Beating back the Real World....

    Hi!  It's been a year and a half since my last post.  Thought I would drop in and let you know that new machines are slowly being polished and readied for the 3063 Update.  Dated somewhere between 3065-3066, it's a look in on some other machines available to the Inner Sphere and Periphery shortly after the FedCom Civil War.

I know, I know.  There is no battle armor.  There are no protomechs.  But most notably, there are no Clans.

None.

And from what I see of 3145 material, thank God.  Clanner dweebs have infected everything; it's like a reflection of the real world.  But of course, while Coleman and Bills fire their best writers and substitute hacks pushing "The Message", they can only poison the game going forward.  The past of Battletech can be added to, but not erased and certainly not re-written.  And add to it, I will.

Loculus Hover Transport (Marian Hegemony)

Janissary Missile Support Vehicle (Eastern Inner Sphere)

    I know, "Eastern Inner Sphere" is not very helpful.  "Everything to the right of the old Chaos Marches", how's that?  And let me tell you, for spamming the enemy with every kind of munition you can imagine at ridiculous ranges, the LRM-5 is God's gift to the infantryman.  You simply overwhelm any AMS the target may have with so many possibles, the number that make it through are hardly affected.  And you run them out of ammo fast.

Anyway, that's all I got for now.  Time constraints and money restrict what we can accomplish, but it's still moving forward.

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

 

 Lurking in the weeds...

We are quietly working on an update to the '3063'.  It will be a report from the year 3065 and feature mostly new machines, with a few significant updates to older units that could have been done better in the original TRO.  We're going to put out about 15 entries, so it won't be in the works for five years (!).

The new units are going to focus, again, on the technology of the Inner Sphere vehicles and 'Mechs.  It has been 11 years since the original TRO was published, and I see no change in the need for new Inner Sphere machines.  By 'need', I mean machines that are interesting, likely, function well in a reasonable tabletop scenario, and look cool.

In Memoriam...

The folks on 4Chan had a nice TRO project going.  It was started in 2014 or so.  It went along well for about six or seven years, then sputtered and ran out of gas.  Real Life can be hard on dreams.  I expected great things of it.  I was very favorably impressed with the designs and the thinking behind them.  I was less enamored of the sometimes harsh criticism of my own work, but 4Chan's gonna 4Chan.  

Nevertheless, I tried in my limited way to help get things going again.  Things looked up and it seems as though the project might actually get rolling.  Munin even graciously permitted me to do a few edits.  But it all came to naught in the end.  It seems that some folks behind the project were more concerned that they alone be perceived as 'owning' the project then actually get the thing done.  

I was (falsely) accused of trying to 'take over' the damned thing and claim it for my own!  Like I'd have access to art and files that they'd paid for.  Like I'd want to sink more years of my dwindling lifespan trying to 'take over' someone else's work instead of, you know, doing my own - *again*.  After a discussion between myself and Munin, I was quietly dropped.  I believe they decided to carry on themselves.  But after that, nothing happened.  No more comments on 4Chan.  No more updates to their blog.

So be it.  

I have been a member of many fan clubs at one time or another in the past, and watched with fascination (always from the outside) as the internal politics played out.  It was always the same.  There were so many promising ideas and projects, and so many wonderful things that could have been done by such talented people.  But the ones in charge seemed concerned mostly about their share of the credit and this idea of 'ownership' of the resulting projects.  And one thing was crystal-clear: if they weren't getting what they wanted out of it, neither would anyone else.

I wish the fellows who were on this project nothing but the best.  A lot of bad things were said about my character and my motivations, but I forgive them.  Talk is cheap, especially there, and I am old enough to separate the wheat from the tares.  It's a shame, really.  I have a copy of their initial demo and that is all.  

Like the Star Trek fan clubs of the early 1990s, it could have been a great thing.  Maybe one day someone will pick the 4Chan TRO up again, and in the words of Captain Picard, "make it so".  

We need our dreams.

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

 I have some News on the TRO: 3063 Miniature front....

Ten years have come and gone since we released the TRO: 3063.  I made a paper copy of it, considered making an Updates version, and life went on.

Some people used it in their own games, others simply read it.

Back in 2011, we collaborated with several artists to create 3D models for miniatures based on the illustrations found in the TRO.  There were about fifteen or so.  They seemed popular.  All of these miniatures had to be purchased from Shapeways, a 3D printer foundry, because ten years ago, only company-level organizations could afford to purchase and install 3D printers.

The Shapeways miniatures were (and are) expensive.  

Over the years, our principal miniature designer, Dorian Sherratt, died of a heart attack while playing lazertag somewhere in Scotland.  God rest his soul.  Meanwhile, 3D printers came down in size and price and went up in capability and speed.  So much so, that everyone with a few hundred laying around can make his or her own custom miniatures.  The CAD programs for designing miniatures (and other things) have also increased in power and gone down in price. 

So now, our former layout man, the irreducible William S. Burt, is in the business of making miniatures based on what's in the TRO: 3063!

He has an artist, a very good one, Kiwi Colour Studios, who will be gradually producing a model for each machine in the book.

I know some of you still play Battletech, some of you actually used the machines in our TRO, and some of you have always wanted miniatures to represent your stuff on the table.  Good.  But - a Shapeways miniature now costs almost $50 for the good high-rez version.  Some new options are on the way. 

You can get the STL files either by joining Kiwi Colour Studio's patreon

(https://www.patreon.com/posts/claymore-design-76066245?utm_medium=post_notification_email&utm_source=post_link&utm_campaign=patron_engagement)

or when they are released on Cult3D. There are several authorized merchants that will be able to print the mini for you if you don't have a printer...

Give it a try!

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

 Another TRO Update...

As everyone is aware, the 'Rona hit us rather harder than we thought.  Well, harder than some people thought, and nowhere near as hard as some people predicted.  I am almost 61 and have been controlling diabetes for a couple of years.  No illness yet.  We're blessed.

But... the crisis has passed from being a medical problem to a political opportunity.  Some folks, having tasted the power granted them under temporary conditions, have done and are continuing to do their best to make sure that our present 'pandemic state of emergency' will never end.  We've had an election 'fortified', a euphemism chosen by the victors to describe what folks in the old days would have called 'ballot stuffing'.  All under the cover of a 'crisis' of the virus.  But I don't care about any of that.

There have been no local gatherings of BattleTech players for over a year.  A lot of the folks playing the game have other things on their mind - such as gainful employment and making their payments on time, or at all.  I don't blame them.  The annual wargaming convention has been cancelled once, and will likely be cancelled again.

The current (and forever ongoing) insanity has affected my schedule as well.  I originally intended to have TRO: 3063 Updates (circa 3069) ready to go in April 2021.  I figured a year was enough time to get the art, writing and so on together in a timely manner.  After all, been down this road before.

But it's been one damn thing after another, even while CGL relentlessly 'updates' their product and pushes it and the available technology into the future of BT - I think 3145 was the last date I heard of, but I cannot be sure.  It is hard to remember that the Jihad, Devlin Stone and the Republic of the Sphere, and the Dark Age are all in the rearview mirror, and getting smaller each day.  

These things were current and larger than life when I published the original TRO:3063.  However, from hanging around fan sites and reading posts, I gather that even today, many folks are playing in the eras of the past, and not the present.  Not sure why.  Clanners are the most vocal of the online faces I see, but I always thought of the Clans as the Klingons of the Inner Sphere.  They are meant to be level bosses, or the Ultimate Boss, of a video game.  You don't play the Klingons, unless you're OPFOR.  

But folks have made fetishes of the Clans, despite any number of unreal 'facts' about them that clash with human behavior or even the little we know of how the human body works.  It's why a goodly amount of BT fiction, fan or professional, comes across as Mary Sue.  It's wish-fulfillment.  

So I will STILL not deal with the Clans in 3063.  There is no shortage of fanboi Clanners - let THEM write their own TRO for that era.  It has been almost nine years since our work came out; anyone could have done something like it in that time.  One effort originally started in 4Chan looked good in 2014, posting some truly impressive progress over the years, but.... it's been seven years and the book's not finished.  It may never be finished.

People grow old, people change.  But I still have an abiding interest, if not love, for the game and a respect for the world-building that lies behind it.  I will move my Updates schedule to April of 2022, cross my fingers and clear the decks.

Wish me luck!

Thank you for stopping by.

Steve Satak

Welcome To the site!

Hi!  If you're new here, and looking to download the fan-made TRO: 3063 and associated books (Record Sheets, Alpha Strike cards, etc), please use the map on the right and go to September 2012.  The first entry will be your destination.  I have installed new links for your downloading ease.

----------------------------------------

This site has been through a few changes due to my various dreams.

I wanted to get a German language version out.  I spent money and time on that and though the second guy was willing to do it, Real Life intervened and I realized I just didn't have the chops to do it.  Throwing money at a late project doesn't save the timetable.  And there didn't seem to be a demand. 

I stop in about once a quarter to my cloud storage and check the traffic specific to the download of the TRO.  I don't do this to feed my ego.  I do it to gauge the need for maintaining this place and the links. 

So far it seems substantial, enough to justify keeping this blog open and the cloud storage paid up.  For the past eight years, you folks coming here have been able to download this TRO to your heart's content. 

That shouldn't change. 

Enjoy your stay here.

We're Making Some Headway...

Hey, everyone!

Alex is back from summer vacation and is working on the translation for the back cover, the inside headers, etc.

I daily await my InDesign Dummies book, as I am eager to brush up on my old skills.  It can't be very hard; it's just that I did a brain dump in 2013, never guessing I would need the skills five years later.

Can't find the original InDesign disk, either, so here's hoping I never get a corrupted program!

I am working hard at completing my paperwork for the shipyard, looking for temporary work while I wait, and so on.  The days are wide open, and I should have time for everything.  If the weather would just cool down a bit, I might get more done!

This is one of the things I do when I am not working on, or playing with, Battletech:

Life counters and Trackers for Magic, The Gathering.

Thanks for stopping by!

Steve

Another Try at a German Translation...

    A translator by the name of Alexander Sosedow recently contacted me about continuing the German translation of TRO:3063.

Of course, I would like to see it completed.

So I sent him the pertinent files and we will peck away at the project, one entry at a time.

No telling when it will be completed.  End of the year would be great, but these things take time and according to Alex, there are at least 100,000 words to translate.

But!  He has the InDesign files and so it's up to him.  I will have to dig up my InDesign 3.0 for Dummies and re-learn how to drop text in and resize the pictures - stuff like that.

He's busy.  I am too, having recently lost my job at Trulife due to a reduction in force at the Poulsbo plant.  Lots of things to do - re-purpose my 401k, look for a job, work out in preparation for qualifying for a shipyard position, look for a job... like that.

Wish us luck.

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve