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BattleTech

I usually play this game a couple of times a month. Sadly, tariffs are coming for Battletech in terms of higher prices. Here's Catalyst's announcement:


I guess, if you play, stock up since a lot of the product is made in China.
 
On happy and exciting news, there's a DLC coming for Clans!

After the layoffs at the start of the year, I was worried but Flash Storm looks like a full expansion essentially with new mechs, new story, and a variety of other things.

Here's the link.

4 new Omnimechs, and 4 Battlemechs. Most importantly: the Fire Moth!!! Also: Elementals!

When I saw Mechwarrior Online was releasing the Fire Moth I was expecting it to end up in Clans somehow, but really glad to see an expansion and focused on the Ghost Bears no less!

There's reference to sending your Elementals against the Jade Falcons as well, which is interesting for sure.
 
On happy and exciting news, there's a DLC coming for Clans!

After the layoffs at the start of the year, I was worried but Flash Storm looks like a full expansion essentially with new mechs, new story, and a variety of other things.

Here's the link.

4 new Omnimechs, and 4 Battlemechs. Most importantly: the Fire Moth!!! Also: Elementals!

When I saw Mechwarrior Online was releasing the Fire Moth I was expecting it to end up in Clans somehow, but really glad to see an expansion and focused on the Ghost Bears no less!

There's reference to sending your Elementals against the Jade Falcons as well, which is interesting for sure.

Very good news and especially since i'm also a Ghost Bear Tabletop player.

Wasn't expecting a full DLC so soon but i'm not complaining. We are moving closer to Tukayyid ;)
 
CGL recently announced a new "Continuum" product line, which is set to cover alternate takes on BattleTech beyond that seen in the "Prime" BT universe.

First up is a box set called BattleTech: Gothic; there's a preview PDF linked to in this article which offers a basic outline of the setting.

Other products from this new product line remain to be seen, though I personally hope that the Empires Aflame concept from 2014 could perhaps be revisited as part of the Continuum series of products.
 
I'd like to see Empires Aflame used as well, as I think it's a very interesting WI? take on the BT universe starting from a key deviation (General Kerensky was assassinated before finalizing the Exodus, resulting in the SLDF not leaving and attempting to rebuild the Terran Hegemony. Thus no Clans or ComStar in this timeline, among other variations).
 
CGL recently announced a new "Continuum" product line, which is set to cover alternate takes on BattleTech beyond that seen in the "Prime" BT universe.

First up is a box set called BattleTech: Gothic; there's a preview PDF linked to in this article which offers a basic outline of the setting.

Other products from this new product line remain to be seen, though I personally hope that the Empires Aflame concept from 2014 could perhaps be revisited as part of the Continuum series of products.

Everytime this comes up i can't believe how stupid that looks. When i first learned of it i thought it was a premature April Fool's joke but here were, it seems real. Not a fan and certainly won't buy or play.

I'd like to see Empires Aflame used as well, as I think it's a very interesting WI? take on the BT universe starting from a key deviation (General Kerensky was assassinated before finalizing the Exodus, resulting in the SLDF not leaving and attempting to rebuild the Terran Hegemony. Thus no Clans or ComStar in this timeline, among other variations).

That is actually something i would be interested in, just an alternate take on history with other Mechs and tech to explore.
 
Empires Aflame is an interesting variation. I'm somewhat skeptical of what I've read about BTG, but I need more information to form a better opinion. Some aspects of it almost sound like "Battletech, but everyone is the Word of Blake." :lol:
 
I read the universe primer for Battletech Gothic and while I'm not terribly interested it also doesn't seem to be as far afield as I feared. The monsters are genetic engineering of megafauna taken to a further step than we ever saw in the official universe, and the rest of the universal mechanics seem to be the same. The cultures, history, and Houses seem to have gone in an even more bizarre direction but there's nothing like demons are aliens or the like. And no Clans.
 
The new DLC for Mechwarrior Clans will be coming out on the 8th.

Time to torture my poor 2 generations old PC ( buying a whole new system now this is insane when you think about the madness of the GPU market right now).
 
Damn - the end of the campaign had me a little choked up. The writing on these games and the characters are really excellent, they really do their homework.

Now onto the next DLC, I wonder which one it will be, maybe Jade Falcons before they finally move onto the Wolves and Tukayyid?
 
Just finished it up last night myself, yeah. That was fantastic and... rough. Going back into the Barracks in the post-campaign, phew. PGI outdid themselves with the story and writing for this one.

Jade Falcons next would make sense, we got a cameo from Marthe Pryde after all. If they set it in between Leo Showers' death and Tukayyid again, maybe spend the first part dealing with the conflict between the Falcons and Steel Vipers, and then Aidan Pryde as our central character and lead-in to Tukayyd?
 
