The Battletech Reader

Errata Has Been Entered - and a bonus Section begun!

2012-01-09T23:15:00.000-08:00

Free Worlds League Guillotine

art by Chris Daranouvong

Hello, everyone.

It has been a long time since the last update. We have been busy with the holidays, and I am sure the rest of you were as well.

Progress…

- Bill has passed the baton on to me as regards the layout of the TRO. We spent some time going over the various commands, and I have my Dummies book to help me with anything odd that comes up.

- During the past two months, I have been collating errors in the TRO prototypes. I am happy to announce that the first fourteen pages of errors has been corrected.

- I have gone through and formatted every entry to standards set by the company’s products. We still have our own look, but the data is arranged in a familiar way and most of you readers should have little trouble navigating.

(Click on image to enlarge)

- We resolved the issue of pixelated art in the InDesign program – with one or two exceptions, it was the way InDesign handles the image. The actual hi-rez printout looks fine, regardless of what we see in the assembly program. I did discover that a lot of the images were huge, but at 79dpi or 200dpi. Converting those images to 300dpi seems to have corrected problems we were having with sizing as well.

- I have updated the MUL to include the Star League version of the White Knight, and found a way to import tables directly from a Word document into InDesign. The result is quite crisp (the Prototype version looked like crap).

- The Index is in place; the Table of Contents has been undated. We dropped the last Section Introductions into place.

- I have begun work on an additional section. Right now, we have the TRO proper, ending with the Index. Then we have the Master Unit List (MUL). Then we have a section titled ‘The Art of TRO:3063’. So far it runs about 25 pages, and should top out at about 30-35. It includes a lot of stuff you folks might find interesting - things we’ve posted on the blog as the years went by, but now all collected in one place and annotated.

- Don’t worry about me killing time with this addition – I have been waiting for our editor to proofread the errata’d version and he has provided me with another six pages of things to fix (so far…)

- The time we are taking for the errata and art allows me to catch up on payments to the artists. I still have a couple of hundred dollars to go, but we are nearly there.

- We are re-doing the cover. Hah! Yes, someone brought it to my attention that the machine on the cover does not actually appear on the inside of the TRO. We are changing that with the help of Chris Daranouvong. The header for this blog post is the proposed replacement for the current Guillotine art.

NEW MINIATURES!!!

This is how the Aurora and the Claymore look, prior to becoming miniatures available on Shapeways! Thanks for the hard work, Dorian!

What follows is the final re-issue of the Free Worlds League Thug:

That’s all for now, folks. Stay tuned and please, hit the PayPal button to help move things along. I always respond, and the money always goes to the artists.

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

PS: Does anyone else notice something about the Company Forums? Whenever they ask a question about some bit of fluff or fact mentioned in a TRO, nearly everyone tries to justify it 'in-universe'. That is, they try to give reasons why such a thing might be true or false inside the storyline itself.

When someone like me comes along:

http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,15042.msg347001.html#new

and suggests that the writers might simply have made a mistake, or that the company did not choose to go in that direction, there is (usually) dead silence. I have ended whole threads with this type of comment. In the case above (click on link), my comment was simply ignored.

I love to write in the BT universe and make no mistake, I have a lot of fun playing the game. But some of those people hanging out on the forums are in a bit too deep, if you ask me. I mean, c'mon. You have to read some of the comments to believe it.

A writer makes a mistake twenty years ago - or writes about something that never amounted to anything outside a single book - and it's clear as day after two decades of hindsight that that's exactly what it was.

And ten fanboys immediately leap to the author's defense with Byzantine explanations as to why all of it makes perfect sense in universe. That ranks right up there with the apologists explaining why there are typos and other glaring errors in the company writing - because that was what the in-universe author intended.

Just thought I would see if anyone else has noticed this. It seems awful silly to me.

The Editing Path Clears... and new Art!

2011-11-16T23:19:00.001-08:00

Word of Blake Aurora Mobile Flak Battery

Art by Stephen Huda

Greetings!

We did it again.

We added another vehicle.

But this one was worth it. I am putting the finishing touches on the rough draft for the writeup.

Imagine if you will, an anti-aircraft battery in BattleTech that can actually shoot down VTOLs and even aerospace fighters. I mean, actually do it in the game, with no special rules, for real. There are many such designs in the BT universe, but none of them are really all that effective.

Oh, sure. The writeup says they are effective, the design is such that you might think they could do the job, but when it comes to putting metal on the table and rolling the dice, most of them come up short.

Don’t misunderstand me. I am not talking about missile launchers. They do a good job – that is, unless the target has an AMS (or in the case of our Outworlds Alliance Sounder, several). Then you’re sort of screwed unless you spam the hell out of them with a bunch of little stuff.

This new machine is called the Aurora, and it started out as a joke. Click on the image for a closer look.

As you can see, pretty cool. I thought ‘what if I send this to our new proofreader and pretended to panic, telling him this was the next project?’ So I sent the pic and some stats I threw together. Instead of a flustered proofreader, I got a comment from John Baker telling me he’d tested it on Mega Mek and thought the new machine was pretty effective. When I told him it was meant as a joke, he shrugged and said words to the effect that it was ‘still damn good, even for a joke’.

I ran it by Bill and he liked it. So much for the joke! I commissioned Stephen Huda to illustrate the machine, using the Claymore’s chassis (they are the same tonnage).

This is a 100-ton machine. It moves 2/3 with nearly ten tons of armor (1/2 for the militia variant and that one carries more armor than an Atlas). There are six LB-5X autocannons supplied with four tons of cluster ammunition. It has a range of 630 meters and a backup battery of five ER small lasers. Oh, and did I mention? It comes equipped with C3i.

With a potential of up to thirty rolls on the motive hits table, this baby will force most other vehicles to grind to a halt if they don’t wind up destroyed completely. Against aerospace fighters, the Aurora has a fair chance of forcing a crash, even on a strafing run.

Recommended for good gunners, and please, don’t do like the boys in the UK did, and try to move it around. The base model moves 2/3 and all they did was drive their targeting modifier up, making it harder to lock on a target. Stick it and its lancemates in a Level One revetment and leave them there.

Word of Blake Claymore (color)

As you can see, the color plates for the Vehicle sections are done. Jim Lafferty did excellent work.

Mercenary Hessian Hovercraft (color)

Good News on the Editing Front

We have a new editor, John Baker. As you can see from the list of errata on the previous blog post’s comment page, there is still a lot of stuff that needs fixing. John is a volunteer with very good writing skills and he has already sent me six pages of corrections. Normally, I would despair because it means I have to make multiple trips to Bill’s house to get these punched in.

However! I now have a copy of InDesign and will install it on my computer tomorrow. Bill will drop by with the files from his computer, and we will get it up and running on my powerful new laptop. That way, I can do the corrections every night instead of once or twice a month!

[We installed it and the fonts it required. Bill brought the TRO files over and installed them. It is up and running for editing, folks! Bill is sick now (imagine that) but will be around in a week to drop the new art in place. By then the remaining introductions should be back.]

- Geoffrey has agreed to look over the new Introductions for the Vehicle sections, as well as the writeup for the Aurora. I will send it to John after that.

- Prototype v6 is still up and ready for download. There are about three days left before I get down to business and start working my way through a fourteen-page Errata list. If you see anything, let me know.

Again, if you want to chip in, please hit the PayPal button if you have five or ten dollars to spare…. I want to get these debts cleared before the end of November and need all the help I can get. I have had several people donate what they can and I have sent it on to my artists.

Also! A new banner for my forum posts!

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

Entering the Final Stretch.... Prototype v6 is Ready!

2011-10-24T21:43:00.001-07:00

Mercenary - Harbinger Gunship
Art by Stephen Huda

Hello. Welcome back!

This is a milestone for me. After four years of on again-off again announcements of ‘the last art is in!’, we really do have all the art on hand. It’s not all paid for – Karl Olson and Stephen Huda need their moolah before we can print these. But I should have that part finished by mid-November. There is also the matter of paying Paul Skowronek his bucks for the four additional edits as well as others (about $40) and getting the final payment to David Dryburgh for work he did a long time ago.

Please hit the PayPal button if you have five or ten dollars to spare…. I want to get these debts cleared before the end of November and need all the help I can get. I have nearly run out of stuff to sell on Ebay (well, not if you count the unpainted Warhammer:40K Leman Russ with all the electronic special effects, but who knows what that would sell for?)

- The Draconis Combine’s BARS (Bulldog Automatic Reloading System) is done. Stephen Huda did an outstanding job, as usual. I owe him nearly a hundred bucks, but should have it paid off by mid-November.

Draconis Combine - BARS
Art by Stephen Huda

- Karl Olson has finished the Mercenary Hessian hovercraft. At a weapons expo, you never know what you will find!

Mercenary - Hessian Hovercraft
Art by Karl Olson

- Bill and I tried to get together one last time for the final push. Sunday the 23rd should have see the remaining art and text entered, along with the special art section and the Master Unit List. As it stands, we did not get together, but I uploaded all the remaining data to Bill via OpenDrive and he put it in. There are some glitches – words misspelled, etc. But Prototype v6 is up and ready for download.

- All writeups are done. Everything we need for the current layout is complete. All the art is on hand and inserted (although we are looking at replacing current art with bolder versions for a better look and I forgot the color plates – two more have been commissioned). Please go over it with the proverbial fine tooth comb.

- Also, we will try to post the current Errata List for you to download. If you find an issue, please look over the list of things we’ve already found and see if your ‘find’ is there. If it is NOT, then please post it in the comments section on this blog along with any suggestions you have for correcting it. We will add it on this end to the Errata List

- The official window for finding errors in the final Prototype is one week. That’s seven days after the Prototype and Errata List go live. After that window closes, I will begin fixing the errors. It will take about another week, during which time I will be open to stuff you spot at the last minute. Please, please, look hard and do it as soon as you can.

- Upon correcting the errors, I will begin the laborious task of going through the entire TRO, adding boldface and italics in appropriate places. This should take at least a couple of sessions over at Bill’s house – I don’t want to tie up his main computer and don’t think I can do all of them in one sitting (I would probably go blind and crazy at the same time!)

- Still selling stuff on Ebay. I just listed two very rare Revised Dual Land artist's proof Magic cards signed by the artist.

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

Errata List

The names are not always coherent depending if you look on the left or the right page, they can be in capital letters or not, be the full name or a part of it, have a - or not.

More annoying is the Capellan Griffin.
The weapons are listed as being on the left side but the picture shows them on the right one.

-----------------------------------------------------
The drawing of the Vagabond is captioned 'isomerus'. As an aside, will the handwritten captions on Eric Ou's illustrations be removed?
On the Ural page there's a missing word or phrase :-
'While most drivers shouted at each other to turn back.
Groves quickly[missing word or phrase] his Ural and left his bickering comrades behind.'
And again on the Grffin GRF-3L page, the title reads 'Grifn'

[ Bill, the Griffin header needs to be corrected – it says ‘Grifn’. We already addressed the conflict between data and image with the last error report.]

[At the top of the Vehicle text, we have several pieces that do not follow the standard format. That is my fault – I should have gone through and fixed them all to say ‘Type/Model: Name’ rather than leaving them all caps with no lead-in. This is probably the case for the entire TRO, so let’s get in there and fix that when we get together next.]

[On the Vagabond art, we have Eric’s signature and the original name of the ‘Mech – the Isometrus. I want to get rid of that but leave Eric’s signature. Furthermore, I want to go through all the art done by Eric and get rid of ALL the names, as well as reduce his big signature to something quite small but legible over to one side. It is currently too big and distracting; it detracts from the overall feel of the work to have the name of the piece listed along with the TRO number. Takes you ‘out’ of the TRO and back into the real world, if you know what I mean. The thickened art gets rid of the name]

[On another note, I think the header text listing ‘Heavy Mech’ or ‘Light Mech’ should include the apostrophe. Make them all ‘Mechs, not Mechs.]

[On the Panzer IX, get rid of the hyphen on the page header name. Comb through and find any others that have this issue. None of them should be hyphenated except for some BattleMechs and the Capellan machines, and that exception applies mostly to the vehicles with Chinese names.]

[Montgomery II Heavy should be just Montgomery II]

[Panther Battle Tank should be just Panther]

[The Panzerfaust text begins with ‘Assualt Gun’. We can correct that when we get in there to add ‘Type/Model:’. As a rule, unless the machine is a significant departure from a standard tank, leave off any descriptor but the name. If it is enough of a different beast, we should keep the name as descriptive as possible with as few words as possible. Panzer X Cruiser Tank is good. The Panzerfaust should be Panzerfaust Assault Gun, not Panzerfaust Mobile Gun (all tanks are mobile guns). Kangaroo Support should be simply Kangaroo. If they want to know what it is for, they can read the writeup.]

[Ural Transport Truck – in the Notables section, it reads “…Groves quickly his Ural…”. This is my goof, it should read “…Groves quickly accelerated his Ural…”]

[Cobra CBR-03 should read CBR-3S, in keeping with the current usage. My goof. I will go in and correct that when we get together next. It needs to be cleaned up in the text and probably in the HMP and record sheets as well.]

[BARS Fast Strike Tank - Power Plant is listed as Nissan 245 Fusion, should read Nissan 225 fusion]

[The text for the FWL Black Knight reads wrong for the placement of the MLs – does not match the art. Drop the new text in when we get a chance or repair it in place.]

[Need to replace ‘enmity’ with something else on page 7]

[Need to install new stats for the FC Roland – the armor has been modified on all variants to match the Prime model and the C version has another ton of LRM ammo and a corrected C3 link.]

[Need to install the art for the missing pics in earlier House entries.] [DONE]

[Remove the Shielding and Transmission portion of the stats section on the DC Tomahawk]

[Change the CM-33’s cargo bay to 9 tons and the loading equipment to 1 ton in the stats section, and correct in the writeup if needed.]

[add ‘and a new look’ to the ferro armor description of the DC Sentinel]

REV SIX

[Aerospace headers are misspelled ‘Areospace’]

[Assault ‘Mechs headers are misspelled ‘Assualt’]

[Forge heading is misspelled ‘Forgr’]

[House order has been Vehicles, then Mechs. Comstar follows this but WoB reverses it. Why?]

[Harbinger is misspelled ‘Harbringer’]

[Hessian text page is missing the smaller art]

[Master Unit List looks good but should come after the Index. I will gen a new index up using the page count you established by putting all of this together]

Another Monthly Update... and more Art!

2011-10-04T21:06:00.000-07:00

Word of Blake - Claymore
Art by Stephen Huda

Howdy. Thanks for being patient while I update.

- Lee Madison’s BARS is cancelled. He dropped out of sight too long, too often. I am scrapping the work he sent and am sending the commission on to Stephen Huda, who will also be working the Harbinger.

- Karl Olson is working on the Hessian hovercraft.

Mercenary - Hessian Hovertank (rough)
Art by Karl Olson

- We still owe Paul $40, Stephen $30 and Dave Dryburgh $70. I am nearly done paying for Momma’s dental work, so they will see some money soon. I also have some other bills related to the TRO – mostly a debt for $100 for 3D CAD work done on miniatures that, unfortunately, we cannot use at the current time.

- Bill and I have not been able to get together for the layout this month. Bill has a ton of yardwork he is trying to get done before the weather turns to absolute crap. I have been doing little things around the house – new doorbell, leak in the roof, cracked door frame – that take up time and money. We are going to try to get together for that last push with the data entry this weekend.

- The writeups for the Hessian, Harbinger, Heirax and Claymore are done, and Paul is working his editing magic on them as I write this. The Claymore art is complete, the Hessian nearly so, the Heirax is already in the bag and I sent the Harbinger stats on to Stephen this evening.

- We have a list of Errata that will address the issues you readers found in the Prototypes. I may relent and release the ‘final’ Prototype to everyone, as I have had very few people volunteer for the job of proofreading.

- Stephen Huda took over and competed the FWL Jaguar commission for Mike Sullivan, who was too busy to finish his version.

FWL Jaguar
Art by Stephen Huda

Doing My Part... Part IV

Sold some more stuff on Ebay:

- A pair of special lands for Magic: the Gathering.

- A foil Dark Depths.

- A Mana Crypt.

- Had some trouble getting those two playsets of Natural Order to Italy. Never again!

Sad Demise

Some of you know I smoke cigars and drink strong coffee while working on the TRO. This has been an institution for the past four years. Unfortunately, the last tobacconist’s shop in the area closed on last Friday night forever. I will have to find another source, probably online, for good smokes.

[Please click on the image for a full-size reading]

Don’t hesitate to hit my PayPal button for whatever you can afford. The art is nearly done.

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

Some Good News... and Some Bad News...

2011-09-05T13:47:00.000-07:00

Sounder Aerospace Fighter
Art by A. Agussoekarno, color by A. Scroggins

Welcome back. Got some mixed TRO news here.

The Good News…

- Lee Madison’s Jaguar is nearly finished. We had to resize the soldiers and round off the nose a bit.

- Karl Olson is paid up to date. So is Stephen Huda. So is Anthony Scroggins.

- We got a big donation last night but are hanging on to it for reasons which will soon be clear.

- Stephen Huda finished the Blackjack quick, fast and in a hurry. And it looks really good!

Blackjack BJ2-OG
Art by Stephen Huda

- Mike Sullivan’s commission is still under construction.

- We still owe Paul $40 and Dave Dryburgh $70. I will pay them off by mid-September.

Working the Layout

- Bill and I worked on the layout yesterday. As was mentioned before, we are concentrating on data entry. The corrections to errors spotted by our BattleTech Readers are on a document and we will implement these after the book is filled in. We have completed the Federated Commonwealth and the back cover.

- The issue of some of the art being too ‘light’ will, like other errors, remain until later. I have the thickened versions on hand, but there are some problems with the white backgrounds turning a shade of bluish grey (take a look at the comparison of the Privateer in the last blog post). Bill assures me he can deal with this – he has access to more powerful art tools than I do. The important thing is that he agrees the art on at least some entries needs correcting.

- You folks have been donating via the PayPal button and I thank you. I was pushing to get this out in September and it will not make that deadline mostly for one very simple reason: the TRO is not finished.

Doing My Part... Part III

- A pair of sealed old-school WH:40K Space Marine Rhinos went for $60.

- The pair of sealed WH:40K Imperial Guard Mordian Iron Guard squads went for $70

- An old-school WH:40K Space Marines Predator got $65.

- The WH:40K Imperial Guard Catachan Sentinel Squadron got $60.

- A playset of Natural Order MtG cards got $145.

Wait…What Did You Say?!

And now the bad news. Yes, I did say the TRO is not finished.

Bill and I were looking at the tail end of the TRO and realized that after the Periphery States, we were left with a hodge-podge of singletons – four Merc units and one unit each for the WoB and Comstar. Now, the Jihad has left everyone with more WoB machines than you can shake a dead cat at, but the fact remains this is a very awkward way to close out a TRO of any sort.

We hemmed and hawed, spent an hour discussing various fixes, but finally came down to a decision: we are going to add four more units to these sections of the TRO.

Before you get that sinking feeling, consider the following:

- We have already notified the writers, artists, editors and proofers and they are on board for a solid push.

- We are nearly paid off on previous work.

- We are using the art from an Outworlds Alliance piece, so it’s three bits of new art, not four.

- We have already got the new designs in place and mostly tweaked.

- I am currently working on the writeups and they are very well fleshed out as far as concepts. The actual roughs, writing and editing should be done in two weeks. These are not filler. They follow the guidelines for the rest of the TRO: they are playable, the faction needs them, they do not duplicate earlier designs, and they have a solid mission profile that is not too narrow. They make sense in-universe as well as on the tabletop.

The New Faces

Here they are:

- A VTOL (the Heirax) for Comstar (we are repurposing the Leopard from the OA, they have plenty) for inserting a six-man battle armor squad at high speed.

- A 100-ton tank (Claymore X3) for the WoB sporting four Light Gauss, experimental C3i and three medium lasers - 2/3, I think.

- A VTOL (Harbinger) for Mercenaries, purpose-built by the FedCom in a program similar to the one that spawned the Kuritan and Capellan Privateers. It moves 8/12 with an ICE, mast-mounted BAP, three MGs and three SRM-6s. This is the FedCom's attempt to supply mercs working the Outback and Periphery border with an inexpensive workaday machine.

- Mercs win again! They get a new hovercraft (the Hessian) purpose-built for them by the Lyran Alliance. It was originally intended to work alongside the Harbinger but is now separated by political issues - but both can still be had on the marketplace. It comes with five SRM-2s and two MLs on a 25 ton chassis moving at 10/15. Fair armor, should prove useful (and it is cheap). Furthermore, it has several factory options you can choose (variants) and like the Harbinger, is accompanied by a goodly stock of replacement parts included in the purchase price.

Yes, I said 'four units' and that comes to four - but we are pulling the OA Leopard. The art is good and the OA already has six entries. So we are reducing that to five.

Unfortunately, I cannot promise this all before mid-October: as this delay is due to our own decision rather than a lack of funds, I am reluctant to take any more donations. It’s not your fault and those of you who have donated already are probably disappointed. Before you grind your teeth at the delay, consider also the following:

- This will push the total entries to 112. Again, no filler, the TRO will balance and the art will be spot-on.

- The publishing date is being pushed back, true, but it is not entirely due to the additional work.
You know that Bill and I are working on our own personal time – we, like you, have day jobs – and I think it unlikely we will get another Slogging Sunday in before the end of the month. Bill has to attend school, take care of his kids (all four) and like that. Getting a day off to do nothing but work on the TRO is not easy for either of us. And the weather is going to turn on us very soon. No more coffee/soda and tobacco sessions in the warm outdoors.

I will keep you posted as to the progress, of course. Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

One Last Prototype - and Progress on the TRO

2011-08-27T14:58:00.001-07:00

FWL Zukhov II
Art by JP Sphagnum, color by Jim Lafferty

Hi! Good to see you again.

Here is the latest with the TRO:

- Lee Madison has finally responded to my email. He had a broken computer. We have some additional tweaking to do with the BARS, but it is shaping up nicely.

Draconis Combine BARS second draft

- I owe Karl Olsen $100 and should have that cleared up soon. Below is the work he did on the FedCom Roland:

Finished Roland background

- Jim Lafferty has been paid up to date.

- Anthony Scroggins has taken the last coloring commission – for the Periphery Vehicles entry – and should have it ready in a few days.

- Stephen Huda has taken the last commission, a re-do of the Blackjack OmniMech.

- Mike Sullivan’s commission on the FWL Jaguar is in progress. It is taking a backseat to his day job, but in this economy that is a good thing – it means he knows his priorities.

- We still owe Paul $40 and Dave Dryburgh $70. Income has increased at least temporarily due to our Ebay sales.

Working the Layout

- Bill and I are scheduled to work on the layout tomorrow. Some corrections and issues have come up, of course. We have the corrections listed and will fix them one by one.

- One of the issues is that a good portion of the art is too ‘light’, the lines too thin for the purpose of illustration. At least it can be said that the line thickness varies wildly from entry to entry, and so I have done some extra work and ‘thickened’ the lines in most of the offending pieces.

As you can see, there is a noticeable difference without losing the details:

Bill is still unconvinced that this issue is worth the time and effort we’ll make doing the replacements, but it is a problem that has been pointed out by at least three of our Readers. Thus I consider it up for consideration to the point where I have prepped all the pieces and am ready to punch in the ‘thicker’ art as needed. Better now when we have only 2/3rds of the Houses done than later.

New Prototype Available Soon!

The latest version, Prototype #5, will be available for your inspection next week. Bill was not able to make it here this Sunday, but we are going to meet again next week. Or try.

This will probably be the last public offering for the Prototype – after this, we will send it to a select group of reviewers to save time and keep some secrets! So don’t hesitate to check our work and send in anything you think we missed or should correct.

Lending a Hand…

- Several people have donated mightily via the PayPal button, one reason we are catching up on the art payments so quickly. I want to thank you donors, one and all. Keep sending if you can – we are nearly done.

Doing My Part... Part II

- The original FASA version of Battlestar Galactica sold for about half of what I expected – we got $40 from a fellow in New Zealand.

- I put up an extremely rare Pokemon collectible, a sealed Trainer Deck B. It went for $142, a huge boost to our Artist Fund.

John is keeping the proceeds to his Tarmogoyf – seems he is getting back into the game! However, I have put up more stuff on Ebay:

- A pair of old-school WH:40K Space Marine Rhinos, still sealed in their boxes.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/120769316538?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

- A pair of WH:40K Imperial Guard Mordian Iron Guard squads, still sealed in their boxes.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/120769315976?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

- An old-school WH:40K Space Marines Predator (the one with the rounded sponsons and turret). No box, unfortunately, but it is still on the sprues and comes with the instructions.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/120769317028?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

- A WH:40K Imperial Guard Catachan Sentinel Squadron. This was the initial issue – the box is not sealed, but it comes with 3 of the Sentinels, all still on their sprues and with instructions.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/120769315340?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

Hard At Work - Another Prototype Ready for Review

2011-08-15T17:00:00.000-07:00

Glad to have you back!

Here are the updates:

- Lee has still not responded to my email. I sent another one yesterday. Not sure what is going on but it has been nearly two months since his last email and we are at the point where I may have to extend the commission to someone else.

- Karl Olsen has finished the Diomedes, the Hammerhead II, the Roland and the Machete. It’s just a matter of paying him for his work now – about $153 left to go.

- Jim Lafferty has done nearly all the color work. I owe him $75 and should have that paid off by Friday the 19th.

- There is one color piece left to do (for the Periphery). I will ask Jim to do that when I have paid him up to date for pieces already received.

- We owe Paul $40 and Dave Dryburgh $70. With school coming, it’s going to be touch and go whether I can pay all this off before the end of September. But we’re trying.

- Mike Sullivan has submitted a rough of the FWL Jaguar and I returned my suggestions. The commission is in progress.

Layout Business

- Work continues on the layout. We slammed away on it all Sunday (the weather was nice) and have added another thirty or so machines – the Free Worlds League ‘Mechs and the Capellan Vehicles and ‘Mechs. We also worked in the corrections to the previous prototype. The Web version now stands at about 26 Mb, the high rez version at 65 Mb.

- We were having the devil of a time getting InDesign to create a PDF, until we realized that the image on page 138 was something like eight feet wide! InDesign just choked on it. Apparently, it is possible to have an image file that is TOO large! We shrank it down and things work okay. That is, until we tried to spell the name for the FC Dragonfly. It would not let us put an ‘L’ after an ‘F’ for some reason. We cleared that up eventually, but it was weird to say the least.

The boldface and italics will be added in later. Bill and I am considering setting a day aside so that I can go through and work on it. I will have to use his computer, so Bill plans to drop his machine off and set it up on Sunday morning. I will spend the day going through and making the changes; Bill will stop by later in the day to correct any goofs I have made to the layout (I know nothing about working in InDesign).

It may take more than a day – I might have to keep the machine for a couple of days. Of course, all this will happen after we get the whole thing put together.

New Prototype Available!

I trust you all will be willing to go through and find any goofs we’ve made – there are sure to be several, and we need to get them fixed. Bill was trying to get the Federated Commonwealth Vehicles in last night, but his eyes began to cross and he was making silly mistakes, so we left it at 151 pages. I believe that is out of a total of 232.

There is one more House to enter, then the Periphery, Mercenaries and Comstar/WoB. Bill would like to do the Federated Commonwealth and post that as the final Prototype available to you all. The rest he wants to do without review, but I am undecided. You readers have been very helpful in picking out errors in layout, writing and art. It seems to me that we could use that kind of help on ALL the sections. Please submit your name if you are interested in proofing the TRO when we have finished all the machine entries.

Help If You Can...

- We are at the point where every donation via the PayPal button is crucial to getting the TRO out in September– even ten bucks will help enormously. I send the money directly from that account to the artists and others, so if you have been watching and waiting, now is the time to send a sawbuck my way. Unlike the company, I cannot publish without completing my payments to the professionals who have done work for us.

Doing My Part...

To show you how much I want to get this out on schedule, I have put up a very old game on Ebay. It is the original FASA version of Battlestar Galactica. The counters are unpunched, sitting in their cardboard sheet, and everything else is pristine. I saw a similar game with the counters in a ziplock going for $85, so I thought $80 would be a good start for this. The money will go directly to PayPal, and then from there off to artists.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120764012516#ht_500wt_1287

Next up will be a copy of the original Albedo RPG. It is in excellent condition, but has been played with a bit.

I have also put up an extremely rare Pokemon collectible, a sealed Trainer Deck B, one of a set issued to the original Gym Leaders for WOTC's initial release of the game in 1999. Most were opened and played back in the early days, but I got lucky and had a batch come my way. I sold most of them for about $10 each back in 2002 to players and collectors rather than cash in on Ebay. But I kept a couple for myself and ten years later, am releasing one to Ebay to raise money for the TRO art.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/120765776339?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649#ht_500wt_1287

Heck, even my son is getting in on the action , putting his only Tarmogoyf up for sale (it is a Magic:the Gathering card worth quite a bit right now).

The Legal Stuff... still waiting

Finally, I contacted the Catalyst Game Labs Battletech Line Developer back at the beginning of July to see what we would have to do to permit publishing this fan work. Disclaimers, copyright notices and and things like that. I also asked Mike Miller for advice. He sent a note to the folks in charge about this, and they responded with a statement that suggested they were going to kick it upstairs.

So far, no response.

Bill thinks we may not get any reply at all. It would set some sort of precedent. But there are any number of fan TROs and other BT-related books already out there, not to mention fan forums and websites. I find it a bit hard to believe CGL does not have some sort of process in place to handle this kind of thing. But maybe they don’t. I guess we’ll see.

Enjoy the prototype and thanks for stopping by.

Steve

The TRO Marches on....

2011-08-03T22:35:00.001-07:00

Feng-niao (Hummingbird) Final
By Stephen Huda

Hello there!

We’ve got some stuff to report:

- Stephen Huda has completed the Feng-niao. It’s a beauty, isn’t it? He really does fine work.

- Dorian Sherratt and Helen Troy playtested the Feng-niao, fielding a lance of them alongside some Savannah Masters (for protection - !). I was going to post the entire battle report, but it’s seven pages and I think you’d run out of patience even though the reading is quite good.

So here is the Feng-niao’s battle report from a Comstar attack on a Word of Blake prison camp:

The Feng-niao lance went in and painted three generators that were powering the WoB laser battery base defenses. Demolisher Arrow IV comes in, BOOM! No more laser batteries.

The Feng-niao then lit up a pristine Thug and Celestial. Arrow IV comes in, BOOM! No more 'Mechs.

Two Fengs go down under a hail of missiles and fire from at least six 'Mechs. Two Fengs depart.

At the front of the base, a Celestial jumps over the wall to intercept hovercraft leaving with Important Rescued Prisoners aboard. The remaining Fengs race up, paint the back of the Celestial. Arrow IV comes in. BOOM! The WoB player tips the miniature over, not wanting to waste time counting infinite damage to his rear arc. The rescue hovers slide by.

Those same Feng-niao paint the base perimeter wall – it’s just getting in the way, right? Arrow IV comes in... well, you get the picture. There is a brand-new doorway in the wall…

…which is key because later on, rather than run a gauntlet of firepower trying for the official exit, the remaining rescue hovers with the VERY Important Rescued Prisoner use that new door to get away safely.

