OOC: Battletech (MechWarrior), any one interested?

[Mantra]

I might be interested in joining if you're still looking for players.

I started following Battletech when it first came out and read the books until the plots became a bit....farfetched. I'm a bit rusty, but I'm willing.

BTW, if you want to play mercs, something else that might be challenging is building a merc unit from the scrap we'd find. Only the successful ones got famous y'know. (The others were mostly dead)

On a personal sidenote, Jade Falcons RULE!

 

[Donsehan]

so which clans/IS factions are allowed?

 

[Orlanth]

I'm writing out some stuff for the thread. ,Like general info and such, as well as my story idea in better detial.

If anyone here has an idea, please post it.

 

[Jagged]

LOL.........three pages of suggestions just move with your plot man. I am sure you will come up with something good.

 

[Orlanth]

LOL.........three pages of suggestions just move with your plot man. I am sure you will come up with something good.

3? I'm on the start of page 2 here.

 

[Orlanth]

General information:
- Earth is now known as Terra.
- The human race has colonies on a large number of planets across the galaxy.
- The Inner Sphere was known as the Human Sphere.
- The Inner Sphere is made of several factions, which are listed below:
- The Federated Suns is lead by House Davion
- The Lyran Commonwealth is lead by House Steiner
- The Federated Commonwealth is lead by the alliance of the above two.
- The Draconis Combine is lead by House Kurita.
- The Fee Worlds League is lead by House Marik.
- The Capellan Confederation is lead by House Liao.

The Clans
- The Clans are made of two types: The Crusader Clans, and the Warden Clans.
- The Crusader Clans are the Clans which are the ones invading the Inner Sphere. Those Clans are:
- Clan Blood Spirit.
- Clan Fire Mandril.
- Clan Hell’s Horses.
- Clan Ice Hellion.
- Clan Jade Falcon.
- Clan Smoke Jaguar (Annihilated by SLDF in 3059)
- Clan Star Adder.
- Clan Wolf.
- The Warden Clans are those which are not so involved in invading the Inner Sphere. Those Clans are:
- Clan Cloud Cobra.
- Clan Coyote.
- Clan Diamond Shark.
- Clan Ghost Bear.
- Clan Goliath Scorpion
- Clan Snow Raven
- Clan Steel Vipers
- Both Crusader and Warden Clans wish to take over the Inner Sphere, but have different ways about it.
- The Clans are based around honor, and genetically and technology advanced.
- Not every Clan controlled a lot of territory; most Clan’s held territory inside the territory of another Clan.

BattleMech general information
- ‘Mechs are huge robotic machines piloted by a MechWarriors.
- ‘Mechs are powered by a nuclear reactor.
- ‘Mech weapons have 3 categories: Beam, Ballistic and Missile.
- Beam consists of Laser type weapons, and flamers.
- Ballistic is quite self-explanatory, but consist of Gauss Rifles, Auto-Cannons, Machine Guns, etc, etc.
- Missiles are also quite self-explanatory, and consist of SRMs, MRMs, LRMs, Arrow-IVs, etc, etc.
- ‘Mech have a very large range of designs meant for different tasks.
- ‘Mechs mostly weigh between 20 and 100 tons, some even weigh more.
- ‘Mechs can be as tall as 14 meters in height. (Example: The Inner Sphere’s Atlas is 100 tons and 14 meters tall with a humanoid body)
- Some ‘Mechs even even have Jump-jets, which basically make ‘Mechs jump and/or fly very short distances.
- Almost everything with a ‘Mech causes heat. Heat can shut-down a ‘Mech and/or make it quite hard to pilot.
- To combat heat, ‘Mechs have Heatsinks, which cool down a ‘Mech. More heatsinks the better, but each one takes room and payload space limiting how many a ‘Mech can have.

Story idea:
The FedCom, lead by Prince Victor Stenier-Davion has launched an attack on the Clans, invading Clan space – the task-force objective is to capture one of the Smoke Jaguar Clan’s planet of (Unknown).
The task-force has hired the (Unknown), a mercenary unit to aid in the objectives.

Unknown = We think up.

We can be the FedCom’s task-force, the mercenaries, or the Clan, or even a mix of 2 or 3.

Positions and such is not decided.

 

[Donsehan]

huh, interesting, oh well guess no clan Ghostbear for me.

 

[Orlanth]

huh, interesting, oh well guess no clan Ghostbear for me.

My idea doesn't have to be what we do, it is after all, an idea.

If must of us want Clan Ghost Bear, then we can.

 

[Orlanth]

We cold do Clan Ghost Bearss' Trials of Possession against Clan Wolf for an IS world.

Information from Classic Battletech

Before their relocation to the Inner Sphere, the Ghost Bears held considerable territory in Clan space. However, they now maintain only their enclave on Arcadia and the traditional posting at Strana Mechty; their remaining holdings were ceded to allies or lost to Trials of Possessions. All other Ghost Bear troops and civilians have been relocated to their Inner Sphere occupation zone, which has been named the Ghost Bear Dominion. The Ghost Bears recently captured the Inner Sphere worlds of Leoben, Skandia and Radstadt in Trials of Possession against Clan Wolf.

Trial of Possesion = A fight over a possesion. Winner becames the new owner of the possion.

We would need Cats to explain abit on the Clans, as they are alot diffrent from the IS. We will also be playing Clan Wolf vs Clan Ghost Bear.

 

[Donsehan]

Orlanth, really it's fine, I just wanted to be a part of Clan Ghostbear because I found it interesting. I'm perfectly fine with going with what you have.

 

[Orlanth]

Orlanth, really it's fine, I just wanted to be a part of Clan Ghostbear because I found it interesting. I'm perfectly fine with going with what you have.

Clan Ghost Bear vs Clan Wolf in those Trails of Possesions is intruging.

Perhaps we can do were the Ghost Bears do invade the IS.

Donsehan, in my RP's I do try to keep all RPers happy.

I want to try something diffrent, and Clan Ghost Bear is diffrent.

I've played agaisnt Clan Jade Felcon, Clan Wolf, House Steiner, House Davion and House Liao.

If we do when the Ghost Bear Clan invades the IS; then that's Clan Ghost Bear vs the Draconise Combine (House Kurita) - That is also very intruging.

 

[Donsehan]

Orlanth really, I'm okay with anything pretty much.

 

[Morgoth]

Honestly, I prefer the original idea: FedCom invading Clan Space.

 

[Orlanth]

Honestly, I prefer the original idea: FedCom invading Clan Space.

Rightio, what does everyone else want?

 

[cats]

I like the oringinal one too. Especailly if you want to ask me for more info on the clans. A friend of mine knew a fare deal of battle tech, I most reguritated what I knew in my earlier posts. I think thats about it except my technology difrences are small things like this.

IS nueral helmets typicaly require a shaved head where as clan nueral helmets allow you to have short hair, and not be bald. Sinple things that aren't balance issues are the main difrences in technology.

I found a couple pieces of my battle tech stuff yesterday, so I can try to look up some things there. But I am actully missing most of the clans weaonry stats and descriptions.

Other then that I would recamend we not play as Victor stienor daivon, he's the main character of mechwarrior four and comes into power jsut after then destruction of smoke jaguar, so the order of events would be messed up. Mechwarrior 3 is actully the final battle against the last smoke jagaur general on a difrent planet. I believe mech comander was the actual destruction of smoke jaguars home world I think tigress. (I installed and played mech warrior 3 for a while jsut before christmass. So I can remember some names.)

 

[Orlanth]

Did the Steiner's invade clan space, or jst the Davion's?

If we do Davion's vs Clans, we dont have to have Victor involved. We have Victor give the order for us to invade and that's all.

What Clan would you surggest we have cats?

 

[Hotclam]

Could I play a character? I've got substantial Battletech Experience, plus I'm a graphic designer: could do ribbon decks, logos, stuff like that.

Ghost Bear is a great Clan, but why even play as them? Start our own clan, work it into the world. The most important thing here is to determine a year cutoff, then begin anew, disregarding all tech manuals, novels and expansions after that year: that way, your history is correct and your future is undetermined, the way role-playing should be. I would choose 3020, but that is simply a suggestion, I don't even know if you guys want me on board yet, LOL.

 

[MrWolf]

I would be very interested.

Obviously, my forte would be playing a Wolf Clansman, but any affiliation is doable.

 

[cats]

Well aparently battle tech is well known.

Well clam any one is welcome to Lit's boards, as for this thread, thats not my place to say, but I imagine your welcome.

I have no profrence with clans, I know smoke Jaguar the best, because they were the classic clan villain. Then I know ghost bear and clan wolf. I like wofl because every other clan is named after some geneticly enginered animal. Wolf is just clan wolf. Outside them I know of clan jade falcon and Death Adder.

Personaly I'm big on salvage so I'm happy as innersphere or mercenaries. Although I plan on starting in a Puma, witch is a clan wolf design that smoke jaguar used, (Suposedly wolf had to give it to them as payment for using a feline name.)

 

[Orlanth]

All are welcome.

I;d prefer to be an IS or Merc.

 

[MrWolf]

In that case, let's play mercenary, so we can have mixed affiliations and more mission options.

 

[Eritz]

okay, just curious, why IS would be at such a large disadvantage, because technology can be stolen, and made pretty easily that far in the future.

The history of Battletech goes that the ruling empire fragmented and was split by civil war, during this time almost all mech factories were destroyed as well as the knowledge. For one of the factions to roll out a new mech is an extremely difficult task. Against the Clan the factions don't stand a chance, they lose almost every engagement they are in losing systems piecemeal left right and centre so they are unable to capture or retro-engineer clan technology. It's not until much later after an epic battle is fought on a single planet, which terms have been arranged all teh factions will surrender if they lose the clans and the clans will halt all advancement for years that space starts to stabalise and technological leeching begins.

 

[Eritz]

Right some things to think about regarding clans. Rules of engagement, how are you going to handle it? It's extremely dishonourable amongst the clans for two clan units to engage a single enemy unit, clans view fighting as a series of isolated duels. How are they going to react to the IS breaking this rule since they can't go toe to toe with a clan unit? Will they let one clanner jump in to even things up or keep up the 1 on multiple engagements?

Second, how many units are people going to be allowed to possibly have control over? Will they be allowed to switch mechs, for instance bugs for recon, strikes for hit and runs, assaults for heavy damage duty and so on?

And if the whole game is just going to be based on mech combat, then you could easily use a prorgam like Megamek to just setup battlefields and have people join that and use that rather than just using the forums. You could switch between the forums for RP and Megamek for combat but then you lose the fine control over deciding an outcome that may be neccesary in a roleplaying game. Sucking a gauss slug to the head tends to be a fairly lethal experience for the pilot.

It might be wise to also assign a tonnage limit to what the players can pick for mechs just to prevent everyone grabbing heavy stuff like AS7-K's and MAD-4A's and force people in the group to adopt different roles. When I played on the online muxs I loved nothing more than running about in stuff like strikes and flanking or performing a ridiculous amount of long range recon in a variety of bugs.

 

[Jagged]

Sharing some thoughts.....

So I take it we are going with the old School Fasa story and equipment. Cool for me.....

Seems a mercenary company is the best bet though for playing out any number of scenerios.

Thirdly...A tonnage limit is a good idea at least until we start capturing/savaging equipment.


I would like to switch between mechs and roleplay because frankly that is why we play on here....to interact with people and not play wargames at a distance.

In the mech books I remember occupations like spy, infantry recon, and many others. Should allow players to do that as well.

I would gladly lead a unit of mobile infantry in battle.......may need to capture buildings and people. With plasma weapons and rocket launchers we could do damage as well as protect mechs that have been disabled.

 

[Orlanth]

I was hoping on more then battles, make this RP like the books with lot more then just battles.