I read the universe primer for Battletech Gothic and while I'm not terribly interested it also doesn't seem to be as far afield as I feared. The monsters are genetic engineering of megafauna taken to a further step than we ever saw in the official universe, and the rest of the universal mechanics seem to be the same. The cultures, history, and Houses seem to have gone in an even more bizarre direction but there's nothing like demons are aliens or the like. And no Clans.

I recently got the primer and need to read through it in more detail, but I admit my first impressions are kind of mixed. A lot of the basic aspects seem arguably too similar to the original Succession Wars setting of the franchise, except for some small variations.

All of the Great Houses have been renamed, but only one of them (the former Free Worlds League) has a different House that has taken over (House Selaj was able to replace the Mariks and effectively destroy their political base, from my initial skimming). The equivalent of the FIrst Succession War seems to have continued unabated in this timeline, although it seems like they still have some advanced technologies like warships. The Periphery realms have been entirely destroyed.

I also got the impression that the alternate ComStar is in some ways more like what the Word of Blake evolved into, in terms of religious zealotry. They don't seem to have taken over the communications system that provided an interesting balance of power in the prime history, and it also seems like the Exodus Fleet was smaller in this timeline (about a third of the total SLDF versus 80% of its survivors in the main universe). Either they had fewer survivors after the Amaris War equivalent ended or fewer of them supported the exodus plan. Not sure if they'll try and make Clan counterparts at some point.

I'm still keeping an open mind, but I do feel like the Empires Aflame setting is a more interesting alternative personally. There are enough differences in the non-Exodus/non-Clans timeline to make it feel like a significant variation without changing too much, and leading to some fun changes like the alliance between Houses Liao and Davion as the Confederated Suns, instead of the Steiner/Davion union.

I'll have to study BT Gothic more to get a better opinion.
 
Playing the new MW5: Mercenaries DLC - Shadow of Kerensky.

You are playing your Mercenary company ( or a fresh one) from MW5 at the onset of Operation Revival from the IS side. Meeting the Clans for the first time is both terrifying and awesome. The first mission just drops you right in as you are hired to take out Pirates and when you encounter them they are badly shot up and actually fleeing something until you meet the source of the panic and they hand your ass to you and you can barely make it out in one piece.

The mismatch in power between your top of the line Inner Sphere Mechs and the Clans is brutal and you have to play very smart to make it through without having to basically rebuild your Mechs from the ground up. At least you can salvage Clan tech and even Chassis ( hugely expensive in Salvage Shares) to slowly upgrade your IS but even then it's no easy walk in the park.

Right now i'm in a stretch of missions where i can't repair my Mechs and it's become impossible. Maybe i need to load an older save before i started this mission series to get more Mechs and equipment.

It's hard but i love it! Makes the wait for the next Clan DLC easier.
 
I'm so excited. I have it, but I'm currently doing a fresh campaign runthrough. Still got awhile to go - just about the start the Rise of Rasalhague and almost finished with the main story. Need that sweet sweet Nightstar before I help out Rasalhague. ;)
 
I'm so excited. I have it, but I'm currently doing a fresh campaign runthrough. Still got awhile to go - just about the start the Rise of Rasalhague and almost finished with the main story. Need that sweet sweet Nightstar before I help out Rasalhague. ;)

Word of advice - load up on Assaults as much as you can. 3-4 Lances at minimum unless you want to "cheat" and move below the invason line to repair in peace and maybe make some money because those shot up Assaults ain't cheap to maintain ;)

Man this DLC is really awesome. It is hard, you abolutely have to play smart because running headlong into Clan fire is a recipe for desaster ( who knew ;) ).

I'm at the last mission but i'll probably have to replay the previous one because i took too much damage and my best Mechs take too long to repair before the final mission starts.

I'm so hyped up about Battletech right now, the tabletop game in both variants is going really well right now in my gaming club too :)
 
Word of advice - load up on Assaults as much as you can. 3-4 Lances at minimum unless you want to "cheat" and move below the invason line to repair in peace and maybe make some money because those shot up Assaults ain't cheap to maintain ;)

Man this DLC is really awesome. It is hard, you abolutely have to play smart because running headlong into Clan fire is a recipe for desaster ( who knew ;) ).

I'm at the last mission but i'll probably have to replay the previous one because i took too much damage and my best Mechs take too long to repair before the final mission starts.

I'm so hyped up about Battletech right now, the tabletop game in both variants is going really well right now in my gaming club too :)

Excited!

I'm a little annoyed with myself because I started off this current campaign using one of the pilot overhaul mods; I've disable it (and all other mods) but the "Mason can still die" aspect is baked into the save now. So I have to redo a mission every now and then - and the trouble is the Nightstar seems to die to AI headshots way too easily. But... maybe I'll get a Banshee 3S on the last story mission. We'll see haha.

That's great to hear how the tabletop games are going at your local club! I don't have time to get around to that, but my brother and I are doing asynchronous games on the tabletop, like chess by mail back in the day. We could do Megamek but there's something really nice about the tactile experience.
 
Excited!

I'm a little annoyed with myself because I started off this current campaign using one of the pilot overhaul mods; I've disable it (and all other mods) but the "Mason can still die" aspect is baked into the save now. So I have to redo a mission every now and then - and the trouble is the Nightstar seems to die to AI headshots way too easily. But... maybe I'll get a Banshee 3S on the last story mission. We'll see haha.

That's great to hear how the tabletop games are going at your local club! I don't have time to get around to that, but my brother and I are doing asynchronous games on the tabletop, like chess by mail back in the day. We could do Megamek but there's something really nice about the tactile experience.

One thing that really confused me ( and i haven't been playing a lot of the MW5 DLCs) was that they are period/timelocked. So if you start a 3015 career it'll take you 35 years game time to get to the Clan Invasion. Unfortunately the game doesn't tell you that and i got really frustrated when i downloaded the DLC and wanted to play it only to see no button that said Start Campaign or something.

I really had to google this little but very important piece of information.

I'll try to finish the campaign this weekend amd thinking of starting a completely fresh career now that i have splurged for the complete DLC package on Steam but time is running out to get this timesink done because the next one is coming soon - Anno 117 :)
 
I picked up a digital copy of the new Centennial version of the classic TRO: 3025. It's pretty faithful in many ways to the original source, with all of the units getting modernized art. I have seen some complaints about the physical copies having issues, at least for some of the preorders, so I'll have to see about that.
 
So I picked up the physical copy recently, due in part to being a completionist. I have multiple editions of some of the TROs because of how the content had to be changed due to the Unseen problem. :lol: It seems some of the early printed copies had a problem with some of the later pages being stuck together because they weren't cut properly, and that's caused delays for shipping them to some of the local gaming stores here.

Thankfully my copy doesn't have that problem, but I can see why some people were annoyed by it. Also because initially it was advertised as being a hardcover but it instead a traditional softcover format. I don't really mind that since that's how all of my TROs are.

I think many of the aerospace units and some of the non-mech vehicles got some new original art, with some entries recycling art from the Recognition Guide series. Most of the modernized mech art is taken from these prior books, which creates the occasional weird problem.

If I have one nitpick about the Centennial edition, it's that the text is largely reprinted verbatim from the original TRO 3025, but without correcting some small basic errors even though it would be pretty easy to do. The Commando entry, somewhat infamously, has an intro date of 2463 and says it was designed specifically to compete with other light mechs like the Wasp and Stinger. But those entered service a couple of decades later, according to their respective entries. The Battlemaster and the Phoenix Hawk are both given intro dates in the 2830s (the beginning of the Second Succession War) but also described as having been in later service with the SLDF before the League fell apart. I know in the Battlemaster's case some later sources fixed this by changing the intro date to 2633, and the Phoenix Hawk was changed to 2568.

The Atlas entry likewise says it was the first mech to mount the big AC/20 and that it was commissioned just before the Amaris crisis, as a response to the Star League Council being able to double their local militaries. General Kerensky was concerned about their ability to outmatch SLDF heavy units. Problem is, the Cyclops entered service almost half a century earlier (2710) and also mounts the AC/20.

The Orion is kind of an odd case, as the fluff text for the original edition mentions the SRM-4 being mounted in the left arm ringing the medium laser, with two extra holes for coolant hookups. This is consistent with the classic art, but the stat block and record sheet for the Orion put the SRM in the left torso instead, and this has been followed by every other tech source/RS published since. Some of the more modern Orion variants have visually added the SRM launcher onto the torso while keeping the distinctive "pepperbox" design of the arm (as in the updated edition of TRO 3050), but the art reused for TRO 3025 Centennial does not. This art was originally published in RG: ilClan V19 for the Clan Orion C Mk 2 model and the equipment for that model differs from the SW era version. The left arm is a more powerful large pulse laser. The entry for Kerensky in the Legends supplement also uses this design for his famous Orion, although that's possibly an error.

It's nice to have a modern edition available, I just wish they'd been willing to fix some of the small text errors, in keeping with later revised sources. :)
 
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