The play test went very well, I think. For a combined BV of about 500, those little Hummingbirds did their part and then some.

- The BARS (Bulldog Autocannon Remote System) is still in progress. I hope. Lee has not responded to my email and his computer may be on the fritz due to the heat.

- Karl Olsen is making progress on the Diomedes and the Hammerhead II. We’ve had to pause on these due to some issues with the Sabra XIII and the Uraltruck.

Uraltruck Debate...

Sabra Debate...

UPDATE!

You can weigh in on these if you like, but the upshot is that we will keep the Sabra as is (with some barrel tweaks) due to its being based on a prototype and the Uraltruck gets a bit of a makeover on the front end. However, the Diomedes and the Hammerhead HAVE been getting some love.

Hammerhead II Rough Draft

Diomedes Rough Draft

- Bill and I are waiting on art. We have some more very good color pieces from Jim Lafferty.

Federated Commonwealth Praetorian
Art by Eric Ou, colorized by Jim Lafferty

Meanwhile we are working on another Union Class DropShip. It will look a lot like our other one (the one you see on the back cover of Strategic Ops) but is meant for actual play, so we are concentrating on battery power and a ‘Mech bay. Don’t worry that this will distract us from the TRO – we have five months to get it done, instead of four weeks!

- I am concentrating on paying off artists for their work – there is only one more piece undone and that will be picked up shortly by none other than our very own Mike Sullivan, now in a more secure place and ready to do a tank! Yay!

- If you are in the mood to move things along, donate via the PayPal button – even five bucks will get things going in the right direction. I send the money directly from there to the artists and editor (who is nearly paid off).

As always, comments and suggestions are encouraged. Go to:

[http://www.wartairsoft.com/TRO3063WEB.pdf]

and download the TRO Prototype 3 if you have not done so already. We should have another ready in about a week. Meanwhile, Bill and I are saving up the suggestions you sharp-eyed readers have made and will incorporate them this weekend.

- A late-breaking addition to the blog: Dorian has finished the Stingray and it is up on Shapeways for purchase.

Stingray

There are 2 in the pack and each is 28mm long. Due to the size of those bars on the front and back we're limited to FD and FUD material, but given the new pricing structure it's not too bad.

Price point on them is US$14 in FD and US$17.08 in FUD not including VAT (where applicable).

There is no need for instructions as these are one-piece models. Naturally, if you want to play them you will need the stats; email me for the writeup, stats and record sheet.

Link for them is:

http://www.shapeways.com/model/272416/c9d69bf56767e1dfacf8889a6fee3dba/tro3063___stingray.html

Hit the music bar below - I have some new tunes up. Enjoy the prototype and thanks for stopping by.

Steve

Prototype v1.3... ready for your review!

2011-07-24T20:33:00.000-07:00

'Running the Blockade'
by Chris 'Colourbrand' Sumner

Greetings.

We’ve made some progress – as you might have guessed.

- Stephen Huda is currently working on a new Capellan vehicle, the Feng-niao (Hummingbird). This is a hovercraft which carries a TAG on a turret and moves at extremely high speeds. The second draft is below:

Capellan Combat Spotter 'Feng-niao' (Hummingbird)
Second Draft
by Stephen Huda

Unfortunately, the advent of this little beauty means curtains for another design – in this case, I pulled the completed Halberd out of the Federated Commonwealth. It is a redundant design, given the AA capability of the Werefox line.

- The BARS (Bulldog Autocannon Remote System) is still in progress. It is hotter than hell in Texas right now, but Lee is still working on it.

- Chris Sumner (‘Colourbrand’ over at DeviantArt) has completed work on the piece entitled ‘Running the Blockade’. You can see it at the top of this post – click on it for a better look!

- Karl Olsen is still pounding away at the Diomedes and the Hammerhead II. There were some issues with email bouncing repeatedly off his account for nearly ten days, but I finally got the suggestions I made through to him. Meanwhile, he has done a very good job on the background work for the Sabra XIII artillery vehicle.

Sabra XIII background (rough)
by Karl Olson

Bill and I were scheduled to get to work on the layout again today, but early this morning he called in sick. Nevertheless, he has been working on the beast at home.

- Bill found that the Lyran section did not have the symbol in the background. Corrected.

- He also went through and got rid of that annoying screen artifact at the bottom of every page (the thin line).

- He has corrected the goofs we made with factual stuff, as well as the misspelled ‘Vehicles’ and ‘Assault’. Or at least I hope so :)

- He added the ‘Mech section to the Lyran Alliance.

Now, keep in mind that we have not gone through and installed bold, italics or anything else of that nature. Nor have we changed fonts (though I have been giving it some thought). But the Third Prototype should be ready for your viewing pleasure as of this posting.

Note please, it is at the same address as the previous version: we left it that way for convenience.

http://www.wartairsoft.com/TRO3063WEB.pdf

- I have been spending more money (!) provided in part by our generous donors (via the PayPal button). Several of our color pieces are lacking in sharpness and professional look. I commissioned ten new ones – colorized versions of work done by David White, Matthew Plog, Alex Iglesias and Eric Ou, among others. Jim Lafferty and Anthony Scroggins have been working on making them come to life!

Capellan Culverin OmniMech
Art by Eric Ou, color by Jim Lafferty

If you want to chip in via the PayPal button, even $5 would be to the good. The delay on this project is not the actual work – we are on schedule – but paying the artists before using their art. We have about $350 to go.

We even have a special section planned! A bonus that will be at the end of the TRO... er, never mind. You didn't read that. Nope. Bill would kill me if you did.

As always, comments and suggestions are encouraged. For those of you who contributed, the Credits section has not been updated on the prototype, but I have updated it here on my computer. We will drop the finished Credits in when everything settles in for the final draft.

Enjoy the prototype and thanks for stopping by.

Steve

[Bonus section: Playtest of the Feng-niao by Dorian Sherrat and Helen Troy]
[Coming SOON!]

Another TRO Prototype...

2011-07-10T21:37:00.001-07:00

DCMS Tomahawk Battle Tank
Art by Eric Ou - Colors by Anthony Scroggins

Hi there!

Hard at work, that’s us!

- Stephen Huda has put the finishing touches on the Leopard helicopter gunship. Bill was transported when he saw it – no, he wasn’t shipped to Australia in chains; I mean he really liked it. I think that means the Leopard is a wrap.

Leopard Helicopter Gunship

Art by Stephen Huda

- The BARS (Bulldog Autocannon Remote System) is going through a revision. I have not heard from Lee when he will have it ready – he said he wasn’t happy with the first take, so he’s having another go-around. I hope he doesn’t disappear again. He really does good work.

- (Chris) is still working on an interior plate featuring the Sounder and Machete aerospace fighters. Here is the third draft, all that we have so far. He is currently about 50% complete.

- Karl Olson has been busy with the Diomedes and the Hammerhead II. They are in a rough stage, rougher than is practical to show you, but they are under construction. In addition I saddled him today with background work for the Sabra XIII artillery vehicle.

That wonderful gift my brother Jay gave me – a dual core laptop – will, sadly, NOT run CS3. So Bill paid me a visit, carrying his home computer with him – monitor and all. We got down to work on building the TRO in PDF format. It is not easy work – took us a while to get the Draconis Combine together. But the installations are coming faster and faster.

Here we are at work, two overweight white guys with tobacco and caffeine as our only allies.

Here is what we have come up with. Click on the image for a bigger version! Type the address into your browser and download it.

As always, comments and suggestions are welcome.

One More Time - if your name is misspelled in the Credits, don't worry. We put it in this time because we needed to check font sizes and so forth. There is a lot more coming and we are going to make sure everyone's name is spelled correctly.

No, we did not finish the Credits section, but if you are not listed there as either a playtester or fact checker and you think you should be, mention it. I will get you in.

Happy reading and thanks for stopping by.

Steve

Taking the TRO a bit further...

2011-06-23T00:46:00.000-07:00

Federated Commonwealth Machete MCT-3

Welcome to another blog update.

We’ve been making progress on the art front with several different pieces in the works.

- Jeffrey Aggusoekarno has finished the Federated Commonwealth’s Machete. There’s going to be some background added, but you can see from the image at the top of this blog post that it’s a very good piece. Dorian and Helen “BattleQueen” Sherratt have thoroughly playtested this machine and are quite pleased with it. Several lances of the Machete formed the ‘escort’ for the Sounders that wreaked such havoc on a pair of Blakist Vincent Mk42 corvettes. I don’t believe I have posted the post-game report for that, and with good reason – the game ran some twenty turns and the report is very long!

- The Draconis Combine has a tank, the BARS (Bulldog Autocannon Remote System), that has been sitting idle art-wise for a long time. Lee Madison finally came up for air and agreed to take another commission – as you can see, his rough sketch is quite promising, especially when you compare it to the original art.

Old BARS art....

Lee Madison's preliminary sketch

- We have a new artist (Chris) working on an interior plate featuring the Sounder aerospace fighter. It will be a snapshot of the encounter with the WoB WarShips. This is a piece to replace ‘The Game’, as that art is more suited for the Infantry Primer (our next project). As you can see from the sample below, Chris knows his stuff:

- Karl Olsen is currently plugging away on backgrounds. I think he may be tinkering with a redesign for the Diomedes as well. He wanted to redo the Hammerhead, but I think that one, while it probably could use a re-draw, is fine as a visual design. I want a tank that looks like a locomotive!

- Stephen Huda has begun the commission on the Leopard VTOL for the Outworlds Alliance. The rough draft is below:

Stephen Huda's Draft of the Leopard VTOL

- I received a wonderful gift from my brother Jay last week – a new laptop computer, a very powerful Toshiba with a dual-core processor and lots of memory. After loading all the software and updating my essential BT data, I am now using it to produce and modify the TRO work. My son thinks I am crazy, though. I purchased a used Dell keyboard and a new mouse to plug into the fancy computer!

There is a method to my madness – you probably know by now that I smoke a cigar and drink coffee while working out in the garage. The old laptop was equipped with a floppy drive (yes, that old) and after four years, shows dirt and wear from the exposure to my twin habits.

However, the Dell keyboard, in addition to having the tactile feedback I depend on, is separate from the computer itself and thus gets all the ashes and accidental spills which would spell disaster were they to fall on the computer itself. The mouse is there for much the same reason – I am accustomed to it and it keeps my activity away from the like-new surface of the laptop.

Thanks, Jay!

- Dorian has completed work on the Werefox line of miniatures. As you can see from the recognition chart, the Charlemagne has the most imposing Small Laser of Doom you’ll ever see:

(Click on image to enlarge)

Just kidding. It is an ER Large Laser of Doom. Still honking big, but hey, maybe it will make a good club for some desperate MechWarrior!

Here are the price quotes for the Werefox line. Don’t be put off by the initial cost – it’s actually a deal because you are getting two tankies!

AAV-I - $15.50

AAV-II - $14.50

Charlemagne - $17.00

D'Artagnan - $16.50

Martel - $16.00

Petain - $15.50

Here is the cover for the instruction PDF, which you can download as needed when making a Werefox purchase:

- I am currently working on the writeups – no, nothing has been changed, but I am cutting out the stats on the second page of each and putting it on its own page. The reason behind this is so that, after I have finished editing the stats for TRO format, we can just cut and drop them into the PDF. A bit of work with that (bold face and italics, mostly) in CS3 and we’re set to drop in the art. I have finished all the BattleMechs and am into the second House on the vehicles.

The really cool thing about this new computer? I can now run CS3 on it! Instead of saddling Bill with all the drudge work of formatting, I can just gather up the files with the text dropped in and transfer them to my computer, where I can make the changes as needed. Then I gather them up again and give them back to Bill for art and layout tweaks. The text portion has been the time-consuming part, and as stated earlier, I am front-loading as much of it as possible so Bill won’t have to hunt and peck to get it to look right. Bonus! I get to make last-second changes directly to the CS3 master files, rather then bugging Bill over changing a single word here or there.

- Bill has now got all the Draconis Combine writeups, ready to drop in. A piece of art here and there is still ‘under construction’, but we have placeholders. Bill will be down at Silverdale’s Avalon Games to conduct gaming sessions on Friday, the 24th of June. I will not be able to make it at 6pm due to work commitments, but will probably drop in at 9pm after I get off. Sorry, Bill.

PLAYTEST SECTION- STINGRAY

Dorian and Helen, in addition to making up all these wonderful miniatures, have been steadily playtesting some of the designs. One tank they used was the Stingray.

(Yes, this is the miniature for the Stingray)

The game went as follows:

The Stingray Playtest

Okay. The game. Helen controlled the Stingrays for the majority of the game so the way they were used was a little different from my style of playing, but they did, as I said before, perform well. I can't give you a blow by blow with them as we didn't really take notes today.

For the sake of comparison I'll make my remarks based on the 3058 upgrade version of the LRM carrier.

Our deployment for the Stingrays was determined to allow strategic movement to an area behind a Level 3 hill where they remained without moving after turn 2. Their ERMLs were never fired through the course of the game, though that is no reason to sacrifice them as it is a vital short range defense measure should they become engaged by any form of stealth or flanking unit. However, a possible option would be to replace them with SPLs (Helen's opinion). Tactically speaking, there is no reason to replace them with MLs as they don't require additional heatsinks to be installed.

Our designated spotters consisted of a pair of OW-3X and a pair of VRB-38-O (see attached) both fast flankers with good mid to short range punch. While we had a couple of TAG equipped vehicles, these four 'Mechs were the heavy lifters for spotting. These guys have a proven track record as spotters for Arrow IV units so they're a natural choice for us to use. (if this bit goes on the blog, please let folks know they can buy the OW-3X in the store and the VRB-38-O is going to be available soon)

Our main tactic in using them was to let my RAC equipped units breach armour then have the Stingrays use their critical seeking LRMs inflict the knockout blow on assault class 'Mechs such as the Archangel (there's a trend here - can you see it? We don't like Archangels) or the Seraph and take Battle Armour down before they could swarm attack our Assault 'Mechs. The tactic worked well, eliminating most of the Djinn Pete and Neil deployed before they could close in on our Assaults. By concentrating our fire on them as we closed on the complex we managed to eliminate 4 squads by turn 5 leaving just 1 squad left but at half strength. They proved no threat and were easily dispatched in a barrage of ERML fire from our three Precentors.

Raining on the WoB Parade

With the immediate Battle Armour threat eliminated Helen turned her attention towards dealing with those bloody Celestials. My uncanny luck with RACs from our Typhoons, Mastodons and Precentors, which were working together, shredded the armour on a Seraph and an Archangel. This left gaping holes in various locations, most notably the centre torso of the Archangel. The Archangel decided it wanted to blow up after the Stingrays hammered it with 8 flights of LRMs on turn 6 causing no less than 4 critical engine hits - which would have breached the reactor had it not passed the emergency shut down roll! (Do you use that rule? It's a lesson on not keeping your XL engine units grouped tight, let me tell you!)

With a Archangel down on turn 6 the Seraph followed suit on turn 7 along with a Preta that had taken heavy damage from the pair of VRB-38-Os that same turn.

Getting to the Heart of the Matter

Turn 8 saw us complete our objective and uncover the location where the WoB were holding Devlin Stone. This turned the game from an attack to a rapid retreat so Neil and Pete started to throw everything at us (including the kitchen sink). Our OW-3Xs bravely held back to give the Stingrays targeting data to cover our retreat and both fell by the end of the game. Turn 8 had the two Stingrays cripple a second Archangel by blowing its left leg clear away at the hip, leaving it easy pickings and a swift foot to the face from Helen's Highlander II-C.

With our retreat underway the Stingrays unleashed fire on the pursuing units marked out by our OW-3Xs while our forces took opportunity fire where permitted. Our pair of Mastodons proved how dangerous a pair of RAC-5s and SRM4s in the turret can be. A Malak suffered a missile death thanks to the Stingrays on turn 9.

While the Stingrays proved effective on turn 10 they didn't kill any units. But it's worth noting as Helen rolled a wonderful series of 6s against a practically undamaged Gregori and executed a perfect Highlander Burial taking it out and leaving a pair of stunned WoB players :D

Turn 11 saw our units reach our table edge and end the game. The firing phase saw our last OW-3X fall under the weapons of the toaster huggers - but not before allowing the Stingrays to finish off a Legacy and a Lightray, thanks once again in part to the Mastodons and Typhoons.

The Aftermath

Okay, there's a rundown and the kill tally is as follows-

4 squads of Djinn BattleArmour

1 Archangel

1 Legacy

1 Lightray

1 Malak

1 Preta

1 Seraph

Judgment Rendered

A pretty good showing all told, they're good for taking units out but lack the punch for destroying units on their own like the Sounder and Machete. Are they better than a LRM carrier? Honestly, we think ‘yes’. Sure, they cost a tad more, (118 BV I think) but statistically, four LRM 10s will hit more often than 3 LRM 20s and the lasers give you more peace of mind than an iC3 will when you're facing fast flankers.

Of course the downside to Artemis is the fact it can't be used with special munitions such as swarm and incendiary, so it'd be considered wasted tonnage if a player used those options, but that's for the individual player to choose based upon scenario and mission objectives. There are a couple of scenarios I can envision where that trade-off could be worth the wasted tonnage. It's no real issue to deploy a Stingray with 36 rounds of standard LRM ammo and 1 ton of Swarm or Incendiary if a player feels it would be of benefit.

Over all I think about 60-70 percent of the missile flights hit their mark with roughly 7 missiles per launcher hitting, So on average you're looking at about 50-70% effective firing. The Artemis IV really helps with its +2 to the cluster hits table. Had we used more Stingrays the tactics we used would have been different - we'd have had the punch to tackle undamaged units and take them out and would have used them as such. Think a medieval rain of arrows, only with LRMs.

Is it better than a Quiang Ton? Honestly no idea, as we've never used that machine, but running the numbers I'd say yes for the same reason I listed as it being better than a LRM carrier, simple law of averages. You've more chance of hitting with 4 launchers than 3 launchers regardless of the number of missiles they fire. Of course it becomes a different game if they do hit, a 15 flight will hit with more missiles than a 10 flight most of the time. But regardless, you've got to actually make the hit roll first and more launchers give a player the edge.

The Quiang Ton’s AMS is a nice touch. Its secondary Streaks are a tricky one, though - you know my thoughts on them already. Frankly, I'd rather take lasers for defense weapons, as they won't blow up in your face.

Dorian (with input from Helen)

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

An Early Post: MUL is Now Complete!

2011-06-06T22:55:00.000-07:00

Stingray

Greetings.

Our last update was a few weeks ago. Normally I would wait another two weeks, as the art gets paid off and there’s some actual progress to report. Things have been moving along, however.

- Jeffrey Agussoekarno has been assigned the new aerospace fighter for the Federated Commonwealth. He is back to work on it – below is the third draft of the new design:

Machete

- The ‘Mechs are all finally finished. Whew!

- We are currently down to about $66 owed to Paul Skowronek for his editing duties. He is working on the Sounder and will be digging into that new aerospace fighter as soon as I get the second draft back from Geoffrey.

- Karl Olson has finished the Stingray support tank and it is at the top of this blog post. He has reworked the Bengal and here is the inked version:

Bengal

- I am also going to ask Karl to work on the background for the following: Diomedes, Roland and Hammerhead II. His work on the Bu-20a Ammunition Carrier speaks for itself:

Bu-20a Ammunition Carrier

- Eric Ou has finished modifying his pro bono work. I don’t think he has the time to accept any further commissions, but he has earned the rest! I modified the writeup for the Sher Khan to better reflect the image’s apparent warload. I think it actually makes more sense now – especially as I have taken an interest in using infantry in the game.

- I am asking Stephen Huda to take another commission – the Leopard VTOL for the Outworlds Alliance. I need to pay him that final $35, though.

- Pursuant to the new organization of the material in the TRO, I have gone through and redone the Page Count, which specifies what goes where and on which page. The final page count is 254. There is a good reason for this sudden inflation of the TRO….

- … we have added an eight-page Master Unit List for the TRO itself! This consumed several evenings of work and covers every machine featured in the TRO, as well as any variants mentioned in the writeups (‘fluff’). The format is similar to the company works as regards the abbreviations for political factions and vehicle types. We also note where other factions have access to the machine in question.

Master Unit List Introduction

Sample Master Unit List (click to enlarge)

- Bill is looking at the images for the Werefox miniatures as of today. He can find no issues with them, so I will pass on them and Dorian can get to work.

- Dorian is about to resume work on the Sound miniature – can’t wait to see what he comes up with!

Local Game Group Begins....

Bill is working on the TRO layout – no, really! He is also starting another gaming group in the Bremerton/Silverdale area, to be held at local shops like Discordia and Avalon Comics and Games. If you are in the area and are interested in playing BattleTech, Axis and Allies, Risk and any other ‘wargame’, please get in touch with me. We would like to pull eight steady players together to have a good time in a structured environment (hey, mission tracks… who knew?).

One of the interesting features of the BattleTech game is that while everyone will start with 10,000 BV of units, what you will play depends on who shows up. For example, if five players show up, four will take their mercenary forces into battle while the fifth plays OpFor with the GameMaster (Bill). In a 15,000 BV scenario, each merc player would contribute 3500 BV of his forces, while the GM and his OpFor will field 15,000 points of whatever is called for by the track.

If only three players show up in this example, each would contribute 5000 points of merc forces against Bill’s troops. You would earn points for your performance as OpFor the same as if you were performing as a member of the mercs. No one loses opportunities for advancement, and everyone gets to play in a balanced game progressing along a story arc.

It’s an interesting proposition and I am eager to give it a try.

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

More Art, Changes in the Layout... and No Autoplay!

2011-05-17T19:24:00.000-07:00

Welcome!

It has been a while since our last update. As you can see, the art for the new aerospace fighter, the Sounder, has gone through some changes. Our new artist is Jeffrey Agussoekarno and he is quite good at this.

There are several advances on the production of the TRO:

- We have almost finished paying off Stephen Huda for his efforts on the Werefox line.

- We are currently down to about $86 owed to Paul Skowronek for his editing duties.

- Karl Olsen is still hard at work filling in backgrounds for various vehicles – at this point I owe him a lot, about $180, counting the pieces he still has to finish. As you can see from the Sounder, he is doing well. Another vehicle, the Stingray support tank, was completely redone in order to bring it into line with the look of most other vehicles in BattleTech.

- Eric Ou has finished the work on the Nemera and the Sher Khan using vehicles already sitting in his portfolio. Unfortunately, he was not able to work in a special feature of the Sher Khan, so I will be tweaking the writeup to reflect the current warload. Nevertheless, this work was done pro bono and I am very grateful for Eric’s effort. It is quite appealing.

Nemera (above)

Sher Khan

- Jeffrey is also working on a mystery ship for the 109th slot – the Machete.

- The Outworlds Alliance Uragan has gone through a change – it is no longer an atmospheric fighter but a true aerospace machine and as such has been tweaked and trimmed to reflect the changes. The art remains the same, however. Given its previous stats, I believe this is a solid step up. The atmospheric fighter version with turbines was too slow, poorly armed and very lightly armored to be a worthwhile addition to the TRO.

- We are still going over the images for the Werefox miniatures (sorry, Dorian!) and should have any issues nailed down in a week or so.

- Bill is working on the TRO layout – his knee is on the mend. He has already begun new projects in addition to our TRO – taking up several painting commissions is a good start.

TRO Layout Changes

- Bill and I have done quite a bit of talking in the past few weeks. Much of it has been on other topics, but we decided to change the layout of the information presented in the TRO. We don’t want an exact copy of the company’s own books – it will be hard enough for folks to establish this as a fan project by looks alone We don’t want this to rise to the level of confusion. Catalyst Games might not appreciate it.

Here is the new proposed Table of Contents:

- Another issue Bill and I discussed was the idea of adding a page or two of information in the Master Unit List format. That is, listing the TRO entries in terms of their faction availability, BV1 and so on circa 3063. We decided it was a good idea and will insert it in the back of the TRO. Of course this is going to extend the page count a bit, but we felt it would aid players and GMs alike in determining selections for their game.

It will take us a little time to collate the data – I will have to go through every single writeup to get it – but we still have four months to go before we publish. And it is a needful thing, if my own experience with HMP is any indication.

The Music Player...

The Music Player…. thanks to all of you who voted on the issue of the Music Player. I have already disabled AutoPlay. From now on, blessed silence is the default setting for those of you not into dubstep, power pop or occasional flashbacks to earlier decades.

However... if you want to hear what is on the playlist, just click on the button at the bottom of the screen.

An Actual BattleTech Game!
Yes! Someone played one of these over the past weekend! With me!

- I played a game with the regular guys up in Everett this weekend. I was running OpFor with the GM. We sent a lot of Draconis Combine 3025-era ‘Mechs across a fairly rough area trying to get to a rallying point three mapsheets away. We fielded two Panthers, two Griffins, two Shadow Hawks and a Grasshopper. All had about 20% existing damage when they stepped on the map. The Grasshopper made it through the shallow lake to the waiting reinforcements on the other side – the rest were destroyed or captured in a valiant (and successful) attempt to soften up the enemy and buy time for their leader to get away.

The Clanners pursued us with five ‘Mechs. Unfortunately, they jumped as well as we did and hit harder, but we did manage to take down a Kit Fox and beat the stuffing out of a Clan Grizzly. I lost all but one Shadow Hawk, who did his best to stomp that Kit Fox into the dirt before finally surrendering.

I decided the Shadow Hawk pilot would relent and call out an honor duel - despite it being very late in the game, it worked. The prospect of getting another Zell point seemed to please the Clan player immensely. In fact, instead of staying at range and pasting me, he ran right up and slugged it out toe to toe. Of course, this meant I could punch and kick him.

The declaration also kept all his buddies off my back - all I had left was a LRM-5 of Doom! And my fists and feet. Things went well for our Clanner- two Clan Large Pulse lasers will do that for you - until I kicked him in the head after knocking him down.

At that he called to one of the other players to help - apparently, my shot at the Grizzly on Turn 2 had made me fair game for that guy under Zell, so the fellow came over to beat on me.

The game ended with my surviving both 'Mech's fire but unfortunately unable to squash the invader thoroughly enough. Cockroaches! What're ya gonna do?

Cowards!
The Clanners were curiously reluctant to enter the water and pursue the waiting Combine warriors – the GM called it a minor victory for the Clanners due to the five machines they trashed, but the game ended with the Grasshopper and most of its fellow DCMS warriors slipping off the map. The Clanners were supposed to destroy them all. They might have, if they’d braved the water, but by that time they were so beat up, OpFor would have taken another couple of them out on the way over.

Which was the plan all along. We OpFor knew we could not win, but were determined to make the players pay a heavy price for total victory. They declined the offer.

The place we played was a Gamer’s Tavern, the AFK up in Everett. Interesting place – if you are in the area, check it out sometime. I recommend the +2 Tater Tots with chili and cheese.

The Ultrasonic Cleaner - a Wash.

Unfortunately, while the ultrasonic bath works well, it does not work well on plastics, which includes the Shapeways minis. So that idea is a bust. But on the bright side, my wife's jewelry is sparkling and I am currently attempting to make a super stripping bath out of it (acrylic floor stripper + water + ultrasonic mojo = stripped metal miniature).

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - TRO Art and Minis

2011-04-28T10:28:00.000-07:00

Thank you for your patience, everyone.

The Miniatures Arrive!

We have received the three miniatures of the JR7-X from Shapeways. They were done in white detail. Bill has two and I have one; we have been futzing with them for several days and have some information we’d like to pass on to the rest of you who might be considering a purchase of this mini or others like it from Shapeways.

- The minis are made from a process neither Bill or I know of, but which gives good detail. The sculptor (in this case, Dorian Sherratt) did a good job not only with the detail but also with adding large, deep sockets and long pins for ease of assembly.

- There are step lines on each model which speak of a machine or process which uses a coordinate system (X-Y-Z axis) to control the laser or whatever is doing the sculpting. These will have to be smoothed. We don’t know yet whether a second coat of primer will do the job of ‘smoothing’, but the first seems to bring these step marks out and dry-brushing will certainly accentuate the appearance. That said, the marks can only be seen if you are closer than four or five inches to the model.

- Each model had to be gone over with a dry toothbrush to remove the excess gunk. I cannot think of a better way to describe this material – it is almost dry but not quite, like gel. Or snot. You have to brush it out of the crevices and crannies and holes in order to assemble the mini and get the detail that was designed into the model.

- This gunk is on every surface. It is on the pins and in the holes that receive them – I spent several minutes with a paper clip and my fingernail removing it well enough just to fit the parts together. I don’t know if it is water-based or not.

- Bill has complained that the ankle joints are the weakest. He says it is the material which is flexing, but I suspect from my own experience that this is not so – if you do not clean the gunk away from the joint area, you will essentially be supergluing gunk to gunk, and that will flex and fail very quickly.

- Gunk aside, the hip to body joint and the leg to foot joint should be drilled out with a pin vise and then pinned together with copper or brass rod. These are the weak points in any case. I am going to ask Dorian to revise the design so that the hip-body joint has a larger pin and a deeper socket to mate more securely. These parts will still be able to rotate in the X-Y axis.

The ankle joint I will leave strictly alone – it is necessary to leave it as-is in order to permit reposing as needed. That said, I do not recommend posing this miniature standing on one leg. The joint, even pinned, is weaker than if it was made of pewter and will not stand any sort of stress (such as when packing and moving the miniatures to a game).

I am going to spend about $30 on an ultrasonic jewelry cleaner to see if that will remove the crappola which seems to coat the entire mini. Of course, not knowing what the mini is actually made of (Bill thinks it might be cornstarch!), there is a chance I will end up with a puddle of crud where my mini parts used to be. I will experiment first with the launchers – which I will be replacing in any case with the more slender versions Dorian has posted on his Shapeways site.

Replacement Art

Some time ago – about four years, to be precise – I decided it was worthwhile to begin replacing a few of the pieces Vlad did for the original version of the TRO. As the art piled up and the writeups began to take on some polish, this need for better illustrations grew and grew. I made a few mistakes in choosing and paying artists, so some of the work we did over – has to be done over again. And paid for – again. As it is coming out of my pocket, this is the price I pay for being hasty.

There are some pieces I commissioned which were intended for the TRO interior plates, but they will not appear because the mood they evoke is not appropriate for a TRO. I am saving them for the next project, an Infantry Primer to be used in playing infantry in BattleTech. No sense wasting money more than I have to!

Some of you may have noted that Eric Ou offered sketches as the basis for replacing art that clashes with the copyright laws. I have not taken him up on these for that reason, but in order to replace sub-standard pieces that are on hand but no longer meet the quality standards of the bulk of our art. This will take some time, but then so will Bill getting back to the drawing board and finishing his layout duties.

Current Progress

- I am in the process of paying Stephen Huda, Karl Olsen and Matt Plog for their artwork. I am also trying to catch up on the last of the money I owe to Paul Skowronek, who did an outstanding job editing the entries for this Technical Readout.

- Dorian Sherratt is waiting on my cuts for the Werefox line of miniatures. We have been in a bit of disarray here; I am currently shifting hours at work and Bill is going under the knife for knee surgery. Dorian has nearly finished the entire line while I have been skylarking – take a look at what we have so far.

