That feels like a retcon. I'm pretty sure some of the Clan Invasion through Twilight of the Clans era books have moments where people are injured by the cockpit canopy being penetrated.
Like, I think Natasha Kerensky's death fighting Joanna of Clan Jade Falcon happens that way? Joanna goomba stomps her, but the description talks about the jump jet breaking through and burning out the cockpit.
Checked Sarna since I always figured the cockpits were display panels and not actually glass windows for the bullets, and that appears to be the case for all "modern" mechs.
Yeah I think the tabletop they make the case that the cockpits are not where the glass/clear parts are. MWO (and MW5) they changed it so you are looking out those windows yourself. Once again Battletech designs are not all that well thought out and mainly the focus is more they look cool, pew pew, dakka, fwoosh, and things blow up.
I definitely remember it being that cockpits had glass canopies because otherwise you couldn't see to target opponents and yes you will note that is explicitly counter to the rules of the game
Level 3 rules excepted, the cockpit is canonically in the head, and I feel like for most 'Mechs that doesn't give you a lot of room to work with unless they're scaled up to be 40K Titan sized instead of the height of a 2-story building.
+1
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
Actually I had to look it up. Sarna's source for the viewscreen thing came from a single book published in the 80s.
But I don't think I've ever heard or seen it mentioned in other books or games. It's always been the opposite, that yes they have glass canopies.
So further down the rabbit hole I went and I found this response from 2011 in regards to this very topic:
Hello,
Yes, the canopy of a 'Mech is made of ferro-glass armor, which the pilot can see through, but which also polarizes against sudden flashes and the like (such as lasers and explosions perilously close to where the pilot sits).
Thank you,
- Herbert Beas
BattleTech
Catalyst Game Labs
Mr. Beas has long been a part of the Battltech scene and until 2013 he was the lead dev for the tabletop game at CGL. So I'm just gonna go ahead and say that yeah, all Mechs have glass canopies.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
That feels like a retcon. I'm pretty sure some of the Clan Invasion through Twilight of the Clans era books have moments where people are injured by the cockpit canopy being penetrated.
Like, I think Natasha Kerensky's death fighting Joanna of Clan Jade Falcon happens that way? Joanna goomba stomps her, but the description talks about the jump jet breaking through and burning out the cockpit.
One of the earliest novels has Caryle popping the canopy on his Marauder because...I think it was damaged and blinding him? Anyway he has to close his eyes anytime he fires the PPCs because otherwise they'd blind him.
That feels like a retcon. I'm pretty sure some of the Clan Invasion through Twilight of the Clans era books have moments where people are injured by the cockpit canopy being penetrated.
Like, I think Natasha Kerensky's death fighting Joanna of Clan Jade Falcon happens that way? Joanna goomba stomps her, but the description talks about the jump jet breaking through and burning out the cockpit.
Yeah, there's plenty of references in the books of cockpit "glass". How it's relatively weak vs normal armor, can be smashed by impacts, seeing enemy mechwarrior's faces through their canopies, how it protects from the blinding light of weapon impacts, or how any crack in the glass could prove fatal in underwater or vacuum environments. But of course it's not really glass but some type of transparent armor ("ferroglass", diamond+polymer layers, etc) that is also coated to prevent light from lasers and ppc's from burning out the pilot's eyeballs.
The cockpit glass being weak seems to also justify why an assault mech has the same max head armor as a light.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
I feel like if mechs had the whole "camera to monitor" setup, we'd hear a lot more about junkers equipped with fuzzy black and white screens like starter the Steel Battalion mech.
Also I think there was a Kurita pilot that straight skewered someone through the 'mech's canopy. I wanna say it was in a novel? May have been a story another player told me, can't really remember
That feels like a retcon. I'm pretty sure some of the Clan Invasion through Twilight of the Clans era books have moments where people are injured by the cockpit canopy being penetrated.
Like, I think Natasha Kerensky's death fighting Joanna of Clan Jade Falcon happens that way? Joanna goomba stomps her, but the description talks about the jump jet breaking through and burning out the cockpit.
I seem to remember the same from the Jade Pheonix trilogy. Aiden fires his last rounds in one of his trials while he's flat on his back and nearly defeated and rolls a crit penetrates his opponent's cockpit on a moon, killing his opponent through exposure.
Considering that the game was originally Battledroids (until LucasArts CD'd that name) and the mechs were all supposed to be robots, some confusion on where, exactly, the human is sitting can be understood. Pretty sure that's also the source for most of the scale confusion in the setting. This Stinger has a tiny window compared to the Battlemaster with it's full head greenhouse, despite the Battlemaster being 4 times what that Stinger weighs.
But, the cockpits are located in the head, and are all the same size according to the rules.
That feels like a retcon. I'm pretty sure some of the Clan Invasion through Twilight of the Clans era books have moments where people are injured by the cockpit canopy being penetrated.
Like, I think Natasha Kerensky's death fighting Joanna of Clan Jade Falcon happens that way? Joanna goomba stomps her, but the description talks about the jump jet breaking through and burning out the cockpit.
I seem to remember the same from the Jade Pheonix trilogy. Aiden fires his last rounds in one of his trials while he's flat on his back and nearly defeated and rolls a crit penetrates his opponent's cockpit on a moon, killing his opponent through exposure.
Considering that the game was originally Battledroids (until LucasArts CD'd that name) and the mechs were all supposed to be robots, some confusion on where, exactly, the human is sitting can be understood. Pretty sure that's also the source for most of the scale confusion in the setting. This Stinger has a tiny window compared to the Battlemaster with it's full head greenhouse, despite the Battlemaster being 4 times what that Stinger weighs.
But, the cockpits are located in the head, and are all the same size according to the rules.
A person could squeeze inside a roughly 4x4x4 ft box of a cockpit. And if you scale that box to human head proportions, would give you a humanoid mech around 11 meters high. And a more generous 6x6x6 ft cockpit would be a humaniod mech around 16.5 meters tall, which aligns pretty closely with the height ranges seen in Battletech.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
+5
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
For comparison the cockpit of an F-22 is about 11x4x2 feet. Of course it is full of shit too, keep in mind.
However, if it was to stand upright it'd be around 19 meters tall.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
A mech with a fake cockpit with lots of glass and a real cockpit somewhere else would be funny. Like, take the battlemaster and put the cockpit in the CT but leave the oversized glass ball head.
A mech with a fake cockpit with lots of glass and a real cockpit somewhere else would be funny. Like, take the battlemaster and put the cockpit in the CT but leave the oversized glass ball head.
We already had that...
+8
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NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
(Semi-Crossposting from the Painting Thread)
I finished this new lance of Battletech miniatures up earlier this week. From left to right, a Cyclops, a Goliath, a custom sculpt I'm calling the "Tsar" Nightstar, and a Battlemaster. Replete in Lyran Guard scheme and colors, I've finally satisfied my own need to have a distinctly-obvious lance for each of the five Great Houses.
I really like the MWO version of the Nightstar, and I reeeeeeaaaaaallllllly HATE the existing Ral Partha/IWM sculpt (I cannot fucking wait to get the new Kickstarter model, it looks HOT). I stumbled onto an idea on the official forums for using a CAV Nightshade Bones model as the basis for a better-looking Nightstar, so I set to work.
Using the body of the Nightshade, I built it out using styrene sheet and Milliput by hand. Then I drafted some artwork in Inkscape for the additional parts: the torso "shoulders" and top, the arms (minus the long gun barrels, also from the Nightshade) and hands, and everything below the waist. Then off to my Glowforge to cut parts! Voila!
You're PROBABLY thinking "Gee, that looks big." And you'd be totally and completely right. I goofed! When I was hand-crafting the torso, I was paying more attention to its internal scale, and absolutely zero attention to it's scale relative to....well, anything. So it looks like an MWO model, because it uses those dimensions....but then the whole torso ended up a third too large in every dimension relative to the scale of even the biggest Classic sculpt 'Mech!
So let me spin you a micro-tale: A minor-but-very-rich Social General of the Lyran Commonwealth, astride his ancestral Nightstar, couldn't help but get his ride shot out from under himself repeatedly over the course of decades. Through absolute dumb luck the 'Mech was dragged off of the battlefield and salvageable each time. And each time this minor-but-wealthy noble, and dabbler in historical studies, demanded that his ancestral 'Mech be reinforced and rebuilt, growing it in size and stature a little more with each trip to the repair bay. The techs and engineers protested, but the Social General was adamant...and paying their salaries.
And thus was born the "Tsar" Nightstar. I'm imagining that by the time it was retired, the "Tsar" was pushing the 110 ton mark....and showing its Absolutely Illegal game status through a litany of lower-torso actuator failures.
(And also, of course, I totally missed that I need to paint the laser lenses on the tops of the arms. Whoops! Gonna go fix that....)
The Pack Hunter and Hellion seem like strange inclusions given that they came out later than the rest. I guess the Clan Invasion era does go all the way to '67.
Also if we don't get a Bane imma be sad about it.
0
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NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
The Pack Hunter and Hellion seem like strange inclusions given that they came out later than the rest. I guess the Clan Invasion era does go all the way to '67.
Also if we don't get a Bane imma be sad about it.
I mean, we know the whole list for the Kickstarted 'Mechs, soooooo......
I'm sorry for your sadness. I'm sad right there with you.
NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
More stuff can never be argued against. 😁
I've been on an eBay binge lately, but there's a bug in the back of my brain reminding me a bunch of Stompy Bots are not that far away, and I don't need more Bots.
When do we actually expect to get robots? I was assuming with everything going on that next year at the earliest is likely.
What is this I don't even.
+2
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NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
edited July 2020
Given that CGL's gotten white-box proofs, I think we're closer to the first delivery than not. I'm holding out hope for Wave 1 before the end of the year; Wave 2 is absolutely certainly not getting here until probably late Q2 next year.
In other words, no one knoooooooows!
Nips on
+1
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NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
I am painting my old sculpt metal Mad Dog right now, and having dropped it three fucking times already tonight and having bent the gun barrels on it each fucking time, god damnit!
The resculpt plastic figure cannot get here soon enough.
I am painting my old sculpt metal Mad Dog right now, and having dropped it three fucking times already tonight and having bent the gun barrels on it each fucking time, god damnit!
The resculpt plastic figure cannot get here soon enough.
You should leave the guns bent all Yosemite Sam like.
I am painting my old sculpt metal Mad Dog right now, and having dropped it three fucking times already tonight and having bent the gun barrels on it each fucking time, god damnit!
The resculpt plastic figure cannot get here soon enough.
You should leave the guns bent all Yosemite Sam like.
I am painting my old sculpt metal Mad Dog right now, and having dropped it three fucking times already tonight and having bent the gun barrels on it each fucking time, god damnit!
The resculpt plastic figure cannot get here soon enough.
The Maddog doesnt have jumpjets, its not meant to fly like that.
I am painting my old sculpt metal Mad Dog right now, and having dropped it three fucking times already tonight and having bent the gun barrels on it each fucking time, god damnit!
The resculpt plastic figure cannot get here soon enough.
The Maddog doesnt have jumpjets, its not meant to fly like that.
I've got three cases of duct tape and a pile of replacement jump jets that say any mech can fly like that once.
+4
Options
NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
I am painting my old sculpt metal Mad Dog right now, and having dropped it three fucking times already tonight and having bent the gun barrels on it each fucking time, god damnit!
The resculpt plastic figure cannot get here soon enough.
The Maddog doesnt have jumpjets, its not meant to fly like that.
Ever fall off of the top of HPG down to the bottom in MWO?
It was definitely a piloting failure/forced push. Repeatedly.
I am painting my old sculpt metal Mad Dog right now, and having dropped it three fucking times already tonight and having bent the gun barrels on it each fucking time, god damnit!
The resculpt plastic figure cannot get here soon enough.
You should leave the guns bent all Yosemite Sam like.
Ugh. My OCD refuses!
Wait, you have a kid and she hasn't broken your OCD yet? What sort of kid do you have?
Update #120: Delays & Deadlines (post #2 updated with more info)
Here's the current timetable on Wave 1 shipping
August 1st: start shipping to the logistics Hubs
August 16th: final shipment to the logistics Hubs.
September 1-15th: all product arriving in all logistics Hubs.
September 15th-30th: all product collated and beginning to ship to backers.
September 21st - October 31st: Backers receiving Wave 1 worldwide!
Dr_KeenbeanDumb as a buttPlanet Express ShipRegistered Userregular
On a whim I picked up the beginner box because I've always liked big stompy robutts. How is there like 40 years of lore that everybody seems to know everything about? How do I even paint these damn things if I can't be sure I'm not painting up some established lore house/clan/whatever? It's exasperating.
Where do I start?
For the record the last time I paid any attention to Battletech was when I was playing The Crescent Hawk's Inception in DOS on a 4 color CGA monitor in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-fucking-eight.
On a whim I picked up the beginner box because I've always liked big stompy robutts. How is there like 40 years of lore that everybody seems to know everything about? How do I even paint these damn things if I can't be sure I'm not painting up some established lore house/clan/whatever? It's exasperating.
Where do I start?
For the record the last time I paid any attention to Battletech was when I was playing The Crescent Hawk's Inception in DOS on a 4 color CGA monitor in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-fucking-eight.
we know the lore because we are peak grognards and its a game that has survived by sheer fan willpower for decades.
As far as paint goes, just slap whatever you want on them. My favorite is to just put on a generic camo scheme. I dont worry about units too much.
On a whim I picked up the beginner box because I've always liked big stompy robutts. How is there like 40 years of lore that everybody seems to know everything about? How do I even paint these damn things if I can't be sure I'm not painting up some established lore house/clan/whatever? It's exasperating.
Where do I start?
For the record the last time I paid any attention to Battletech was when I was playing The Crescent Hawk's Inception in DOS on a 4 color CGA monitor in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-fucking-eight.
we know the lore because we are peak grognards and its a game that has survived by sheer fan willpower for decades.
As far as paint goes, just slap whatever you want on them. My favorite is to just put on a generic camo scheme. I dont worry about units too much.
Fluorescent pink works as well. Actually all the fluorescent colors. It was the 80s so fluorescent color jobs would be fitting.
Posts
Yeah I think the tabletop they make the case that the cockpits are not where the glass/clear parts are. MWO (and MW5) they changed it so you are looking out those windows yourself. Once again Battletech designs are not all that well thought out and mainly the focus is more they look cool, pew pew, dakka, fwoosh, and things blow up.
Steam: betsuni7
But I don't think I've ever heard or seen it mentioned in other books or games. It's always been the opposite, that yes they have glass canopies.
So further down the rabbit hole I went and I found this response from 2011 in regards to this very topic:
Mr. Beas has long been a part of the Battltech scene and until 2013 he was the lead dev for the tabletop game at CGL. So I'm just gonna go ahead and say that yeah, all Mechs have glass canopies.
One of the earliest novels has Caryle popping the canopy on his Marauder because...I think it was damaged and blinding him? Anyway he has to close his eyes anytime he fires the PPCs because otherwise they'd blind him.
Yeah, there's plenty of references in the books of cockpit "glass". How it's relatively weak vs normal armor, can be smashed by impacts, seeing enemy mechwarrior's faces through their canopies, how it protects from the blinding light of weapon impacts, or how any crack in the glass could prove fatal in underwater or vacuum environments. But of course it's not really glass but some type of transparent armor ("ferroglass", diamond+polymer layers, etc) that is also coated to prevent light from lasers and ppc's from burning out the pilot's eyeballs.
The cockpit glass being weak seems to also justify why an assault mech has the same max head armor as a light.
Considering that the game was originally Battledroids (until LucasArts CD'd that name) and the mechs were all supposed to be robots, some confusion on where, exactly, the human is sitting can be understood. Pretty sure that's also the source for most of the scale confusion in the setting. This Stinger has a tiny window compared to the Battlemaster with it's full head greenhouse, despite the Battlemaster being 4 times what that Stinger weighs.
But, the cockpits are located in the head, and are all the same size according to the rules.
A person could squeeze inside a roughly 4x4x4 ft box of a cockpit. And if you scale that box to human head proportions, would give you a humanoid mech around 11 meters high. And a more generous 6x6x6 ft cockpit would be a humaniod mech around 16.5 meters tall, which aligns pretty closely with the height ranges seen in Battletech.
However, if it was to stand upright it'd be around 19 meters tall.
You're just trying to trick us into talking about LAM's.
Well now that you mention it. . . .
https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Torso_Cockpit
We already had that...
I finished this new lance of Battletech miniatures up earlier this week. From left to right, a Cyclops, a Goliath, a custom sculpt I'm calling the "Tsar" Nightstar, and a Battlemaster. Replete in Lyran Guard scheme and colors, I've finally satisfied my own need to have a distinctly-obvious lance for each of the five Great Houses.
I really like the MWO version of the Nightstar, and I reeeeeeaaaaaallllllly HATE the existing Ral Partha/IWM sculpt (I cannot fucking wait to get the new Kickstarter model, it looks HOT). I stumbled onto an idea on the official forums for using a CAV Nightshade Bones model as the basis for a better-looking Nightstar, so I set to work.
Using the body of the Nightshade, I built it out using styrene sheet and Milliput by hand. Then I drafted some artwork in Inkscape for the additional parts: the torso "shoulders" and top, the arms (minus the long gun barrels, also from the Nightshade) and hands, and everything below the waist. Then off to my Glowforge to cut parts! Voila!
You're PROBABLY thinking "Gee, that looks big." And you'd be totally and completely right. I goofed! When I was hand-crafting the torso, I was paying more attention to its internal scale, and absolutely zero attention to it's scale relative to....well, anything. So it looks like an MWO model, because it uses those dimensions....but then the whole torso ended up a third too large in every dimension relative to the scale of even the biggest Classic sculpt 'Mech!
So let me spin you a micro-tale: A minor-but-very-rich Social General of the Lyran Commonwealth, astride his ancestral Nightstar, couldn't help but get his ride shot out from under himself repeatedly over the course of decades. Through absolute dumb luck the 'Mech was dragged off of the battlefield and salvageable each time. And each time this minor-but-wealthy noble, and dabbler in historical studies, demanded that his ancestral 'Mech be reinforced and rebuilt, growing it in size and stature a little more with each trip to the repair bay. The techs and engineers protested, but the Social General was adamant...and paying their salaries.
And thus was born the "Tsar" Nightstar. I'm imagining that by the time it was retired, the "Tsar" was pushing the 110 ton mark....and showing its Absolutely Illegal game status through a litany of lower-torso actuator failures.
(And also, of course, I totally missed that I need to paint the laser lenses on the tops of the arms. Whoops! Gonna go fix that....)
More close-ups under the spoiler:
I think I know why, actually:
No canopy.
Also if we don't get a Bane imma be sad about it.
I mean, we know the whole list for the Kickstarted 'Mechs, soooooo......
I'm sorry for your sadness. I'm sad right there with you.
I want my King Crab IIC, dammit!
Decided to take the KS credit, if they let me, I may try to pick up more swag.
I've been on an eBay binge lately, but there's a bug in the back of my brain reminding me a bunch of Stompy Bots are not that far away, and I don't need more Bots.
That bug is only slightly getting the job done. 🤣
In other words, no one knoooooooows!
The resculpt plastic figure cannot get here soon enough.
You should leave the guns bent all Yosemite Sam like.
Steam: betsuni7
Ugh. My OCD refuses!
The Maddog doesnt have jumpjets, its not meant to fly like that.
MWO: Adamski
I've got three cases of duct tape and a pile of replacement jump jets that say any mech can fly like that once.
Ever fall off of the top of HPG down to the bottom in MWO?
It was definitely a piloting failure/forced push. Repeatedly.
Wait, you have a kid and she hasn't broken your OCD yet? What sort of kid do you have?
Steam: betsuni7
Here's the current timetable on Wave 1 shipping
Where do I start?
For the record the last time I paid any attention to Battletech was when I was playing The Crescent Hawk's Inception in DOS on a 4 color CGA monitor in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-fucking-eight.
3DS: 1650-8480-6786
Switch: SW-0653-8208-4705
we know the lore because we are peak grognards and its a game that has survived by sheer fan willpower for decades.
As far as paint goes, just slap whatever you want on them. My favorite is to just put on a generic camo scheme. I dont worry about units too much.
Fluorescent pink works as well. Actually all the fluorescent colors. It was the 80s so fluorescent color jobs would be fitting.
Steam: betsuni7