I was wondering if the optional rules are considered cannon in lore? For some like indirect fire, the answer is a rather obvious yes or probably, but others, like sprint, seem a bit more questionable

Edit: specifically wanted to know because I’m writing a fic and planning to include sprinting mechs in it

EDIT: Lots of people are posting duplicate comments, be aware I will strictly be using the comment with the highest upvote so if you said a mech someone else also said, be sure to upvote them.

I will say, it doesn't have the be developed or even still produced in that era but it needs to be in use in a way people find iconic for the time.

Mechwarriors,

Remember, please, when you see someone posting something that breaks the rules and that you don't like -- whether it's AI art, slurs, off-topic controversial stuff, or whatever -- please, please, just report it to us and let us handle it.

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You've got folks to clean up the shit for you. Don't reach down and grab a handful to smear yourself with it, too.

So I am probably gonna word this horribly, but mh epg group recently started a game and they are training some nee mech warriors. One of them brought up the idea of having them run a combat Sim in their mechs.

The problem is I cant find any info on it anywhere.

So can a mech be set to simulation mode, where the pilot can move around and engage enemies without doing or taking damage?

I think it makes sense to have thaf kinda mode on a mech, but cant find any mention of it.

Anyways thanks in advance.

Let me be up front, this comes across as self promotion, but really I just wanted to make something the community can use, but if it still seems to the mods like self promo then so be it.

When I've played battletech solo, the worst part was running the other side. You know what you're planning, so the enemy never does anything you didn't expect.

Most solo aids give you a generic behaviour table that treats an Atlas and a Trebuchet exactly the same, which is no help at all.

So I built one that reads the actual loadout.

The bit I care about most is how it works out where a mech wants to fight. For Classic it ignores the Alpha Strike damage numbers, because those squash minimum range and each weapon's own brackets into one figure and you lose everything useful.

Instead it walks the hexes in each band, checks which bracket every gun on the mech falls into, applies minimum range penalties, turns the to-hit into a 2d6 hit chance and adds up expected damage. Then it weights that by role.

So a Trebuchet wants long, because LRM 15s reach 21 and its backup lasers are dead past 9.

An Atlas wants short, because the AC/20 and four mediums all peak inside 3 hexes.

An Awesome 8Q sits at medium instead of charging in, because three PPCs have a minimum range of 3 and getting close is genuinely bad for it.

Weapon stats are off the Total Warfare tables and the Tactical Operations advanced weapons tables. Variable damage weapons get handled properly, so Heavy Gauss reads 25/20/10 and Snub-Nose PPC reads 10/8/5.

Both rulesets are in there and kept separate. Alpha Strike gets OV, heat, shutdown and TMM. Classic gets the weapon model plus the full loadout and heat sink count on the card, and it will never quote you an Alpha Strike damage number.

Orders also know how fast the mech is. Someone flagged a Sagittaire being told to close to short range. The range preference was right, five Medium Pulse Lasers and two Large Pulse is a knife fighting loadout, but the thing walks 3 and runs 4. That's three turns crossing open ground barely shooting back. Now it tells you that, and sends slow mechs cover to cover instead of straight up the guts.

Things it does not do. It only runs the OpFor, not your force, so it can't work out your TMM or pick targets for you. It has no idea what your terrain looks like.

It's free, no signup, runs in your browser. If a specific mech reads wrong in play I want to hear about it, that's the useful kind of bug report.

battletechhq.com/opfor-command.html

So here's the flavor, You are a pirate captain, you commandeered a jumpship and have one functioning leopard dropship, (the other one got crippled by the people you got the jumpship from and you've been scavenging it for parts to get the other one repaired. You've got some heat on your back and need to disappear, but also need money to pay for repairs and people. Luckily you hear some radio chatter among other jumpships about this colony world that is trying to get Comstar to recognize them as a planet and get put on the navigation registry.

A low population world, with poor defenses, that definitely doesn't have an HPG and isn't even on the navigation registry. You don't know what's on planet, but you can be sure there's going to be a distinct lack of hardened targets. If you played your cards right and were quick enough, you could be a king/queen/monarch.

What does your lance look like?

Feel free to go full flavor, or more practical. Era is succession wars, and options are whatever got salvaged by the pirate beforehand.

Is there a way to get record sheets with the relevant equipment rules and abilities on them? Like a double page thing? I am tired of manually adding the rules to theme.

Recently got the Inner Sphere command lance, the one with an Orion, thunderhawk, pheonix hawk and Atlas 2. Currently wondering where the best place to find the full game stat blocks are? The mech types are listed but I was after the actual diagram sheets, not the Alpha strike ones.

(Apologies if the answer is somewhere Obvious, this is my first time trying to get into the tabletop after playing MW5 and the 2016 computer game)

Cleaning out my battletech closet. Normally I have them all labeled or can recognize them but these two got me stuck. Help please.

Okay, so after making sure that sharing mech designs was okay I will share this one.

I don't have a name for it yet, hence the Experiment designation.

It's a 95 tonner, and is probably the most expensive thing I have ever designed.

I have run it through the Mech Factory's combat trial sim several times and it seems to me to work very well.

Obvious weaknesses are the XL engine and the ammunition dependency,,, as well as the complete lack of CASE.

And sorry if the drawing is crappy. I banged that out in about an hour. It was suggested that an image works well, so I included one.

Comments and critiques, pitchforks and torches are all welcome.

I've got a 3rd Ed. Locust that, somewhere in the 30 years between my middle school bedroom and today, lost one of its MG pods. I've been looking for a replacement and really don't feel like paying someone on ebay $20 for a whole other loose locust, and then I'd have another one missing the pod that I stole for mine.

This seems like a good candidate for 3d printing, but I can't find anyone who has the file for that part. I've considered making a clay cast of the other one but then it's mirrored and that's a pain in the ass.

Any ideas? Anyone have a good scan of that part?

I always wondered how he got the job at PGI, and what life looks like now since he has been let go.

FYI if you would like to support Alex, he is open to commission work: https://www.deviantart.com/flyingdebris

Best contact via twitter: https://x.com/Flyingdebrisguy

Is it within the rules to share mech designs for constructive critique?

I've been playing BT since they changed the name from "BattleDroids", so I have made a LOT of mechs in my day... I've even seen some of my old designs seeing print when some dev or another had the same ideas I had.

Just wanted to ask before dropping a mech sheet into the pot.

About a week ago, I asked for help in identifying an unknown mech, which turned out to be a Zeus. I've just finished it, and figured I'd post a shot of him and his friend.

Of note - these are the last two mechs I needed to paint before I cleared my pile of shame. I'm now officially finished.

In the process of pulling them out, cleaning them off, superglueing a few dozen back together . . .

Will share more detailed pics later this week as it progresses!

My first job at a dump I found about 2/3rds of these in a box. I know they look a bit dusty, but they've been sitting in a bigger box with my old collection since I got my own place last year. Some of them will also remain missing limbs for the rest of their lives - I used to pretend they were battle damaged 😅

There's also a smattering of Crimson Skies and some kind of fantasy TTRPG made with the same bases.

It's a real pain trying to get three gun barrels lined up nicely They still came out ok tho. The little one in the front is an extra insert, because I ran out of old paint pots. It can be swapped in for another if I need to use all the Light ones.

Working on some more Marik Militia next, and then another Lance of House Hiritsu Mechs will bring me up to a full Company for each House.

EDIT: Oops, I just found two more that I apparently dropped and forgot about when I was bringing them in after priming. I guess I'll get to those next time I work on generic Units.

Finished a few more mechs for Jade Falcon Omega Galaxy! Loving the red talons on these birbs!

Almost at a full binary of Omega now - I think an Ion Sparrow will be just the thing to round it out!

Mad Cats for display and gameplay.

Really happy how these came out. I backed out of the gold trim idea and just went with the cockpit gold color instead. I want to do more mechs with the black trim color possibly for Ghost bear. Next is the wife's mechs for a 400 point aces combined lance (which I still have to print off some aces cards) and some custom painted mechs. Then we are off to our scoring sands campaign!

Are you like me?

Did you too forget to attach the wingy bits to your Aces Box Rifleman C2?

Do you also have an unpainted Spider and a rapidly growing obsession with Inner Sphere partial wing mechs?

Boy oh boy do I have good news for you!

With a little green stuff, you too can have your very own Spider 8x! If you can find a kick-ass sword, maybe even an 8xr!