- Karl Olsen is still working on the backgrounds. He has also been commissioned to create a new Stingray and a new Bengal. These two ‘tanks’ Vlad did were inspired by the work of ShamanX over on deviantArt and while they might make great subjects for the cover of a sci-fi novel, they ain’t BattleTech.

Even so, we might have used them if we’d been able to find a way to clean up the art. We did, finally, thanks to David White, but could not get the required software and decided the best course was just to re-do both pieces.

- Matthew Plog has presumably finished inking our piece for the Quiang-ton and is currently awaiting payment. When he gets his dough, we will get the art.

Entry #108

I swore over a year ago this would not happen, but there is going to be a new machine added to the TRO. We saw some of the pieces Eric Ou had laying about and decided to make use of one. It just looked really good. Darn you, Eric! Your stuff is so tempting!

The machine we designed was too heavy for the art, and Eric obliged by sketching something new. We are still talking it over, but the design itself is a definite ‘go’. It is a really solid addition to the game, looks like it will be fun to play and actually performs its intended role. We’ll get art for it one way or another. I have already sketched out the basic writeup and sent it off to Geoffrey for fill-in. When we have beaten it into shape, we’ll send it to Paul.

This new addition is something we do not yet have in the TRO – a genuine aerospace fighter. (The Urugan does not count, as it is conventionally powered and is atmospheric only). The reason we have insisted on keeping this new design is because it looks to be very effective but does not duplicate the mission or warload of any other fighter in its weight class. It is quite unique, and unless I have missed something, should be popular with the folks who would like to add a little aero to their game but have not found a solid reason to do so.

[Update: Dorian and his sweetie took just two of these fighters to a game yesterday. I believe on the first pass, they nailed a nearly fresh WoB Grigori. To borrow a phrase from that funny BattleTech/Hitler video, it went down faster than a Clanner on the third date.

Needs more ammo, check. Some AMS, check. Change the SSRMs to SRMs to widen the ground attack profile, check.]

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

Welllll.. maybe not all of them :(

2011-04-17T13:46:00.000-07:00

{ This space for rent!}
We'll have a new header up soon!

I had an epiphany over to visit last night.

This one had a name: Bill Burt, the fellow doing our layouts.

Bill came by (bum leg and all) to visit and shoot the breeze. And he talked with me about some alarm bells that went off when he saw the Battlemaster as one of the proposed TRO ‘Mechs to be sculpted in the near future. Some of you may be familiar with him as Sounguru on the forums and elsewhere as the Fat Guy. You've seen his sig:

"When all else fails, call out the Fat Guy."

Well, my common sense was obviously failing, so this was Good Advice. And Bill gave me some additional advice during the four hours we smoked and talked.

As a result, I have decided not to support making miniatures of what I call the Named BattleMechs based on the art found in the TRO: 3063.

What does this mean? It means anyone who decides on their own to sculpt a so-called “Named ‘Mech’” does *not* have my permission to base it on my commissioned artwork, nor do they have permission to associate such a miniature with TRO:3063 - or me.

Before you get totally bummed, let me explain our position.

A Tricky Position

The Named 'Mechs are machines which have names belonging to Catalyst Game Labs - Jenner, Champion, Battlemaster, Bandersnatch, etc. Some of our own TRO art has much of the look and feel of existing company images and, by extension, the Iron Wind Metals miniatures. That was intended. In the past, the company has turned a benign eye on such efforts by its fanbase. But those efforts almost universally consist of art and text accompanied by a carefully worded disclaimer. Here is mine, well in advance:

The TRO:3063 is NOT an official CGL publication. It has the look and feel of one, but it is not. It is not for sale. No one will profit from its release. In fact, I will be in the hole for five grand by the time it is done.

If we publish and are not slapped with an immediate Cease and Desist letter, that is because the folks in charge have been gracious enough to permit us the use of their names and ideas as part of fan-produced material. Not for sale, but to be given away freely to all fans of the game.

Not Crossing The Line

Producing the art of the Named ‘Mechs in our fan TRO as miniatures for sale anywhere would cross a line I very much do not want to cross either before the release of the TRO - or after. The folks making the miniatures would almost certainly get a Cease and Desist letter, as they're essentially using intellectual property which is not theirs to make a profit for someone besides CGL or IWM. And the connection would be the TRO: 3063. We would get dragged into it and I do not want that to happen. Not now, not ever.

It is not just an issue of names, either. Some have suggested we play cute and list the mini as something else and so perhaps get away with it. Not so. The look and feel of a fan-produced miniature sold for profit that is based on fan-commissioned art that is based on the look and feel of official company art is still infringing. It takes money from the pockets of the companies producing the originals and food from the tables of the folks making those products.

My son’s design – the Nimravus – is based on the company’s own Lynx. It won’t become a miniature with my permission or knowledge because the art is very close in appearance to the parent design. This should not be a problem for most of you. Little John played for two years with a kit-bashed Lynx and he was content. I encourage the rest of you to do the same. It doesn’t matter how much I’d like to see the new Champion as a miniature. I would – a lot. But I won’t do it. I won’t assist those who do.

The Exceptions...

If a particular piece of art from the TRO:3063 using the name of a Named 'Mech looks little or nothing like the original company art (and there are several of those), artists are free to make a miniature based on that art. (This is why I changed the header piece, by the way... Shane got permission from me several months back to use the art of our Champion II.)

Please do NOT use the company name.

Please do NOT associate it with the TRO: 3063.

Otherwise, *I* have no objections. (Of course, others may. LTBB and YMMV.)

Re-establishing My Position

As I have stated many times over the course of four years on this blog, I do not want to violate Topps or CGL intellectual property rights. I do not want to take any business away from them, nor be associated with anyone who does so in an illegal manner. It only makes sense - if these companies can't make a dollar selling BT minis, they go under and that is bad for everyone. This is their livelihood. They are not going to let anyone infringe in a way that affects their bottom line, and I for one do not intend to try.

Machines abound in the TRO which are our own design. There is no shortage of 'Mechs and vehicles to model, so they will go ahead as scheduled. The Privateer is one of those. The Churchill Mk XX is another.

My Sincerest Apology

I am sorry, but the production of a Centurion or Catapult miniature based on the art in the TRO: 3063 is not legally possible at this time. I will not permit it unless I get permission from the owners of the license, and that is not likely to happen for reasons already mentioned. I am sorry for those of you who are disappointed – hell, I’m disappointed. But not very disappointed. And I should have realized this was the situation before I posted the last blog entry. You will notice the changes I made to that post already.

This business with the miniatures was not a stunt to get new donations. Believe me. If I had wanted to get more money from the PayPal button, I would have been one shilling SOB for the past four years: this project has at times put me in tough financial straits. However, I can understand if some of the more recent donors feel rooked. It will be hard, but if those of you who donated via the PayPal button in order to see a particular Named ‘Mech produced feel cheated, I will refund your donation. It will take time, as I am still in the process of paying for new art. But I will do it if you ask.

Meanwhile, we have been making progress on the Privateer minis. Here are the prototypes.

A Capellan PV-2L. We'll spruce up the pose - or you can make one of your own!

The current PV-1K - the Dragon's choice for outfitting Dispossessed mercenaries.

Current Progress

Aside from the splash the miniatures made, we have been busy here.

- Stephen Huda finished the Werefox line of AFVs. The last two, the Martel and the Charlemagne, are done. Excellent work, Stephen! I believe our sculptor, Dorian Sherratt, is taking a stab at making miniatures of the entire series.

- Karl Olsen is busy at work on the backgrounds of several machines that sorely need it. What you see here is a prototype only – we plan to clean up the art a bit before presenting it.

- Matthew Plog has been kind enough to work a commission for our TRO. The Quiang-ton will be ready in a couple of weeks.

- Paul Skowronek has finished up the last of the editing, bar one – the Mastodon. I sent it off to him yesterday. I am combing through, reading and deciding which need more Notables or Deployment information, as well as addressing the issues Paul found with the Periphery Vehicles.

Well, that is all for now. Have to get going, pay some bills, wash the clothes, vacuum and like that.

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

They're coming.... from the pages of the TRO!

2011-04-04T16:17:00.001-07:00

JR7-X

From the Mercenaries section of the TRO:3063

Yes, indeed. They are coming soon. One at a time, but they are definitely on their way.

But which ones?

Good question!

Someone out there asked for miniatures based on the art from this project. Several someones. I chuckled at the time. Silly fans, don't they know how expensive a miniature is to commission and produce?

Well, things have changed over the past two years. Some people have done a bit of 3D work, but it's been expensive.

Serendipity strikes and suddenly we have a new source, and he works fast.

And is reasonably cheap.

So.... wouldja do poor old Steve a favor?

Go back into the archives of this blog and tell me - what do you want to see as a tabletop miniature when September rolls around? I am not pageview whoring here, I am serious - dig back. Everything that will go into this TRO has appeared at one point or another on this blog over a period of nearly four years. You can find it.

When you do, let me know right here in the comments. We'll do what we did with the prototype - file it and use it to determine priorities.

More later!

http://www.shapeways.com/model/234569/3063___jr7_x_jay_x.html?gid=ug66038

Stay tuned!

Candidates So Far:

Privateer PV1-K

Privateer PV-2L

Klat, I turned your donation right over to the sculptor in England, who has agreed to put the Privateers both on the short list. Thank you for the donation!

And in case folks are worried this is only for 'Mechs....

You want to get that with fries?

Get a pair of these - along with parts for all the variants:

http://www.shapeways.com/model/237377/tro3063___churchill_mk__xx.html?gid=ug66038

Steve

Things moving along... with big guns!

2011-03-11T20:05:00.000-08:00

Werefox AAV II by Stephen Huda

Hey there!

It has been a long wait but we have some new stuff to show you as things slowly get done.

There are five pieces left to do.

Here is the latest:

- Paul Skowronek (Skiltao) – has been steadily working on editing the writeups. He has finished the House ‘Mechs and is now busy with the units from the Periphery and the Mercenary section. Thanks for the hard work, Paul!

- We have been upgrading things ever so slightly as the playtest results come in. After a recent game where OpFor played all tanks against Clan ‘Mechs, I decided that anything armed with a Class 20 autocannon should probably be able to move fast – it’s not enough to just sit there hidden and wait for someone to roll into range. The range for that big gun is quite short. Our forces put paid to the Clan scum with two Shrek PPC carriers, but even with their reach, they were too slow to catch a Summoner and the bastich got away. 3/5 is fine for having it out with big guys and other tanks, but not so good at catching heavies.

Therefore, the Federated Commonwealth’s Churchill Mk XX has been modified – it is smaller now, carries the same warload and armor, but moves a healthy 5/8 on tracks. Unfortunately, it almost tripled in cost, but is still quite a contender for the C-bill. We updated the HMP and PDF files and I altered the writeup to reflect the new design, but still have to enter the data in the HMP file.

- Our Layout Man, Bill Burt, encountered a distinct setback while running across a field playing airsoft. He stepped into a four-foot deep hole and nuked his knee. The bad news is that he will be OOC for the next six to eight months. The good news is that he has plenty of time now for the layout duties!

[As with all the images,
click on this to enlarge]

- Stephen Huda plugs away on the Werefox line. As you can see, he did a fine job on the Werefox AAV II.

- Eric Ou has been paid up to date, but is still too busy to take on a commisson.

- We have commissioned Matt Plog to do a piece. It will have to wait until I can pony up the cash, however. This should happen in late March.

- Anthony has completed the first of two commissioned pieces, as seen below:

Churchill Mk XX by Anthony Scroggins

- Karl Olsen has been brought back to redo an armored car for the Outworlds Alliance – the Diatryma. I am still tinkering with it to straighten out some strange angles but it looks good, otherwise.

Diatryma Armored Car by Karl Olsen

I declared the income from your donations on my taxes this year – the total comes to just under $900! Thank you all for giving so generously. I am sorry for the infrequent updates – once a month at this point while we slowly pay for the quality work we are getting.

For those of you who enjoyed the music over the past year, I apologize. Hypster ran into trouble about seven months back with copyright issues. Now they are only permitting people to play YouTube videos on their embedded player. I don't know how much of the BR experience this was for you, but I could not change the music around midsummer of last year and so, I am afraid, the music list got a little stale.

There are not a lot of embedded music players out there anymore, at least not the kind to which you can upload tunes and have them run on your blog. And this just doesn't seem like the place for videos. I will try, but no promises.

Okay, got it in. Go to the bottom of the page and open the playlist to play something different. There is no shuffle on this player.

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

The Progress Report....

2011-02-04T21:01:00.000-08:00

Howdy.

Here is the latest:

- Paul Skowronek – dropped off the edited stuff on schedule. The last of the Werefox line is edited, and Paul is now working on the ‘Mech writeups for the Draconis Combine.

- Dave 'BurningChrome' Hindelang is working on the corrections he’s spotted via the Prototype PDF. So far we have two pieces done. Trouble is, they are in the DC, on which Paul is currently working. Another problem is that the pieces are as seen in the prototype PDF, which I think adds certain errors that are less a writing issue and more of a data entry bug. Don’t get me wrong – I want those corrected too, but first things first.

- The HMV and HMAero PDF files are done. That is, the data for each machine and all its variants has been entered as an HMP, HMV or HMA file.

- We have begun Phase Two of the Heavy Metal experience – I am entering the finalized writeups into each HM file. We are coming along nicely with that – as a matter of fact, it so happens I have spotted some issues with the writeups (mostly stuff added to fill in gaps in word count left by Paul’s editing) and corrected them.

- Dave is also providing me with files of a sort I had not considered – MegaMek. Apparently the couple of designs he has tested so far have been solid performers, so Dave is now attempting to get artwork for them. Apparently there is an avatar for each machine – he is going to work with an artist to create the images required for MegaMek.

I don’t know – I suppose anything that lets you play BattleTech in your underwear is probably worth that kind of effort. Hell, it’s a hobby, right? This is just another facet.

- Stephen Huda is continuing his work on the Werefox line. There are some issues he has to resolve at home, but he has been working hard nonetheless and the Werefox D'Artagnan infantry combat vehicle is at the top of today's entry. Stephen has been paid up to date.

- Eric Ou is up to his neck in classwork and as I have stated before, I think that comes first. He has done some preliminary sketches on the Outworlds Alliance Leopard Gunship and the Draconis Combine’s Sher Khan. He might get to them in the next couple of weeks – depends on his school workload, of course. Eric is paid up to date as of this evening.

- Please give a hearty welcome to a new artist, Anthony Scroggins. I have commissioned him to do a couple of black and white pieces and perhaps a color plate. Yes, we have made room for one more. The prices are at the upper limit of my affordability and I will take a couple of paydays to cover them, but if you visit his deviantArt site [http://shimmering-sword.deviantart.com/] you should come away feeling much as I do - the man is worth every penny.

Here is an example of his work, colorized by our layout man Bill Burt:

[Please note: this piece was originally done for Strider's Strikers
(www.stridersstrikers.com) and is used with their permission]

The Current State of Technical Readout:3063

As I mentioned in the last post, your feedback has been vital to my project. So I have decided that it is time for me to outline some feedback of my own to you, the BattleTech reader. Many of you have been following this blog for years now and for that, I thank you. Here are some quick summaries to show where we are:

[CLICK ON THIS IMAGE FOR A LARGER VERSION]

So far that is where we stand. I estimate from the number of pieces left to do that I will need to set aside at least $350 for the art and $300 for the editing. A total of $650 and we should be done. It will come to about $3700 for everything.

We’re getting there. The best part is that our artists, writers and editors don’t have to wait until we get published so they can get paid!

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

Odyssey of the White Knight...

2011-01-17T21:28:00.000-08:00

Welcome! It has been about two weeks since our last update.

Here is the latest:

- Paul Skowronek – I have decided to bump the pay per piece up a bit and reduce the number of pieces due per week. Paul has a life and other responsibilities, and I think scheduling seven writeups per week is unrealistic. So I am going to go with doing five per week. That means I am going to pay the same for five as I would for seven – putting more money in Paul’s pocket while creating a production schedule which works out for everyone.

This schedule, if kept, will give us 107 fully-edited entries by mid-May. As the layout and remaining art will be complete by then and as we will have been editing in accordance with the Table of Contents, we should be able to assemble the entries as their text is finished. I just shipped the Lyran Alliance vehicles, but with Paul’s approval I am going to begin shipping the BattleMech writeups instead.

- The HMV and HMAero PDF files are nearly done. I am working on the last half of the Periphery (about 12 machines) and then the fourteen or so variants. Then we will be done. For now…

The idea is to get all the Heavy Metal files created to match their respective PDF. I know – they should be in the machine already. However, the designs were genned up, tweaked and turned out over three years. Some of the designs are on other computers and some have been tweaked even after they were set in PDF format – so I have to call up the PDF, check it against the current list of Vees or ‘Mechs, and create it if it is not there.

That is just Stage One, however.

Stage Two is where I cut and past the completed writeups into each HM file, make sure the appropriate Availability block is checked and otherwise final-check the design. I cannot do that until the editing is done, but I can do the rest for now.

- Stephen Huda has completed the reworking of the White Knight. This piece has gone through a long gestation period and at least four artists. See below:

CLICK ON THE IMAGE FOR A FULL-SIZE VERSION

- Eric Ou is quite busy but has agreed to re-do the Leopard gunship and the Draconis Combine’s Sher Khan. No telling when they will be ready, but I still owe him $50.

Speaking of money, I have paid for Kurbound Seth’s work.

- Your feedback has been vital to my project – many errors caught, some corrected on the spot. Below is the Check Sheet I generated to use with each entry. Please let me know if you can think of a check I missed:

Thanks for stopping by!!

Steve

TRO Prototype... up for your critique (Please beat me!)

2010-12-28T20:30:00.001-08:00

Werefox Petain

Welcome back! It has been a little over two weeks since our last update. I hope you had a Merry Christmas and a good New Year celebration.

I have decided to give the response to Pink's blog posts on BattleTech a rest. We've both made our points.

Here is what has developed:

- Paul Skowronek – Our final writeup editor has been hard at work. I have paid him up to date and should be sending another $21 this Friday. We are making good progress… he is now working on the Federated Commonwealth vehicles.

- The HMV and HMAero PDF files are languishing… I am going to work on them this week and hopefully have them all done by this next Friday.

- Stephen Huda has completed two Federated Commonwealth vehicles – the Werefox Petain and the Werefox AAV (anti-aircraft vehicle). See the header image above for the Petain – below is the AAV. Excellent work, as always.

Werefox AAV

- Eric Ou has completed the Draconis Combine’s Tomahawk and Revenant. See below.

Revenant

Tomahawk

- Okay, and now for the part everyone has been waiting for....

Bill and I have been working independently for about the past two months. Friday night I got a chance to set with him for several hours and we worked on the TRO prototype.

I think we made significant progress – though some pages (such as the credits) are not there and will not be until the final version, the whole thing is beginning to shape up. We now have the entire Draconis Combine ‘Mech section in place.

In fact, we are advanced far enough that I am going to solicit reader feedback on this one.

Don’t hesitate to point stuff out – misspelled words, data out of place, canon or continuity issues, art, etc. I need to have as many eyeballs as possible looking at the layout, the text and the art. I don’t care if it is a matter of taste or you spot a hyphen where there should not be one – I will take it on board.

One thing – I have already spotted the model numbering errors in the Isometrus writeup between the Marik version and the Lyran version, so no need to point it out.

A word of caution: I have linked to this and downloaded the PDF using ‘save page as’. About half the time, I get a useful PDF. The rest of the time, what is downloaded is wonky and Acrobat will not open it.

[However, this is while using Google Chrome as a browser. A working version is easy to download if you use the latest Firefox.]

If you still cannot download a working version from the site link above no matter how you try, email me and I will shoot you a copy – it is lo-rez and only about 6.5 megs.

Thank you and welcome to the ranks of the proofreaders… and no, I’m not paying anyone (except Paul). I cannot afford to. But if you find some serious errors, I will add your name to the credits page. Howzat?

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

Sweet looking tank... and another response to Paint It Pink!

2010-12-14T20:09:00.000-08:00

Draconis Combine's Katana

Hello! It has been another three weeks since our last update. Here is what’s happening:

- Paul Skowronek – gave me his PayPal account and a bill for $57 dollars. He has completed editing another five writeups for the Draconis Combine and is working on seven more at the time of this writing.

- Lee Madison has been working on the background for the White Knight. In addition to that, he has added two-tone shading.

The Final White Knight

Our layout man Bill is working on the layouts. I should be able to get something from him this weekend.

- The HMV and HMAero files are still under construction. I should be done with them in a week or two.

- Stephen Huda has completed the Draconis Combine’s Katana. See the header image above. Really nice, Stephen!

- The Draconis Combine’s Nemera is ready to go.

Final Nemera

- Stephen Huda has begun work on the Federated Commonwealth’s Werefox family, starting with the Werefox Petain, a design which makes use of existing weapon stocks.

A Response to Paint It Pink’s Second Blog Post on Uncool Rules: Battletech 2.3: The Battletech Reader

This post is going to be a response to the one made over on Paint-It-Pink’s blog. Linky:

http://panther6actual.blogspot.com/2010/12/battletech-23-battletech-reader_04.html

Even Bigger 'Mechs

Steve said: "There are rule sets out there cobbled together to allow larger ‘Mechs and other machines. But reality (such as it exists in BT) in the form of the in-universe flavor the writers want prevents this from becoming canon. Also, there is the acknowledgment by many players (including myself) that a machine much over 100 tons becomes little more than a slow-moving pillbox. We have no shortage of ponderous gun platforms at 100 tons – why would a 200-ton machine be anything other than more of the same?" [big snip]

Pink replied: I mostly agree, but they already exist (Ares Colossus Class) from MW:DA and sometimes one has to make the most of things as they come. While all you point are valid, the truth is that CGL can't limit what players choose to field, only players can do that. The attempt to control the shape of Battletech through the use of canon designs only works if the players buy into it. I've never bought into canon as the only one true word of Battletech. IMO trying to control the background setting is doomed to failure.

I see the universe canon code more as "guidelines", if you savvy?

Steve’s Reply: What players choose to field is going to be limited not by what the company provides in the way of ‘canon’ designs, but what the rules support. Whether or not you like the idea of the company restricting designs to a range of 20-100 tons, that is what they’ve written the rules to produce. That is what constitutes ‘canon’, after all – what will work within the provided rules and has the company’s blessing. I admit that the company’s blessing ain’t what it used to be, but it is their product and most folks I know will not start churning out 400 ton machines just because they found a nifty set of add-on rules for it out on the net.

And with good reason. First, the game has been tweaked and balanced to accommodate ‘Mechs and other machines of the current tonnage range. To introduce new machines is not a matter of adding a few more tables to the back of the rulebook. The new sizes will affect the game in myriad ways that most of us won’t be able to understand at first. If ever. It may even render certain weapons types permanently obsolete in the era where such monsters exist.

Second, who wants to allow such a beast in a game that is supposed to be over in hours? Has anyone calculated the amount of armor on that thing? It’s sure to be a lot. I don’t want to spend an afternoon trying to beat through it.

The Ares is interesting and yes, cool, but only time will tell whether or not there will be rules to permit such a machine. What function could the Ares possibly have that cannot be done by existing quads and bipeds? I will admit, it looks cool. Until you see it moving, that is. Horribly slow. I wonder if they are even going to bother with a set of rules for what is, admittedly, the only example of a +100 ton machine in the game – and which came from a spin-off game at that. It sets a precedent for something quite unpleasant to consider – the complete overhaul of a good portion of the TW rules. And once a foot has been wedged in that door, only God knows how and when they’ll get it shut again.

Finally, controlling the background setting of BattleTech is what keeps it BattleTech and also something they can put up for sale in the shops. Would you have them hand everything over to us (ugh!) fanfic writers? We’re a pretty shady lot. Someone has to set the limits, after all. Why not the folks who have the license and practically invented the game as we know it?

Quad 'Mechs

Steve said: "I think advanced rules already allow for a turret in a quad ‘Mech. I have used HMP to make them. The loss of internal space in a quad’s legs is somewhat mitigated by the fact that they are permitted to carry armor equivalent to a bipedal ‘Mech that is ten tons heavier... Neither is their ability to fire in a hull-down position behind Level One terrain,... That’s four out of twelve hit locations that are essentially ignored and that is the same as a LOT of extra armor!"... To put them in a position where they enjoy not only the hull-down ability and the extra armor, but all of the advantages of a bipedal ‘Mech as regards field of fire is to negate any real difference at all... [lots of snippage]

Pink replied: Yes but, the construction rules are clunky, and IMO could have been phrased in such a way as to make them conceptually easier to stat up designs that look like quad mechs with center torso turrets e.g: unseen Goliath. I also want six leg designs for a Desert Gunner from Dougram, or a quad with an upper body and arms. I'm not interested in super munch, but I am interested in look and feel.

To do this one needs a slightly redesigned record sheet, and the ability to move engines and gyros etc around the center and side torsos. That's all I'm asking for. More flexibility.

Steve’s Reply: I would like to see the construction rules for quads phrased in a less clunky way. You’ve got a good deal of experience in this field – why not generate some of your own based on the Tech Manual?

I think that the idea behind leaving turrets off the standard quad is intentional. It is in the interest of game balance, which I mentioned before.

Six legs – visually, quite impressive, but what effect in the game? Why would more legs help? We could ask ‘where do more legs help in nature’ but hexapods in nature are very small and do things on a scale a ‘Mech would never be able to duplicate – or, so far as I can see, be required to. I can see it in a movie or an anime series where the Rule of Cool is king. But translating it to a game where physics are paid a little more than lip service (not much more, I grant you), it just won’t wash.

The Centauroid ‘Mech is another product of the Rule of Cool. However, it too is a hexapod and furthermore, based on a concept which is derived from a writer’s metaphor for the fusion of man’s Reason and Animal Nature. Separated so far from its roots, all the idea has is visual appeal – significant, to be sure. But I cannot think of anything, even a ProtoMech, which would benefit from that body plan in terms that would be meaningful in BattleTech. In GURPS, or AD&D, yes. BattleTech, no.

Moving the engine, gyros and such inside a BattleMech would, I believe, break some fundamental rules in the game. I am not talking about written rules, of course, but rather the unwritten rules which always place the guts in the center of the ‘Mech. This is supposedly to protect them, and the area does have a lot of armor - but so do legs. There is something about the game’s insistence on placing the goodies in a location represented by a ‘7’ that says to me there is more going on there at the game’s structural level than meets the eye. A ‘7’ is the most commonly rolled number on two six-sided dice.

Some kind of balance is kept on the tabletop by this arrangement, I don’t understand it and as a consequence, I am loathe to screw with it. There is no telling what will happen, good or ill. Mayhap Mr. Eastwood could look into this?

Flexibility is fine, but the more detail you have, the more things slow down. I am not sure the addition would be worth the eventual cost. There’s a break-even point and I believe the game’s designers know where it is better than I do.

Breaking the Game with TarComps

Steve said: "You flummoxed me here – earlier, you wanted the option of heavier machines that for most practical purposes are designed to get to the area of operations and... sit and shoot... Targeting computers take up tonnage, are tied into all weapons and grant only a +1 to hit. Are you going to nix precision rounds for the autocannons as well? After all, they negate up to 2 points of movement modifier on their chosen target. Ma’am, those rounds are the best reason anyone would use the AC/10. Which is it to be?" [some snippage]

Pink replied: Can't have you all flummoxed now. Okay, here's the thing. Slow assaults moving 2/3mps per turn are sitting ducks to fast light mechs, which IMO is a good balance for the game. Anything that makes it easier to hit has consequences out of all proportion to the on the face of it bonus. For example, using weapons giving a minus two to hit bonus has effectively made the pilot an elite 2 gunner. That is a big bonus.

My proposal is that targeting computers allow a player to re-roll one die, and the minus two weapons allow a player to re-roll both dice. Only once per weapon per turn of course.

Steve’s reply: Slow moving assaults move slowly because they are armored out the ying-yang and have a significant warload. One thing proponents of sabre dancing (the practice of a lighter, faster ‘Mech ducking in and ‘slashing’ with weapons as it runs past the heavier opponent) do not tell you is that the sabre dancer nearly always ends up a ragged mess. It’s not hard to see why.

The target is nearly always stationary – after all, movement gives it no advantage in combat. Stationary opponents automatically gain an effective –2 bonus against targets that are running as a ‘Mech that stands still does not have a movement modifier to add to it’s own gunnery – and the opposing pilot DOES have to take his own running movement into account.

Furthermore, the lighter machine’s warload is not likely to hit hard enough to match that of the stationary target – who, even when hitting less often, hits much harder with guns only a machine of his size can carry – and usually in quantity.

Finally, the lighter fast ‘Mech is nearly always much more lightly armored. The hits from those big weapons that do land are going to get through pretty fast.

Yes, the big stationary pillbox can use a tarcomp to tip the balance. Many do. However, not many pack pulse weapons and the reason is simple – they don’t move fast enough to compensate for the shorter range. Now that light, fast ‘Mech? It practically begs for pulse weapons, as it needs something to offset the penalty for running with the throttle slammed forward all the time. And a lot of them have such weapons.

Die re-rolls replacing gunnery bonuses? If you must. But the one is designed to work with the existing method for determining target locks in BattleTech. The other is something I might expect to find in the MW:DA game – where such a mechanic is more fitting. In any case, how will you translate the ability of the targeting computer to select a given location – at a +3 to hit – and slam it with every direct fire weapon that makes the to-hit roll?

Electronic Countermeasures, Sensors, Networks a Waste of Time

Steve said: "I have never played in a double-blind game, so for me the Beagle and ECCM are things which rightly should exist but which are not necessarily critical assets when playing at the local game shop. That said… I have equipped several of the machines in our TRO with ECM for the express purpose of ECCM, because when it DOES affect my local game, the impact is phenomenal." [snip again like we did last summer]

Pink replied: I agree, these things have to exist. They are just a pain in the ass, because IMO such things as ECM, ECCM and Beagle probe should be standard on every mech, not additions that take away from the combat effectiveness of the mech itself. YMMV, and there is little that can be done about it either, so I put up with the stuff for the time it can serve a purpose.

Steve’s Reply: If they were standard on every ‘Mech, THAT would be a pain in the tuckus. Can you imagine trying to figure out the effective ECM bubble for every machine? When would C3 ever be effective? When could you field hidden units?

The one thing about the game that I think really reflects how much electronics are packed into the average machine is this: all players, at all times, can see what units are on the field of combat. They can identify them, determine their state of damage and furthermore, know exactly where every machine is – friend or foe - even if it is behind cover. Unless the unit is specifically Hidden or the game is Double Blind, we all take this privilege for granted.

I see the ECM, ECCM, Beagle, etc as just specialized gear designed to get around unusual starting conditions or to counter special link systems – such as C3. I recall in one of my long-ago blog posts ranting about this very thing – a C3 network, properly deployed, is horrifically effective against unprepared opponents and a pernicious pain in the tuckus to those in the know. Would you deny us the one piece of gear designed to combat it until such time as all machines can boast of having ECM?

Gentlemen Do Not Fight With Anything But Ranged Weapons & Their Bare Hands

Steve said: "Given that most ‘Mechs repeat the human form in large, it seems to me nothing is more natural than two ‘Mechs facing off against each other with swords and such. How is that not cool? Several million avid fans of the Solaris matches would beg to differ."

Pink replied: Ah but, what happens on Solaris stays on Solaris. Carrying a dead weight around that can only be used close up and personal, is IMO (and Greyson Death Carlyle) a waste of the opportunity to carry something more useful; like armour, heat sinks, or ranged weapons. ;-)

Steve’s reply: Ah, but the Solaris comment was supposed to elicit the understanding that physical weapons also appeal to the Rule of Cool – note their popularity with the gathered throngs – even when they are not strictly practical.

And I would take exception to even that: there is a place for hatchets and swords, and I should know, as I cut my piloting teeth on a Nightsky. The close-in fighter is quite common, and when facing slower machines in its own class, physical attacks are a nightmare. Especially if augmented with TSM – many are not. It’s not a good weapon for a slow machine, but you will often find them on machines that are fast for their size.

The idea is to stick to your own weight class and cash in with the beat stick. The damage done is as much as a kick, with the added bonus that you can strike any location, not just the legs. I have lost track of the number of ‘Mech pilots I have sent to the Great Hiring Hall in the Sky with my Nightsky’s hatchet buried in their cockpit.

If nothing else, the Clan’s disdain for such weapons should be reason enough to consider their use.

Final Comments...

Pink said: …However, I disagree with the 100-ton Limit rules, because in practise I have found that while the younger players will revel in the awesomeness of the Colossus mechs, in the long run they are very specialised units that exist really for the Rule of Cool.

Steve’s reply: I disagree. I don’t think the word ‘awesomeness’ exists. ;) Younger players might revel in the sheer awesome (it is a noun here) of the Colossus, but even the Rule of Cool won’t convince the other players to let them pilot one.

One More Thing…

A reader commented on the utility of ProtoMechs in the game when combating ‘Mechs. I agree, they are one more way of taking down the big bruisers. But only one way, and not every Clan has them. I mentioned that a lance of flatbed trucks equipped with rockets could accomplish the same mission. Here is that truck:

And for comparison, a Point of ProtoMechs:

As you can see, the trucks are slightly lower in Battle Value and similarly armored; they pack quite a punch with their salvo. They don’t jump but at 190,00 c-bills per truck, you can buy four for the price of a single ProtoMech (890,000 c-bills) and still have change in your pocket to purchase more rockets for your surviving trucks.

[A caveat here: I saw the price listed on the ProtoMech construction table, but don’t know if it is just for one unit or all five. Considering the fusion engine, I am going with just one].

Just two trucks confronting a BattleMech at close range bring ten 15-tube launchers to bear. A ‘Mech pilot will ignore that at his peril. An entire lance of these trucks? Something is going to get broken. You might lose a truck – you will definitely put a hurt on that ‘Mech.

Thanks for stopping by!

Steve

More New Artwork... and a Reponse to Paint It Pink!

2010-11-29T19:47:00.000-08:00

Greetings. It has been about three weeks since our last update. That is about right, given the rate I am paying and the response time from some of the artists / editors. Here is what’s happening:

- Paul Skowronek – spotty communications but we have reached an agreement. Now if he could only get that PayPal account up and running. I want to give you money, Paul, but I have nowhere to send it.

- Lee Madison finally responded and came up with this, the latest iteration of the White Knight.

- Our layout man Bill has had several things come up, mostly family-related. He has been busy with the holidays so no work has been done outside of some of the basic stuff I showed you in the previous blog post. I still have the page count as accurate and we are still massaging the images as well as the overall look and feel of the pages themselves.

One of the important things is the font size and font alignment. As some of you may have noticed, there was no real attempt to proofread the prototype we showed you. Aligning the text is very important and so far, Bill has been doing it by hand. He’s in a hurry and that ain’t good. I am going to take advantage of his down time and see if I cannot get InDesign to let us format the text in the document so all we have to do is drop the text in and it does the justifying automatically.

- Kenneth Schmidt is an intrepid user of Solaris Skunk Works and has done the data entry for the ‘Mechs, so we will provide those along with the HMP files for each machine. Unfortunately, SSW does not provide for vehicles of any sort, but you’ll still have their HMP versions available along with the Record Sheet PDF.

- The HMP files themselves have all been entered. Along the way I found a few issues and tweaked one or two designs in order to comply with their original intent. The writeups were modified accordingly.

- The HMV and HMAero files are still pending. They are time-intensive, as I do not have all the data in this computer. I have to call up the PDF and then make sure what I do have in HMV matches perfectly. Otherwise, I have to work split-screen, creating the HMV file from the PDF. And it’s fricken’ cold out there… in fact, my fingers don’t last long at 28 degrees F.

- Stephen Huda has completed the Werewolf VTOL for the Outworlds Alliance and is hard at work on the Draconis Combine’s Katana.

- The Draconis Combine’s Nemera had some late-breaking issues, mostly to do with perspective. I have sent it back to Chris Seymour for correction.

- The Taurian Concordat’s Auroch armored personnel carrier is finished. Good job, Karl!

- The Panzerfaust is complete. Payment to be rendered by Friday, pending a working PayPal address.

- Stephen Huda has also agreed to take on the Federated Commonwealth’s Werefox family, six vehicles which share a common chassis but which are not Omni vehicles.

- Ian is still working on the Tomahawk. Due to his workload on other projects, I have decided to pass the commission for this piece on to Eric Ou, who has time to do this and one other piece. He has already generated a couple of sketches which look very good and they will form the basis of the two vehicles

A Response to Paint It Pink’s Blog Post “BattleTech 2.1: Uncool Rules”

Some of you who have read PaintItPink’s blog (and who among the discerning has not?) noticed I took exception to a few of the items she listed under ‘uncool rules’. My initial remark:

Steven Satak said...

Oh, I am SO going to comment on this at length. But not here in the comments section, because I would run out of room.

The people at CGL are making a wargame that dips into fantasy. Their attempts to keep the wargame aspect under control are as impressive as their effort to include the fantastic. The two are at constant war with each other and with the current state of the art in the real world.

That they even attempt it, repeatedly, and market the result as successfully as they do, is simply astounding.

Her response was thus:

Steven S.: Wow, a post that has turned you into a Ra-Ra CGL fan boy! ;-) Looking forward to your piece in due course.

All right, the woman has called me out and I have to respond. I simply have to.

First, let me clear the air. I am a BT fanboy, not a CGL fanboy. They had me for a while and then they lost me – chalk it up to unpaid writers and three quarters of a million smackers gone missing at the ATM. I like the game and the fictional universe a lot, but the people who head the company that makes it? No way. I’ve had my rants on this topic and will let that be.

Nevertheless, I stand by my ra-ra because it is, frankly, justified. They have a hard row to hoe and they have done it against all odds (even the ones they have brought upon themselves). Not always gracefully, not to everyone’s satisfaction, but they keep at it. Three years on my part of writing, organizing art and wrassling with the problems involved in making a BT publication which is the equal of the company’s own work has taught me one thing – it ain’t easy. I don’t care for Herb personally, and you know what I think of some of the others. But by Hades, they do the best they can.

That said, let’s move on.

Pink said:

“Being an Old School Player of Battletech, what sold me on the game was the fact that it would allow me to simulate the action sequences I saw in Japanese SF anime giant mecha show, which were/are cool. So, using the concept of the "Rule of Cool", here are the rules in Battletech that I think are not cool. “

Ammo Explosion Rules

1. Ammo explosion rules, and the various CASE rules, are so clunky as to be the first thing everyone I know house rules, so not cool. In fact the ammo explosion rules are a classic example of a broken rule in Battletech, which is amply illustrated in the explosion of one ton of machine gun ammo equals 200 points of internal damage. My inclination is that an ammo hit equals the damage of the ammo. For example machine gun ammo would be two points, LRM 20 would be 20 points. Internal damage is always bad, but this plays far more reasonably (fun & cool), and would remove a lot of arguments for not carrying auto-cannons etc.

I agree with this as far as ammo explosion is concerned. I never did like the idea that a single bin of machine gun rounds could gut an otherwise untouched ‘Mech. It made carrying machine guns a serious hazard and one that tends to force people away from machines that are specifically designed for anti-personnel missions. Unfortunately, this is one mission which practically begs for ‘Mechs, as they are for all practical purposes giant men, with all the advantages of the human form as regards terrain. Despite that, the ammo explosion rules as they stand make a man-hunting ‘Mech a positive liability and most folks I know would rather avoid using them for that reason alone. You never see a tank blowing up from such a hit – why a ‘Mech?

I have never seen a house rule such as the one you list; it is a good house rule and I admit my experience is limited. Perhaps I will suggest it next time I game.

Even Bigger 'Mechs

2. Not allowing mechs larger than 100 tons is so not cool. Giant stompy robots are cool. Bigger giant stompy robots have even more cool. Cool is good, rules that get in the way of cool are not good. Of course the reason these rules have never been codified is that there are some flaws in the engine table when they arbitarily shifted the mid-range engines power to weight ratios. As for the record sheets, again these can be adjusted as there is nothing intrinsically stopping one from doing so.

There are rule sets out there cobbled together to allow larger ‘Mechs and other machines. But reality (such as it exists in BT) in the form of the in-universe flavor the writers want prevents this from becoming canon. Also, there is the acknowledgement by many players (including myself) that a machine much over 100 tons becomes little more than a slow-moving pillbox. We have no shortage of ponderous gun platforms at 100 tons – why would a 200-ton machine be anything other than more of the same?

Over 100 tons, you lose some of the advantages of the human form and the differences between a 200-ton ‘Mech and a 200-ton tank become moot. Further, where do you stop? The rules would have to be modified to account for those larger machines and they are complex enough as it is. The revision of rules has to stop sometime or you would never get the work to market. And soon enough, you’d have games where no one fields anything lower than a 150-ton ‘Mech.

Can you imagine how slow the game would be if you had to plow through four or five hundred points of armor to take down a ‘Mech? Even then, you would still not please everyone – eventually there would be players calling for rules that permitted 400-ton ‘Mechs, or even 1000-ton ‘Mechs. Finally, how would you transport such a behemoth?

No. I don’t believe the additional quality you would bring to the game would be worth the man-years required to shoe-horn it into the existing setting. And I don’t believe it would make for a better game on the tabletop, either.

I once called the fuzzy line between what ‘Mechs do and what infantry do the ‘30-meter Limit’. Once you begin trying to play BattleTech inside that single hex, the rules break down – and fast. You are effectively in RPG territory. You can’t have it both ways, though the writers and designers have worked hard to make it at least somewhat possible. I strongly believe that there is an upper limit to the game’s resolution as well, one I call the ‘100-ton Limit’. Once you start playing above that limit, you are in BattleForce territory, and again, the BT rules break down pretty fast.

Quad 'Mechs

3. The quad mechs rules in Battletch are so not cool. Quads are cool, quads with a torso and arms are cool, quads with a torso and a body with four arms are cool. Tripods with, or without arms are cool. Six legged mechs with turrets are cool. Battletech is about the rule of cool. Again the rules for having quads that can torso twist, or not (think choice of hand actuators etc for Rifleman etc) is relatively trivial. Record sheets can be adjusted so that quad mech legs are treated like biped arms with two sets of internal spaces. Allowing turrets for quads as their version of the built in torso twist. It's all cool.

I think advanced rules already allow for a turret in a quad ‘Mech. I have used HMP to make them. The loss of internal space in a quad’s legs is somewhat mitigated by the fact that they are permitted to carry armor equivalent to a bipedal ‘Mech that is ten tons heavier. That’s nothing to sneeze at. Neither is their ability to fire in a hull-down position behind Level One terrain, effectively negating all incoming hits to the legs fore and aft. That’s four out of twelve hit locations that are essentially ignored and that is the same as a LOT of extra armor!

What do you want? The quads would not even be there except for the Rule of Cool, and the latest set of rules tries very hard to make an unlikely arrangement as practical as possible. To put them in a position where they enjoy not only the hull-down ability and the extra armor, but all of the advantages of a bipedal ‘Mech as regards field of fire is to negate any real difference at all. Cool is great, but we’ve got a game to run.

One Shot SRM, MRM, LRM launchers...

4. One-Shot Launchers (SRM, MRM, LRM) rules are a complete waste of time, so again not cool. My reading of the rocket launcher rules suggests that the fix is in, but the will to remove useless stuff is lacking. I can see from an RPG perspective that one-shot launchers may offer more in-character role-play opportunities, but for Battletech the boardgame, not so much.

No arguments here. I would expect such devices on vehicles, but not on a ‘Mech. Other than a drastic reduction in weight (and I don’t really see that), the only advantage would be to allow the use of special ammunition. And who wants a launcher that can only plant a single minefield?

Breaking the Game with Tarcomps

5. Rules that break the basic premise of the game, which for me is epitomised by the basic rule of thumb that faster machines are harder to hit. So for me this means targeting computers, pulse lasers and any other clunky rules where the rules make it an advantage to sit and shoot, rather than fire an manoeuvre have to go, as they are just not cool.

You flummoxed me here – earlier, you wanted the option of heavier machines that for most practical purposes are designed to get to the area of operations and... sit and shoot. A 135-ton 2/3 ‘Mech is not the epitome of maneuver.

Yet you appear to have an issue with weapons that give additional advantage to that tactical choice – this, despite the fact that pulse weapons are quite limited in range. Targeting computers take up tonnage, are tied into all weapons and grant only a +1 to hit. Are you going to nix precision rounds for the autocannons as well? After all, they negate up to 2 points of movement modifier on their chosen target. Ma’am, those rounds are the best reason anyone would use the AC/10. Which is it to be?

Armor Variants a Waste of Time

6. The additional armour rules for stealth, hardened etc. are great for the RPG, but are a total waste of time for the boardgame, too much detail for very little added play value. So again just not cool.

I have seen stealth armor used and mis-used. Hardened armor is a very great advance for machines which are small and carry very little protection. Furthermore, to be able to prevent a headcap is considered a good thing by most of the players I know. Regardless, I have seen very little of these options used except in games where the opposing forces have them due to House choice. Chalk that up to complexity, or just that no one can figure out how to get the most from a stealthed design – like rocket launchers, they add flavor and have their role, albeit a minor one, in the overall game. How is that not cool?

Electronic Countermeasures, Sensors, Networks a Waste of Time

7. All the electronic rules covering things like ECM/ECCM, Beagle probes, C3 Boosted, Master & Slave, Remote Sensor Launcher rules are just so not cool. All of this stuff needs to be folded into the basic premise that Battlemechs are the ultimate warmachine of the future, and such detail should only rear its ugly head when playing the RPG.

I have never played in a double-blind game, so for me the Beagle and ECCM are things which rightly should exist but which are not necessarily critical assets when playing at the local game shop. That said… I have equipped several of the machines in our TRO with ECM for the express purpose of ECCM, because when it DOES affect my local game, the impact is phenomenal. In fact, one of our recent games turned on the fact that a Raven ‘Mech had a Beagle probe and discovered hidden units early on that were positioned very close to our front lines. With their cover blown, they became fodder for our big guns and much of the enemy’s plans were trashed on the spot. They were off-balanced for the rest of the game and that was VERY cool.

ProtoMechs Do Not Remind Us Enough of the Somme

8. Protomechs that look like animals. Not cool unless you are five and think Transformer Beast Wars is the best thing since sliced bread. Don't get me wrong, Beast Wars can be cool, but it is just so not Battletech, which is grey, unrelenting warfare over centuries, where the advances of the great powers on the interstellar scale look less than impressive. Remember the scene in the Black Adder Goes Forth episode Private Plane. The one where General Melchet shows Lt. George the one-to-one scale model of the 17 square feet of land that the last offensive captured from the Bosch. That's Battletech!

I haven’t much to say here other than that ProtoMechs are a rare sight in any case. Like LAMs they are neither fish nor fowl, and their best use is in actions against infantry – that is, below the Thirty Meter Limit. They rightly belong in the RPG setting, where they would be a positive terror to players. On the tabletop, assuming you ever get to see them, they do not amount to much besides adding flavor. And animal forms will do that as well as any other.

Gentlemen Do Not Fight With Anything but

Ranged Weapons and Their Bare Hands

9. Melee weapons on mechs, except on industrials, and even then they should be field expedient and appropriate to the task of the mech. Hate hatchets, hate swords, and maces even more. This is Battletech not WH40K. Not cool.

Given that most ‘Mechs repeat the human form in large, it seems to me nothing is more natural than two ‘Mechs facing off against each other with swords and such. How is that not cool? Several million avid fans of the Solaris matches would beg to differ.

Double Heat Sinks Do Not Have Enough Drawbacks

- Make Them Explode, Too

10. Double heat sinks rules have no down sides. Not cool. I rather like the suggestion made on the CBT forums that when damaged that they could cause a critical hit on the usual 8+ on 2D6.

Now THAT is an interesting house rule and one I’d not heard of before. I will suggest it next time I play.

Weapons Ranges are Explained in an Uncool Way

11. The way that the weapon ranges are explained are dumb. The way the rules explain extreme and line-of-sight are so not cool. The rules as written tie the game into unnecessary knots.

It’s a tabletop game, meant to reduce ‘real world’ combat into something you can begin and finish in about six hours, give or take. It has to fit on the table. The armor has to be beaten off the machines to get at the fiddly bits inside – how realistic is that? I don’t know if the ranges as explained in the fluff make any sense or not – it’s dipping into that Thirty-Meter Limit and the rulings have to stop somewhere. I have not yet had any of the games I’ve played ‘tied into knots’ over this (other things, yes). So this might just be a case of an imperfect mesh between rules quantified for a quick game and their in-universe justification. I think justifying it is a mistake, but they’ve done it and thus far, it hasn’t caused my gaming group any heartburn.

Infantry Are Not Handled Well in a Game

Where Giant Stompy Robots Are the Main Focus

12. Infantry organisation rules. One mech, or vehicle equals a squad, and 3 to 6 squads equals a platoon. Why oh why oh why then make infantry based around platoons when every unit is equal to a squad. Then you can allow platoons of infantry to be created organically by choosign the number of squads in them as appropriate.

Ah, but now we’re going into WH:40K territory. Or are we? I admit, the equivalents are a bit sketchy, but again, when you are dealing with something that fits entirely inside a single hex, the rules begin to break down. More gracefully in this case than most, because the designers tried to work it out, but only we grognards seem to have an issue with it on a playing basis – possibly because we know too much about how real-world units work.

Rules Supporting My Flavor of the Game Are All That is Needed.

13. Anything that adds extra details needs to go into the RPG side of the game where it belongs. Battletech needs to be streamlined, fast and sexy, because that is cool. At the moment Battletech is a fat bloater who waddles from place to another, and that is not cool.

This comes from trying to appeal to a wide range of players – serious wargamers as well as chips-and-soda casual players. No one group is going to be completely satisfied, and the designers knew that – which is why we have different levels of technology, different eras to play in, and the quick-start rules. It’s a fat bloater all right – but only if you look beyond the rules strictly required for the game you prefer. To the casual gamer, all those books and supplements are a waste of money. To the armchair general itching to get a battalion on the field, they are life itself.

Thanks for stopping by. And Ashley, please forgive me for being a snarky git.

Steve

Updates! And a taste of TRO!

2010-11-08T21:15:00.000-08:00

My apologies for the very late update…

The Editing Process… a Painful Decision

- Geoff and I have finished our work on the pieces that were edited by Paul Skowronek (skiltao). I sent another batch to Paul, along with an offer to pay for his work. Three measly dollars per edited piece is all I can manage, but the bill will eventually come to $300 by the time Paul is done. Not much, I admit, but I can afford it at the rate he has been turning them out – roughly a piece a day.

Pretty easy, huh? At the end of the week I send him $21 via PayPal and on to the next batch. The question is, will he do it for so little? And if he does, will he have time to do them?

For those of you with a mathematical bent, Paul has already edited approximately ten pieces gratis. That leaves 97 pieces. Divide that by five (an average - let’s be honest, he is not going to do seven pieces every week) and you have… twenty weeks before the writing is at a level where we can publish it without committing seppuku immediately afterwards.

That’s five months. And we’re being optimistic here, because holidays are coming and everybody has troubles – Paul will not be able to edit steady for five months. But who knows? Maybe he can do two pieces a day. Maybe. That would cut the time down to two, maybe three months.

We Need the Time

We need those months of time, brothers and sisters. I am slowly catching up on my bills, but we have at least four more pieces of art to complete – and if I can afford it, an overhaul of the Federated Commonwealth’s Werefox vehicles. They have all the charm of the Clan ‘Mech drawings in TRO:3050. That comes to at least six additional pieces.

All of this – the writing, the quality art, the solid designs – is pointless unless we have a layout man with imagination, experience with InDesign and an intimate knowledge of BattleTech. We had one, but he took sick and I have not heard from him in a long time.

Meanwhile, Bill Burt has jumped into InDesign. He began his schooling by creating a PDF-based magazine for his airsoft team. Not much to do with BattleTech, I admit, except that he IS using the InDesign for Dummies I bought, and his expertise has already been turned on our layout.

Here is an example of the work he has managed so far:

http://www.wartairsoft.com/TRO3063testsmall.pdf

PLEASE - I know there are errors. This is a prototype where we learn to look for, and fix, crap like that. Just take a look and watch as Bill's skills increase...

Production Values

We have hammered out several decisions since beginning the actual layout work…

First of all, we decided the following:

- There will not be a full color version in PDF and a separate black and white version with color plates for dead tree printing. We realized that a full color version would result in a ginormous file, something we would have to send through the mail on a CD-ROM. Bill proposed a low-rez version for quick download and the hi-rez for those of you who wanted it, but we shelved that. It is a lot of work for not much added value.

- We decided that the original black and white print model in high and lo-rez versions would probably be the best compromise – the lo-rez would be small enough to download (about 30 megs) and still remain suitable for viewing. The hi-rez version would be for those of you who want to print their own dead tree copy, and as mentioned before, we would simply mail it on a CD-ROM.

- Bill doesn’t like to lose the full color option, but there it is. He suggested instead that we provide a zipfile with all the Heavy Metal Pro files inside – something you users of HMP will appreciate. Remember, this TRO is filled with machines you will want to put on your gaming table. So getting around the chore of entering the readouts into HMP is a bonus.

Our apologies to all the users of Solaris Skunk Works, but we don’t have files ready for that just yet. Maybe if you volunteer to do the data entry, we will provide it.

Heap O' Labor

If this sounds like a lot of work, rest assured - it is. But getting things right is more important at this stage that getting it out fast. After all, it has been three years since I began this project.

As I write this, I am sitting at a little card table in the far corner of the Juanita High School Gym, right under the fight song banner. It is Sunday and my son and his drum instructor are part of a group of 350+ drummers who are attending Woodstick – the Big Beat 2010. This year, I had to pay $10 for the privilege of watching a bunch of drummers having fun. I am not a drummer; nor a wannabe, so it was a perfect time to catch up on my writing.

One other thing I will do is begin compiling the HMP files for Bill’s Master List. Most of them were designed (or their data was entered) on this computer, so it’s just a matter of working at it. I may collate them with the Record Sheet Annex PDF files to ensure I don’t overlook any variants.

[A wee bit into the process I began to bog down. It seems I do NOT have all the designs on my trusty laptop, and the data entry was eating up time. As I plowed through reloading the data from the PDF sheet into my HMP program, I realized the writeups would have to be loaded into the ‘Mech data sections for the HMP files to be complete. And the writeups are not finished yet…

No matter. I will continue to create the HMP files, and load the writeup/variant data in as it becomes available.]

What’s Cooking….

- Stephen Huda has is working on the Draconis Combine’s Katana and Revenant, as well as the Outworlds Alliance’s Werewolf VTOL. Depending on the cash available, I may ask him to do the last BattleMech, the Draconis Combine’s White Knight.

- Karl Olson is still working on the Taurian Concordat’s Auroch Infantry Fighting Vehicle.

- Chris Seymour has finished the Draconis Combine’s Nemera – refer to the image at the top of this blog entry

- Ian is working on the Tomahawk. (Still).

- Lee Madison has fallen out of touch again. AGAIN. I sent an ultimatum of sorts – either set a deadline (and fulfill it) or lose the commission. It’s a shame – he does good work – but this falling-silent-for-months-at-a-time shit has got to stop. I can’t work with it.

Seriously, we should have some new work rolling in soon. Everyone seemed to slow down in October, which is why you saw a distinct lack of updates.

- As you know, my wife’s dental work and subsequent replacement partial is costing us a bundle. I am trying to pay people as quickly as I can:

Karl Olson has been paid for his work.

Stephen Huda has been paid up to date.

Eric has been paid as well.

However, there is still some art that has been completed and whose payment is outstanding:

Interior plates - $70 remaining to David Dryburgh

Seven internal color renders - $48 remaining to Terrance Wong

Chris Seymour - $30 remaining

I am hoping to clear those up by next payday, possibly by the end of November.

Control Line!

I have been working on and off with the Jumpin’ Bean plane. I assembled the wing sections and sanded everything, but have not yet made the horizontal or vertical stabilizers.

Below is the Jumpin’ Bean wing in its stock form. I stood the fuselage up so you can get a feel for the plane’s proportions.

And this is what it looks like with the center section added and another engine laid out.

That is quite a bit more wing, and there will be a third fuselage in the center. In fact, I have been thinking about turning those two fuselage pieces into engine nacelles and extending the center fuselage back so that the plane resembles a British Mosquito more than a P-38.

You see, I am worried I will not be able to get the two-fuselage design to line up properly without a jig and I have no time or place to build one. But a single fuselage would be a snap and I would not have to worry about alignment beyond the basic 90 degree angles…

However, I will have to extend the stock fuselage back quite a way to correct the existing proportions and increase the horizontal stabilizer area. I will also have to add plywood stiffeners to the fuselage area around the trailing edge of the wing. That area is notorious on Jumpin’ Beans for snapping in a crash.

One more issue: the tanks are too long to fit between the existing ribs.

I will have to install another rib to mount the tank, then remove the original. Odd spacing, but I don’t think it will sacrifice much strength.

My First Attempt at an Illustrated Work

I was digging through the closet when I came across the artwork and layout for a little book I wrote for my son in 2000, ten years ago. John was five and Daddy had been gone for six months and I wanted to send him something that told a story about my ‘adventures’ while out at sea. It kept me busy and mostly sane.

Believe it or not, this actually happened on our ship. I build a box kite from sticks I made from cut-up mop handles (plenty of those around!) and plastic from the jet shop and tape from the post office. It was held together with epoxy (I worked in Hazmat at the time and there was no shortage) and the joints pinned for strength with thick copper wire from the Motor Rewind Shop.

I won second place (we were not able to get my kite into the air long enough to beat a guy who’d gotten out there an hour before) and still have the T-shirt prize I gave to my young son when I got home.

The artists were a quirky pair from the Print Shop. I paid them $5 per illustration, and they plugged away at it until they got bored, which was about halfway through the project. My mother thought the topic was too drawn out and complex for a five-year old, but what the hell? It accomplished its goals – I kept busy, learned a lesson about hiring artists (handy for this TRO) and learned how not to write for kids. Or so I hope.

Thanks for stopping by!

Steve

Progress and some Reminiscing...

2010-10-10T17:35:00.000-07:00

Welcome!

We are working on the writing as well as finishing up commission work.

- Daniel Cherng has given up his commission on the Draconis Combine’s Katana and I will pass it to Stephen Huda pending more money and his completion of the Pershing A-57.

- Stephen Huda has completed the Pershing A-57, as can be seen above.

- Karl Olson is working on the Taurian Concordat’s Auroch (formerly the Damocles) Infantry Fighting Vehicle. We have moved into the third draft as can be seen below:

- Ian has requested another round of suggestions for his draft of the Tomahawk. *Sigh*.

- Eric is busy with school work – he is going to pass the Werewolf commission on to Stephen Huda.

- Paul has completed editing all but two of the Capellan vehicle writeups.

- Geoff is working on filling in the gaps left by tighter editing of those writeups.

- Eric has come up with a template for our PDF, but we are still working the bugs out.

- Bill has ordered a copy of InDesign CS3 for Dummies; it was cheap off Amazon and should arrive in the next few days. It boils the process down and should go a long way towards Bill’s understanding and ability to work with InDesign. I am hoping to get a copy of InDesign for myself so I can help Bill.

- I am still saving and budgeting for the remainder of my wife’s dental work. It should be done by the end of this month. The art payments will resume after that.

- The following is a list of the people I owe money for art:

Interior plates - $70 remaining to David Dryburgh

Werewolf - $25 remaining to Eric Ou

Nemera – $30 remaining to Chris Seymour

Panzer X, San Ku Chu, Auroch, Centaurus - $60 left to pay to Karl Olson

Pershing - $30 remaining to Stephen Huda

Tomahawk – $25 left to Ian Stead

Seven internal color renders - $48 remaining to Terrance Wong

This is a total of $288. We’ll get there.

Old Dreams

A long time ago I was a member of a Star Trek club in the Seattle area. Or rather, I built things for them. I had been doing this for about six years, in Seattle, Hawaii and San Diego. My conclusion was that the fans wanted fancy stuff, but didn’t want to pay what it cost to make the things – never mind the labor or even a profit. Even in 1994, electronics were seen as disposable and the average fan didn’t want to pay top dollar for a Playmates Next Generation Tricorder which had been heavily modified to look like the real thing.

There were others like me, but they were fans and many of them were much more knowledgeable and skilled in electronics and building costume props. One of them was Dave Pinney, who built a sliding door that was powered by pneumatics and triggered by a pressure pad. He also built a console, Next Generation style, complete with graphics and a chair. The console was powered by pneumatics and swung out and in based on a signal from the seat. Here are a few pictures of his creation:

]

The graphics were printed on paper and sandwiched between two layers of glass. They were backlit by a string of white Christmas lights inside the console. Pretty clever! I told him I thought it would be great if the console actually did something. So – I devised a way of detecting the touch of a finger to the glass (via reflected IR) which filtered out florescent light flicker.

After substantial testing on the workbench, David refined my design and built a working prototype. I built the main circuit board based on that prototype. It cost over a hundred bucks just in parts. With its ten switches, we could have controlled a lot of stuff from that console. But ST fandom suffered a major collapse after the Next Generation show went off the air and the console was disassembled.

I tried to get it built about ten years later, in 2005. I had the console (still!) but no glass and someone else had the base and chair. And they were not going to pay me for my work, or fund the remaining electronics, and they were not going to give up their half of the project. It was the same old story – you pay for and build everything, Steve, and we’ll pat you on the back and play with it until it breaks. My half of the console eventually ended up in a Kitsap landfill, but I could not bear to part with the circuit board and its many unused components. As you can see, it represents a lot of work:

Each circuit was assembled by hand. The infrared sensors had to be proof against the flicker from flourescent lights and the random IR bouncing around out there, so we took the IR signal and fed it into a 741 Op Amp configured as a Schmitt trigger. Suitably cleaned up, the signal was then fed from the 741 into a 567 Tone Decoder, which would not respond unless the incoming signal was within a certain frequency band. We set the IR LED emitters to that frequency, of course. