Ross_Hollander

your puny mountains cannot mountain me

[ross-hollander]

Officials:

I cannot stop you from putting my posts in voice acting compilations or Reddit posts or whichever but please credit me and let me know if you do that.

I take asks, if there is anything people feel the need to ask me about.

The difference between '3151posting' and 'mechposting' on this blog is whether the subject matter at hand is relevant solely to the world or game of Battletech or to the mecha genre at large.

If something is presented as BattleTech lore but lacks a tag of same, you may safely assume I am making it up for funsies.

This blog contains mentions of death and violence.

If you are looking for more of or more comprehensive parts of my writing, consider my Itch account where I host:

Loot the Room!, a fantasy game of treasures and tribulations in the typical dungeon.

Impostor Syndrome, a game of trust, cooperation, and lack thereof.

Acceptable Casualties, Mork Borg engine for a post-apocalyptic modern warfare RPG.

Acceptable Casualties: Crossfire, a tabletop skirmish game originally built for toy soldiers.

Ride into Sunrise, a fairly rules-light RPG in quantum superposition between samurai film and spaghetti Western.

MEAT Grinder X, a passion project to create a mecha tabletop wargame actively hostile to players.

PUNX, a business-card-size cyberpunk RPG, light but serviceable in a pinch.

Mayhem in Hangar Nine, a game of office politics, petty arguments, and also giant death robots.

There is also a lot of Mork Borg and CY_BORG stuff on there.

[ross-hollander]

With each missile bursting, a grave is opened; each laser etches a headstone. A battlefield is only a cemetery in the making.

Excerpts from Kipling's Epitaphs of the War. Art from the cover of Interstellar Operations book, by Florian Mellies.

[ross-hollander]

Two thoughts..

...not intended to be connected, but they might well be:

a) Caine as the gaming industry. For one thing- when in doubt, he makes an online PVP shooter. He's fine with all manner of murder, dismemberment, torture, destruction and mayhem, but literally crashes and restarts at the mere mention of sex. He hates (and fears) the idea that people enjoy games that he didn't come up with; on the other hand, he takes little to no notice of what people say they want from him. He also insists on the 'adventure' format- ambient things like the stargazing or simulators like the diner are suggested to him. There's only one correct form, style, etc., and it must be his.

b) Why won't Caine just make adventures that are, you know, fun? Answer: he doesn't know what fun is. Think about social media algorithms. Caine sees in a binary of engaged vs. not-engaged, and considers the latter terrible. For him, there is no difference between 'horrified and running for one's digital life' vs. 'having an all-time blast'- both are Engagement. That's why he's fine with Jax (antagonistic and unruly but usually engaged with adventures) but can't stand Zooble (cooperative with the gang but reluctant at best for the adventures). It also explains the digital food fixation: fundamentally useless- the cast can't truly eat or, in fact, starve -but it engages them in 'eating'.

[ross-hollander]

(muffled sound, as though playing a floor downstairs at some party, of "Fireball" (Pitbull, ft. John Ryan) blasting at full volume)

[ross-hollander]

If you find yourself...

...stuck one jump spinward from the middle of nowhere, doing garrison duty on some dirtball of all the strategic importance of a can of whipped cheese spread, you can always pass the time by playing N Degrees of Malthus.

All you need is a noteputer and an Encyclopedia Sarna data module. Plug it in and hit the Random Page button. Now, from wherever it sent you, you count how many links it takes to get to the page for Star Colonel Nicolai Malthus, and accrue that many points. The next player randomizes and the process repeats. Players must always take the most direct route they know of- i.e., never take a 'Clans' link if you can take a 'Clan Jade Falcon' link. After a predetermined number of goes at this for each player, the one with the most points wins, and sweeps whatever stakes were put as the pot to start- snacks, change, etc.

Landing directly on Malthus' page when randomized is considered a jackpot and earns you a full trinary of points (15). Finding a true dead end is worth 10. Landing on Adam Steiner actually loses you 5, and you must immediately pass the turn.

[ross-hollander]

Meanwhile, in the German BT novels:

Honestly quite an interesting story, but seeing that crop up on the wiki is really something.

[ross-hollander]

Had the Major been standing two feet to the left in the command tent, he would have been the first forty-pounder casualty in several centuries.

[ross-hollander]

it fucks me up a little that bt has disposable rls as opposed to InfSRM launchers so you could just kit like a squad of 16 guys with them and at least prevent a zone from being freely overrun without killing most of them.

mechwarrior really does fuck up regular concepts of armor defense...

Well, it's true that there are no disposable one-shot Inferno SRM launchers. However, we are not beyond hope. The stock Inner Sphere infantry platoon has four elements: three maneuver and one support. The maneuver elements don't pack any sort of heavy weaponry, beyond machine guns or grenade launchers, but the support element frequently field such things as portable SRM launchers.

Now, it is verifiable that Inferno rounds come in SRM format, and that a foot-portable SRM launcher can fire anything a 'mech-mounted one could. Thus, by regulations, sixteen guys could in theory crew three Inferno-equipped SRM launchers, and if dug in to defend an area could prove a not-so-easily-dislodged barrier to anything with a heat gauge trying to seize said area. Or anything with skin, really.

(BattleTroops, p.34, Classic BattleTech RPG, p.137, TechManual, p.230.)

Why no expendable Inferno launchers? Your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps it simply never got made, perhaps it did but fell to lostech, perhaps there was never a niche for it. Like, maybe it was determined that having just the one Inferno shot would never be enough to make it a safe bet- best to leave the weight off the troopers, and let the support squad handle the missile business.

[ross-hollander]

Now, everybody and...

...their grandma know of Operation SCORPION, the first time ComStar tried to take over the known galaxy.

Those whose places of residence are not located underneath rocks likely also know how, following SCORPION's abject failure, ComStar broke in two, the more fundamentalist half eventually making a second attempt at taking over the known galaxy in the Word of Blake Jihad.

Not so very many know of the third time such a thing was tried, with the Blessed Order's go at it in the days of the Republic. Indeed, only a select handful are familiar with the incident- thus making it elite Buhl knowledge.

[cursed-40k-thoughts]

Rest in peace, John Blanche. You had a truly monolithic, formative impact on both Warhammer as an IP, and the lives of countless fans and artists around the world.

[ross-hollander]

i think something overlooked about the hetzer more generally is that it's a tank. Firelock has taught me that any tank is better than no tank, especially when the other person doesn't have tank, or at most something like a missile armor, unless situations are Funky (urban, other enclosed terrain)

having something that you can introduce to infantry troops and deliver protected small caliber handshakes from is very nice.

Now look here, first off, Hetzie is not a tank. The family tree is large and complex, but she is from the Wheeled Assault Gun branch; apparently it's to do with the lack of rotating turret, you see. And second, she does not do 'small caliber': the Hetzer's first, frequent, favorite and only weapons system is an AC/20, unless the crew get out and start throwing rocks at people.

But in that AC/20, via advanced strategic and tactical analysis (MUL's Alpha Strike cards), we can determine that there are many infantry units that Hetzie can simply one-shot, and next to none that she can't put paid to with two. If you want to get by her or, better yet, her and three identical sisters, you will need to step things up beyond such light elements.

Thus, while she isn't a tank, I agree: far better to have Hetzie on your side than not. Even with her technical quirks, she remains an AC/20 on wheels, punching well over her price tag. Furthermore, the whole game of guessing which parts will be functional or indeed there when you buy a new Hetzer adds a fun lootbox element to armored combat.

[ross-hollander]

While I am all for...

...the 'mech pilot with the humanity gradually whittled out of them, I think there's some potential to be had in the notion of the pilot with more humanity put into them.

A pilot with stitches where the extra musculature grafted into them burst the skin around it. Constant, profuse sweating, a perpetually thrumming heartbeat; the drugs they take aren't to enhance their combat capabilities, but to deaden them, so they aren't in a perpetual state of life-or-death adrenaline rush.

So enhanced that they're long past recognizable for human. They can take G-forces double what any baseline could; they also can't hope to subsist on human food, and have to eat ultradense nutrient tablets. They have such canny senses that they barely need a targeting computer. Fluorescent bulbs drive them insane, because they can see every individual flicker. Some of the more overwrought ones have secondary arms, or CQC suites installed- in inch-long fangs and razor claws. They've had monsters grown inside them, now poking through the seams of their flesh.

Looking in the mirror, what do they see left of them? A body constructed out of lab-grown super-organs, chest rising and falling all wrong because their redundant cardiopulmonary system has its own rhythm. Not theirs. Triple-jointed fingers more dexterous than a magician's, with the strength to crush their own cockpit controls if they don't handle them carefully. Not theirs. Eyes from a grandmother, the family nose, gone. Something new, built graft by graft, cell by cell, is in its place, and they can only sit chained to the oars of this Ship of Theseus.

[ross-hollander]

[ross-hollander]

The question I have always had about the Hetzer is thus: If you can make an incredibly cheap tank which has a platform for a AC20 and works like a mobile gun/SPG then surely you could make a incredibly cheap mech? Zuhama II (licensed by Kwikscell inc) 25 rated fusion engine AC20 with 1 ton ammunition Chassis: welded steel frame Speed: 10/21km No armour 22.5 tons Construction cost is lower but the market price is 1,000,000 C-bills. You could get 10 of these for 1 Atlas. So: Would you buy the Zuhama II? The cheapest mech design I can reasonably make with a AC20?

Now, if I'm reading this right, you seem to be offering a 'mech with five shots of AC/20, a completely bare frame, slower than an UrbanMech with the second-weakest grade of engine known to exist (apparently there's a 10-grade engine, but nothing known to be powered with it).

First of all, you clearly have an extremely bright future at Kwikscell. Nobody could be a more natural fit for the company.

But, second, among the other reasons that most people would be able to determine- this is a 'mech essentially assured destruction if somebody spits at it; even assuming the pilot survives- somehow I'm not sure the budget has room for an eject seat -that still means a new Zuhama every time. And that means that every time you replace it, you're resetting the clock on the pilot getting over neurohelmet feedback for the 'mech. Always keep that in mind: like shoes, a factory-fresh 'mech is harder to handle than one broken in already.

So not only will they be piloting an un-CASE'd ton of AC/20 ammunition and a gun with the barest excuse for legs and neither mobility nor protection, they'll probably be doing it with splitting headaches and nausea. When it comes to the field of combat economics at that point- Inner Sphere Standard battle armor is 400,000 a suit, and, quite frankly, six guys with binoculars, a rangefinder and an SRM launcher are probably even cheaper.

[ross-hollander]

Saw a spider quadleg box an atlas yesterday. Didn't go too hot for the spider, atlas put a knee through the chassis, but it definitely had the atlas for a second.

You know, it's a real problem, trying for a melee box in a Quad- you simply don't have the actual arm structure for it. I mean, doubtless it was a good attempt, but you're just going nowhere fast.

No, if you're in a quad 'mech, you'll never win on raw arm strike power, which is why you should never resort to it. I knew one MechWarrior who had a lengthy tally of melee kills/downs, all in an Antlion. She credited it to BJJ practice. There was also the famous Solaris ace, Giorgi Anthonsen- he rolled with a Jaguar, and he earned far more than his share of melee wins, according to him thanks to his judo training.

Meanwhile, there's the likes of "Hallux", a basically jump-jet-exclusive midair 'mech-tial art invented by the Jade Falcons (as the taboo on melee fighting has worn off over time), or the old FedCom MLM (which stands for Mass, Leverage, Momentum, the person who named it had no idea what the snickers were about) system, which was a 'mech-fighting style developed for those 'mechs without BattleFists. And speaking of Solaris, if you ever get a chance- you must see at least one Assault Sumo match. It's truly something to behold.

[ross-hollander]

Is the arrow 4 urbie a metal gear? If you consider it fits all the criteria. Nuclear capability check, bipedal locomotive check. Its a metal gear

Well, Aleksandr Leonovitch Granin (Hero of Socialism, recipient of the Order of Lenin) described the basic premise of the Metal Gear in his 1964 lecture "Put That [Gun] Away, You'll Spoil My Drink" as a missing link between artillery and infantry. This actually proved a half-truth in what would come to be known as the Metal Gears, as it reached a compromise with his colleague Dr. Nikolai Stepanovich Sokolov's vision of a nuclear-armed tank.

Thus we may say that there are three tenets to Metal Gear taxonomy:

A crewed or at least piloted mechanism, (Granin/Sokolov school- though later supplanted by unmanned Gears.)

with two legs, (Granin school.)

and a strategic nuclear arsenal. (Sokolov school.)

Therefore, examining the UM-AIV UrbanMech, we can determine it possesses all these points: it is bipedal, a piloted machine, and wields a nuclear missile array. Of course, just how strategic that is could be questioned- even Arrow IV missiles aren't intercontinental unless your continents are very close together, on the geographical scale -but I agree that it counts.

[ross-hollander]

I have recently been delivered a suit of iron (yes, iron) armor. It's quite battered but what confused me is how I can find exact matches of autocannon and laser impacts in miniature on its shell. Here is the trademark shearing effect caused by an AC10 burst. There is the ablation and crystal structure disruption of thermal damage from a medium pulse laser.

I am worried that if I put it under the microscope, I will find a dud shell with the stamping visible on its butt buried in here somewhere.

As it stands the nice young man and his butler told me to just repair it. His butler did linger to instruct me to contact her first for inspection of the finished product, and produced a repair chit with signed battalion orders.

Now what? Of all the things I don't actually have the equipment to repair this, unless he would like a nice replacement set of ferro-fibrous or ballistic-reinforced writ uselessness miniature.

The motto of the mechtech is, after all, to do the best work, with the best tools, to the best of your ability, for the best that what you work on will do. Even if somebody hands you a raggedy and jury-rigged MilitiaMech, you must put your all into making it shine.

The further motto, of the employed and profitable mechtech, is to never question the job so long as the customer can be trusted to pay- and quite frankly, the kind of person who has a butler to manage their armor may hold planets for ransom with giant death lasers while tying up their railroad tracks and twirling young ladies on mustaches, but they'd never do anything so petty as stiffing you for a repair bill. That money will come through- believe it.