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.
As far as I can tell, there is very little in the way of fixed paint schemes for anyone. Some of the books may describe a particular unit’s paint scheme, but by and large they all use whatever. Generally, lore wise, the House militaries use various different types of camo schemes depending on the situation. Like any other real world military.
As someone who's spent several years slowly collating and customizing a collection along factional lines, the first question you need to ask yourself is Do You Actually Care About Canonical Color And Camo Schemes?
If the answer is No, then go ham! The game's not WYSIWYG, and literally no one on the planet will care how you paint your tiny stompy robots. Just make 'em pretty, and we'll Ooooh and Ahhhhh.
If the answer is Yes, then Here. We. Go!
The first, and currently easiest resource to look up on, is the Unit Color Compendium that @Betsuni linked. It is a noncanonical reference, but it does its best to use canonical sources for interpreting and presenting its color/pattern information. It's more art here than science (like much of Battletech Color/Camo work tends to be), but it's a nice, pretty-looking place to start. I look at it regularly for ideas.
And yes, @Iolo, we're supposed to be getting a guide similar to the UCC as part of the Kickstarter rewards, but it's nowhere near ready yet. Not even a hint of it's been dropped yet.
The second resource to look up is the CamoSpecs Online website. CamoSpecs is recognized as a de-facto reference for canonized color/pattern schemes. It's not as official as, say, a color print image in a sourcebook (e.g. the One and True Canon), but often many of the paint schemes done by these artists become the color images in the print books (and thus canonical). A WORD OF WARNING: The server for CSO is basically a tangle of wires balanced on a two-and-a-half-legged stool, and so it's very slow to load some times.
The adjunct to CSO would be the CamoSpecs Online Facebook group and Youtube channel. They're both currently active, and great! And much less creaky! But much less expansive.
The third, and definitive, place for color/pattern information is the Fourty Years Of Sourcebooks, which is....sometimes unhelpful! Sarna.net is the unofficial-but-very-complete Battletech wiki, that often can tell you what books have what info, or even what fictional faction/subfaction used what colors and scheme. Books like the Combat Manuals are filled with examples (but there's only two of those books, and the line was discontinued ), or even this Oldie but Goodie:
My last source would be the official Battletech forums. In their Miniatures subforum, people are painting up 'Mechs in schemes all the time. The search function's a little shaky, but there's a ton of good art over there to look at.
So my suggestion at this point would be: If you're interested in painting for a particular faction, ask the brain trust here and we can give you direction. Like I said, I've been studying this for a while; at one time I was considering trying to become a CSO artist (talent and skill notwithstanding). So one of us should be able to point you where you want to go.
And lastly, when in doubt: Olive Drab Everything. The single largest military in the Battletech timeline was the Star League Defense Force, and they painted everything in drab, and that trickled down to the majority of formations inside and out of their successor formations. And it's almost camo in most cases, so you can get away with it pretty easily.
There's a 287 page full color PDF of many of the UCC paint schemes called "unit_color_compendium_1801_double_pages.pdf" you can download from https://www.sarna.net/files/docs/fan/ Professionally laid out with little blurbs about each one.
Also, the "technical-readout-3028.pdf" on that same page is a really nice TRO companion to the HBS Battletech game, using the same MWO models for the unit art.
SiliconStew on
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
+8
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
Here is a sample page from the UCC Pdf linked above. Just to give you an idea of how, fucking, nice it is.
Keep in mind though many, if not the vast majority, of those paint schemes aren't necessarily "canon". More often than not they are people's "best guess" based on what may have been written in a book or article somewhere.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
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.
I think this is the PDF of the booklet that came with the older intro box set (maybe still does?). I think it is a good summary.
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
edited July 2020
I found Battletech to be surprisingly liberating when it came to painting Mechs. There really is no wrong way. I got a Catapult painted in the loudest colors I could find, an Atlas done up like Deathstroke (Young Justice), a Wolverine painted like X-Men Animated series Wolverine, an Iron Man Commando, a Blackjack painted up in a Blackjack playing card colors and my Awesome is all kinds of Oosik. Not to mention the various types of camo paint schemes I've done to some of the others. I also got a Gundam paint scheme in there somewhere too.
Even if the paint job kinda looks bad you can just say, "Well I guess that Mechwarrior isn't really an artist". And it works lore wise! The Mechwarrior wanted to paint their Mech themselves, but maybe they should've hired someone to do it.
edit- Oh yeah I got a Master Chief in there too.
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
If you can find enough other Battletech players in your area to actually complain that you have misused the camo of the 54th Tucular Irregulars by painting it on a too-new omnimech, and they harange you for it, then congrats, you've won and have found more Battletech players than most of us know in person.
What is this I don't even.
+10
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
If you can find enough other Battletech players in your area to actually complain that you have misused the camo of the 54th Tucular Irregulars by painting it on a too-new omnimech, and they harange you for it, then congrats, you've won and have found more Battletech players than most of us know in person.
I mean come on at that point you may as well throw all the Lore out the window!
If we're playing in 3025 and I see a goddamn Raven in your Lance I can't be held responsible for what happens next!
:razz:
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
If you can find enough other Battletech players in your area to actually complain that you have misused the camo of the 54th Tucular Irregulars by painting it on a too-new omnimech, and they harange you for it, then congrats, you've won and have found more Battletech players than most of us know in person.
I mean come on at that point you may as well throw all the Lore out the window!
If we're playing in 3025 and I see a goddamn Raven in your Lance I can't be held responsible for what happens next!
:razz:
That's clearly a prototype Raven built with lostech that was passed down from an ancient SLDF cache of supplies.
RVN-1X
The original 3024 prototype of what became the RVN-3L Raven, this was the unit that was pressed into service against the Federated Suns during the Fourth Succession War. With XL engine technology not yet available, the 'Mech mounted a standard Omni 175 fusion engine, giving it a maximum speed of 86 km/h, and was protected by four tons of standard armor. The EW Equipment at the time that this 'Mech was built consisted of a massive 7.5 ton experimental electronic warfare suite that did not live up to expectations. The equipment also had the unfortunate side-effect, when damaged, of disrupting other systems, though normally communications and targeting only.[4] BV (1.0) = 674, BV (2.0) = 589
+12
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
I have been undone!
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
RVN-1X
The original 3024 prototype of what became the RVN-3L Raven, this was the unit that was pressed into service against the Federated Suns during the Fourth Succession War. With XL engine technology not yet available, the 'Mech mounted a standard Omni 175 fusion engine, giving it a maximum speed of 86 km/h, and was protected by four tons of standard armor. The EW Equipment at the time that this 'Mech was built consisted of a massive 7.5 ton experimental electronic warfare suite that did not live up to expectations. The equipment also had the unfortunate side-effect, when damaged, of disrupting other systems, though normally communications and targeting only.[4] BV (1.0) = 674, BV (2.0) = 589
Note the Omni 175 rated engine weighs 7 tons even. So the sensor system is the heaviest thing on the chassis.
Not entirely sold on the antennae/spoilers on the back of the King Crab, but the rest of it looks fine enough to me. I still think the PGI version is better, but this is just a hair behind in second place.
Highlander feels a bit too rounded when i was expecting something more boxy. I definitely don't hate it though.
Rest of the set looks fine.
*Exterminator looks like it bulked up a bit (which it kinda needed)
*No comments one way or the other on the Black Knight. It's fine, but wasn't a "chase" mech for me.
*Sentinel and Mercury both are incredibly well done as far as re-imagining the original 2750 artwork.
I genuinely love the Sentinel. I've always wanted to love it, and with this new redesign I'm all-in.
The Raven is another 'mech I love, at least on paper. Especially the 2xLL design. Like the Pack Hunter style 'mech, one single big gun, but unlike the Panther or the Vindicator, it's got double-barrels and it's small enough to be mobile.
NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
The other thing I noticed a while back, that bothers me, is that the K-Crabs's torso looks too thin to me, like a pancake. The PGI version feels like it's thicker, giving it more height, and also stands off the hips more. This version looks like it can barely torso twist without it's underside colliding with its hips and legs.
+1
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
It's not the size of the PPC, it's the capacitor that counts
Clearly said by an UrbanMech pilot.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
+6
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NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
(Crosspost from the Painting thread, plus bonus grousing at the end of the post!)
Stomp Stomp Pew Pew!
I finished up another 'Mech group, a star of Clan Wolf from Beta Galaxy.
I had to make some adjustments to a few of these sculpts. For instance, the hips on this Linebacker normally sit right underneath the main body, and give you no ability to rotate the torso. So I build it up underneath said torso with some laser-cut parts, and after fixing the thigh-hip attachment points it actually looks like it could both walk and torso-twist.
This Pouncer kinda drives me mad, because I like the sculpt, but the attachments points at the "shoulders" for the arms is basically nonexistant. I have no idea how the sculptor ever intended the arms to stay attached to the torso. I therefore sculpted a layer of greenstuff to thicken the torso in the z-axis, and give the shoulder nubs enough volume to actually stick the pins of the arm parts into mating holes, along with adding some volume to the hips to match.
I tried a few new techniques on these 'Mechs, including using my airbrush and a mask to lay down the base colors (top half/bottom half). It worked out pretty well! Not sure when I'll try that trick again, but it was nice to see it work out pretty well.
So all of these are old sculpts, and I Just Don't Even with the sculpting choices of the weapons. The Ice Ferret and the Stormcrow on the ends are the old blue-resin sculpts and they just straight don't match any canon weapon loadout I can figure; most of the 'Crow variants don't even have missiles in the torso, so I have no idea why it was sculpted to look like that! I know on the later art the "forehead" becomes a vent of some kind, but still. The Linebacker is basically wearing swim fins for feet, but on top of that it doesn't even remotely have ports for the missiles of the Prime variant in the torsos; I don't know how you'd even fake it. The Pouncer is fine, it's missing a small laser port on the torso but I can forgive it that. I can't forgive the sculpt for it's absolutely shit connection points from the arms to the torso though; it's so bad. And despite having gun barrels made out of butter, at least the Mad Dog old sculpt has panel doors where the missiles should be.
Funny story though: I've owned that 'Dog since I was a young teenager, and when I got it fresh from the blister it was missing the hip piece. Since I was basically a child and didn't know how to get a replacement part or return it (the store was almost an hour away from my house), I instead cut a chunk of the sprue to fit, with a pair of nubs sticking off to slot into the tops of the legs. If you look carefully you can see where I stacked two layers of sprue to make up the hips; in hindsight, I should have torn it apart and rebuilt it properly, but it was already assembled (for yeeeeaars at this point) and I just didn't feel like fixing it. It's passible, but it does wobble a tiny fraction if you hold it just right. Boo.
I say again: I cannot wait for the new-sculpt plastics.
Have we talked about @Nips getting canonized in IlClan Recognition Guide 04?
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!
A buddy of mine, said a buddy of his wife said he picked up "a book" and mentioned "he saw my friend's name (me)", but MY friend couldn't provide details!
Each installment of this PDF-only series not only includes a brand new BattleMech or OmniMech, but also details Classic ’Mech designs from both the Inner Sphere and the Clans, now fully rebuilt with Dark Age technology (3085 and beyond). Allowing beloved units redesigned for the BattleTech: Clan Invasion Kickstarter to be competitive on “modern” battlefields, this series also includes in-universe development notes, battle histories, notable pilots, and record sheets for each ‘Mech.
WSP-5A Wasp / Wasp C
Thresher II
Warhammer IIC
Ice Ferret (Fenris)
BJ-5 Blackjack
TBT-9N Trebuchet
AWS-11H Awesome
I mean, weren't the Oosiks destroyed in the 2nd Succession War? Maybe this was a nascent revival.
"Destroyed" according to the DCMS, so I mean fuck those guys for sure.
I'm less quibbling the "little" part (though we mustered almost a hundred warm bodies MechWarriors circa the start of the Clan Invasion! I have the paperwork!) than just using the name of the damn thing! There's nine of us according to my paperwork, so I was hoping CGL'd at least name-check the unit.
There's still hope for other canonizations, though! But this also means I need to start buying/paying attention to the RecGuide series, because CGL is flooding those mini-books with canon pilots. The entry for the Wasp uses up 12 canonizations. They squeezed 20 into the whole of Volume 4 (boy the Wasp got a lot of pilots!). I know CGL's got a lot to work through, but that's a solid chunk in a book that's only 11 pages of actual writing.
WSP-3W
Manufactured by Achernar for Wolf's Dragoons in 3050, the Clan Invasion era 3W upgraded the armor to Ferro-Fibrous and carried two Sutel Precision Line Small Pulse Lasers in the right arm and four ChisComp 32 small lasers split between left leg and left torso. This increased firepower came at the cost of reducing armor protection to just two tons. BV (1.0) = 276, BV (2.0) = 342
Okay 2xSPLas and 4xSLas is kind of weird but I get it. A solid build, not unlike the Locust folks love to run in MWO.
But putting 2 lasers in one leg? That's ... that's a drunk mechtech is what that is.
Posts
As far as I can tell, there is very little in the way of fixed paint schemes for anyone. Some of the books may describe a particular unit’s paint scheme, but by and large they all use whatever. Generally, lore wise, the House militaries use various different types of camo schemes depending on the situation. Like any other real world military.
As to lore, Tex Talks Battletech is undoubtedly your go-to source.
Lots of history about the site on various forums as well.
Steam: betsuni7
Do we have it now, or was it something we were going to get as a stretch goal from the recent kickstarter?
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
As someone who's spent several years slowly collating and customizing a collection along factional lines, the first question you need to ask yourself is Do You Actually Care About Canonical Color And Camo Schemes?
If the answer is No, then go ham! The game's not WYSIWYG, and literally no one on the planet will care how you paint your tiny stompy robots. Just make 'em pretty, and we'll Ooooh and Ahhhhh.
If the answer is Yes, then Here. We. Go!
The first, and currently easiest resource to look up on, is the Unit Color Compendium that @Betsuni linked. It is a noncanonical reference, but it does its best to use canonical sources for interpreting and presenting its color/pattern information. It's more art here than science (like much of Battletech Color/Camo work tends to be), but it's a nice, pretty-looking place to start. I look at it regularly for ideas.
And yes, @Iolo, we're supposed to be getting a guide similar to the UCC as part of the Kickstarter rewards, but it's nowhere near ready yet. Not even a hint of it's been dropped yet.
The second resource to look up is the CamoSpecs Online website. CamoSpecs is recognized as a de-facto reference for canonized color/pattern schemes. It's not as official as, say, a color print image in a sourcebook (e.g. the One and True Canon), but often many of the paint schemes done by these artists become the color images in the print books (and thus canonical). A WORD OF WARNING: The server for CSO is basically a tangle of wires balanced on a two-and-a-half-legged stool, and so it's very slow to load some times.
The adjunct to CSO would be the CamoSpecs Online Facebook group and Youtube channel. They're both currently active, and great! And much less creaky! But much less expansive.
The third, and definitive, place for color/pattern information is the Fourty Years Of Sourcebooks, which is....sometimes unhelpful! Sarna.net is the unofficial-but-very-complete Battletech wiki, that often can tell you what books have what info, or even what fictional faction/subfaction used what colors and scheme. Books like the Combat Manuals are filled with examples (but there's only two of those books, and the line was discontinued
My last source would be the official Battletech forums. In their Miniatures subforum, people are painting up 'Mechs in schemes all the time. The search function's a little shaky, but there's a ton of good art over there to look at.
So my suggestion at this point would be: If you're interested in painting for a particular faction, ask the brain trust here and we can give you direction. Like I said, I've been studying this for a while; at one time I was considering trying to become a CSO artist (talent and skill notwithstanding). So one of us should be able to point you where you want to go.
And lastly, when in doubt: Olive Drab Everything. The single largest military in the Battletech timeline was the Star League Defense Force, and they painted everything in drab, and that trickled down to the majority of formations inside and out of their successor formations. And it's almost camo in most cases, so you can get away with it pretty easily.
Also, the "technical-readout-3028.pdf" on that same page is a really nice TRO companion to the HBS Battletech game, using the same MWO models for the unit art.
Keep in mind though many, if not the vast majority, of those paint schemes aren't necessarily "canon". More often than not they are people's "best guess" based on what may have been written in a book or article somewhere.
I think this is the PDF of the booklet that came with the older intro box set (maybe still does?). I think it is a good summary.
http://www.battletech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/BattleTechUniverseGuide-1.pdf
Even if the paint job kinda looks bad you can just say, "Well I guess that Mechwarrior isn't really an artist". And it works lore wise! The Mechwarrior wanted to paint their Mech themselves, but maybe they should've hired someone to do it.
edit- Oh yeah I got a Master Chief in there too.
I mean come on at that point you may as well throw all the Lore out the window!
If we're playing in 3025 and I see a goddamn Raven in your Lance I can't be held responsible for what happens next!
:razz:
That's clearly a prototype Raven built with lostech that was passed down from an ancient SLDF cache of supplies.
Note the Omni 175 rated engine weighs 7 tons even. So the sensor system is the heaviest thing on the chassis.
Steam: betsuni7
Tags: Comedy, Absurdist, Crude Humor
Excuse me?
I saw this, and started feeling funny feelings. Y'know. In that place.
I look forward to trying it once MW5M comes to Steam!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/450703636/battletech-clan-invasion/posts/2909754
The King Crab feels comparatively undersized to me, but this new Sentinel looks surprisingly good considering the awful source art.
Highlander feels a bit too rounded when i was expecting something more boxy. I definitely don't hate it though.
Rest of the set looks fine.
*Exterminator looks like it bulked up a bit (which it kinda needed)
*No comments one way or the other on the Black Knight. It's fine, but wasn't a "chase" mech for me.
*Sentinel and Mercury both are incredibly well done as far as re-imagining the original 2750 artwork.
The Raven is another 'mech I love, at least on paper. Especially the 2xLL design. Like the Pack Hunter style 'mech, one single big gun, but unlike the Panther or the Vindicator, it's got double-barrels and it's small enough to be mobile.
It's not the size of the PPC, it's the capacitor that counts
Clearly said by an UrbanMech pilot.
Stomp Stomp Pew Pew!
I finished up another 'Mech group, a star of Clan Wolf from Beta Galaxy.
I had to make some adjustments to a few of these sculpts. For instance, the hips on this Linebacker normally sit right underneath the main body, and give you no ability to rotate the torso. So I build it up underneath said torso with some laser-cut parts, and after fixing the thigh-hip attachment points it actually looks like it could both walk and torso-twist.
This Pouncer kinda drives me mad, because I like the sculpt, but the attachments points at the "shoulders" for the arms is basically nonexistant. I have no idea how the sculptor ever intended the arms to stay attached to the torso. I therefore sculpted a layer of greenstuff to thicken the torso in the z-axis, and give the shoulder nubs enough volume to actually stick the pins of the arm parts into mating holes, along with adding some volume to the hips to match.
I tried a few new techniques on these 'Mechs, including using my airbrush and a mask to lay down the base colors (top half/bottom half). It worked out pretty well! Not sure when I'll try that trick again, but it was nice to see it work out pretty well.
So all of these are old sculpts, and I Just Don't Even with the sculpting choices of the weapons. The Ice Ferret and the Stormcrow on the ends are the old blue-resin sculpts and they just straight don't match any canon weapon loadout I can figure; most of the 'Crow variants don't even have missiles in the torso, so I have no idea why it was sculpted to look like that! I know on the later art the "forehead" becomes a vent of some kind, but still. The Linebacker is basically wearing swim fins for feet, but on top of that it doesn't even remotely have ports for the missiles of the Prime variant in the torsos; I don't know how you'd even fake it. The Pouncer is fine, it's missing a small laser port on the torso but I can forgive it that. I can't forgive the sculpt for it's absolutely shit connection points from the arms to the torso though; it's so bad. And despite having gun barrels made out of butter, at least the Mad Dog old sculpt has panel doors where the missiles should be.
Funny story though: I've owned that 'Dog since I was a young teenager, and when I got it fresh from the blister it was missing the hip piece. Since I was basically a child and didn't know how to get a replacement part or return it (the store was almost an hour away from my house), I instead cut a chunk of the sprue to fit, with a pair of nubs sticking off to slot into the tops of the legs. If you look carefully you can see where I stacked two layers of sprue to make up the hips; in hindsight, I should have torn it apart and rebuilt it properly, but it was already assembled (for yeeeeaars at this point) and I just didn't feel like fixing it. It's passible, but it does wobble a tiny fraction if you hold it just right. Boo.
I say again: I cannot wait for the new-sculpt plastics.
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!
A buddy of mine, said a buddy of his wife said he picked up "a book" and mentioned "he saw my friend's name (me)", but MY friend couldn't provide details!
I'mma go buy that shit immediately.
https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Recognition_Guide:_ilClan,_vol._4
My only quibble is the "small mercenary command" bit (instead of the Oosiks by name), but other than that HELLS TO THE YES!
Gotta buy a new Wasp and paint it up, BRB!
"Destroyed" according to the DCMS, so I mean fuck those guys for sure.
I'm less quibbling the "little" part (though we mustered almost a hundred warm bodies MechWarriors circa the start of the Clan Invasion! I have the paperwork!) than just using the name of the damn thing! There's nine of us according to my paperwork, so I was hoping CGL'd at least name-check the unit.
There's still hope for other canonizations, though! But this also means I need to start buying/paying attention to the RecGuide series, because CGL is flooding those mini-books with canon pilots. The entry for the Wasp uses up 12 canonizations. They squeezed 20 into the whole of Volume 4 (boy the Wasp got a lot of pilots!). I know CGL's got a lot to work through, but that's a solid chunk in a book that's only 11 pages of actual writing.
Okay 2xSPLas and 4xSLas is kind of weird but I get it. A solid build, not unlike the Locust folks love to run in MWO.
But putting 2 lasers in one leg? That's ... that's a drunk mechtech is what that is.