quick abstract and purpose of this blog:
I paint BattleTech minatures and spout my opinion on them. I play the game constantly, and I enjoy it. Occasional other stuff too.

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@highlander-732b
quick abstract and purpose of this blog:
I paint BattleTech minatures and spout my opinion on them. I play the game constantly, and I enjoy it. Occasional other stuff too.
Fuck Russia.
Fuck Putin.
XユーザーのRaikkonenさん:「#umamusume https://t.co/ibkoSShr7J」 ※Illustration shared with permission from the artist. If you like this artwork please support the artist by visiting the source.
Apparently, I collect House Kurita now too, not only Steiner.
Decided to make "canon" force of the Red Hunters/Duke Hassid Ricol's private army, as its showed in the Alpha Strike commander book, but decided to paint them in generic red colours of Kurita/Sword of Light regiments, as only duke's The Red Hunter has official image with this scheme and generic colours more universal
Its Tuesday time to talk about the Thunderbolt
So, in my current playthrough of MW5:Mercs I have acquired a Thunderbolt and I gotta say I wish I liked it default load out more. Its arrangement of armaments means it has something for every distance which is nice but it does not have the heat sinks to support it's weapons.
Even using just the medium and large laser in moderation I was riding the red of my heat gauge in any fight that lasted longer than a minute.
Very cannon to how terrible heat management was in the succession wars era 11/10 immersive experience.
I think the thunderbolt is a good argument to have more specialized Mechs instead of general purpose Mechs at least until the rediscovery of double heat sinks.
I really like the look of the thunderbolt, the offset cockpit adds a quirky charm to the machine.
This playthrough has really shown how the hunchback is the superior mech.
During my playthrough, I converted every single Thunderbolt into a TDR-5SE when possible, and dropped the Jump Jets if I needed to. That version of the Thunderbolt is pretty good, generally because you have enough heatsinking.
Personally, my favorite design so far is the Catapult CPLT-K2, simply because twin PPCs is good, although I made the decision to remove some of the secondary weapons to add even more heatsinking.
Holy shit this is GORGEOUS OP
A doodle of a Zaku urbanmech
A doodle of a Zaku urbanmech
Something done for fun.
it'd be cool if they made mecha series that subverted the usual format of country-based robot battle tournaments with super robots in favour of something a bit more authentic to the way conflicts tend to work in real life, maybe even to the extent of full-blown war drama with an undercurrent of the technology actually advancing as the timeline moves forward
rather than having the protagonist chase after the stereotypical absent older brother and his demon robot, we could have a rivalry between once-strangers motivated largely by political forces outside of any single person's control, though aggravated by personal ego
I feel like people on the wiki just kinda say shit with no regard for the utility of the mechs they're attempting to punch down on.
i will note: the Archer 5CS mounts a total of 60 LRM tubes with artemis, which is in fact 10 more than the Longbow. and putting the blame on the wiki editors there is unfair when it is paraphrased from the TRO
Tumblr reading comprehension moment. This could have been worded better though.
I think the wording is fine, as the Longbow doesn't get an updated version until 3056. The Archer ARC-5CS is a 3051-3052 design. Only after 3056 is the wording untrue, and even then, the ARC-5CS can still put more missiles in the air than the 3056 Longbow LGB-7Q (ARC-5CS is 15×4, LGB-7Q is 20×2).
The Longbow is more lethal with the LGB-7Q variant, mostly because it mounts five IS Medium Pulse Lasers to absolutely trash anything that gets below LRM min range, while also mounting an IS ER Large Laser for a little extra direct fire utility.
Phoenix Hawk Custom
This specific mech is a customized version of the royal phoenix hawk to make it look like a standard variant. It took a lot of time to get the details correct.
One thing about Battletech that I like relative to other mech properties is Battletech will have mechs that are just apologetically shitty
You simply don't get shit like this from franchisees that are more starry eyed and less cognisant of the failures of the Military Industrial complex
Oh excellent I found this post again it has been living rent free in my head for ages.
I was exactly the kind of nerdy kid that collected dedicated books filled with diagrams explaining the various sci-fi vehicles or technology from my favorite shows and movies, and I cannot recall any other fictional universes that went out of its way to deliberately imagine stuff that was canonically crappy.
Here's the starting snippet from the Sarna's BattleTech wiki entry on the Charger:
Can you imagine playing a game where more than one of the options it offers are deliberately bad and making them even somewhat passable requires you to jump through more hoops?
Why do these things exist? Same reason crappy military equipment exists in real life: lobbyists, corruption, graft, lazy or rushed engineering, take your pick. Some 'Mechs like the Assassin are noted for being so uncomfortable to use that its pilots developed fucking back problems.
It's one thing to have players argue about what mechs or builds are superior in which situations but BattleTech took the bold stance, "What if you were just given sub-par equipment and had to make the best of it?"
Sure you get a giant robot...but what if you were given the giant robot equivalent of a lemon?
And yanno what? Some people still like the bad mechs. You can run into forums where people defend the Assassin or the Hollander or argue about the Cicada. There is a meticulous and frankly excellent Youtube video that defends the "abject failure" of a 'Mech that is the Charger with a run time of one hour and sixteen minutes and it is fucking riveting. It has to be the most mecha pilot things I've ever seen: it incorporates the 'I love my ancient, shitty car' attitude to your giant stompy death robot shenanigans.
"Oh, old Edna here? Yeah, yeah I know her model got discontinued for a reason. It's impossible to get replacement parts for her, the reactor runs too hot, her left hip-actuator acts up when it's too cold, and the cockpit has less leg room than minesweeper's convention...but goddamn I wouldn't trade this piece of junk for anything. She's got character."
I'd argue that a bad chassis doesn't ultimately mean anything either. Basically all of those chassis get significant overhauls later down the timeline, turning from abject disappointments into actually good battlemechs.
The Charger gets the CGR-1A9, and eventually the CGR-3K and CGR-3Kr refits, tacking on some advanced tech and significantly improving the weapons suite, making the mech significantly more effective, especially at close ranges.
In addition, the Charger is refined into the Hatamoto-Chi, where it gets the power of samurai armor and the internals of a Thug THG-11E crammed into the chassis, significantly improving the capabilities of the original design. The Hatamoto-Chi also gets a myriad of good versions as well, as it continues to get refits even into the ilclan era.
The Assassin has generally been a pretty underwhelming mech for most of its lifespan, until you realize it was designed to hunt other light mechs and vehicles. It has very decent mobility for a mech of its size, and it performs decently well as a scout.
Besides being cheap, the Assassin was also famous for being able to flank very quickly in comparison to many of its contemporaries, only really being outmatched in jump distance by the Ostscout, a mech not designed for direct combat. In addition to that, many light mechs of the era would have similar levels of firepower, but were not as mobile over most terrain compared to the Assassin.
Aside from lore considerations, the Assassin was unparalleled during the original 3025 setting, as target numbers for range bands were fixed attributes. This meant than an assassin in medium range after jumping was a guaranteed 10+ to hit on 2d6, which provided it a lot of evasion.
Even the most modern version of the assassin is dedicated to the same ideas as the original. The Assassin ASN-109 incorporates Stealth Armor powered by an Angel ECM Suite as an integral part of its systems, making it exceedingly difficult to hit, and is equipped with a Light PPC and an MML-5 rack, as well as a One Shot SRM-2. This is not perfect by any means, but it vastly improves over the original's damage potential, and retains the original's idea as a light mech hunter and overall annoyance.
Now, on to the Cicada. The Cicada was envisioned as a 40t Locust with slightly better equipment. This meant a marginal increase in armor, and two medium lasers instead of a single one. It's not paticularly interesting overall, but it is reliable as a larger counterpart to the Locust.
Like many of the others above, it also gets some very good upgrades, with the newest Ilclan-era version mounting some very advanced weapons. The Cicada CDA-4A equips two medium Variable Speed Pulse Lasers and a single Re-engineered Medium Laser, as well as a supercharger. This means that the design is very accurate when attacking at point blank ranges, and certainly has the speed and armor to make it there.
This design is unironically one of the best designs I've ever seen, and it is exceedingly reasonable for its BV cost, being a very VERY nasty flanker which will get into the back arc of an opponent.
Finally we arrive at the Hollander.
I dunno who told you the Hollander was bad. Whomever they are, they are lying. If you haven't been headclipped across the map by a Hollander BZK-F3, you don’t have a say in this conversation.
A Gauss Rifle mounted to the frame of a light mech is not something to underestimate.
You have not lived unless you've seen one of your most expensive designs, a King Crab KGC-008B, an work of mechanical art that excels above and beyond what this little malignant mockery of a mech even costs, fall to a single watermelon-sized metal ellipsoid quickly delivered straight through its cockpit.
You can definitely make an argument that the sequels to the original Hollander are subpar mechs, but the original stands apart as a classic. No substitutions.
To close out my arguments today, I conclude that there are very few bad mechs. Eventually someone likes the chassis just enough to fix most of the problems with a liberal application of C-Bills and time.
Now due to me hurting my wrist again, I'm takin a break from drawing and writing and spending my time doing something I can Kinda do with my other hand
Stamps.
Free to use, credit not necessary but appreciated, I'll probably upload these to my website soon. Stamp template by ahmed-art on deviantart
I actually practice my recognition skills using this trainer. I'm currently sitting at a 93% recognition rate for every single mech acrosss every era.
When I say "Give me a photo of a battlemech, and I can probably tell you the best variant", I'm not kidding.
This free web app lets you practice your BattleTech Mech recognition skills.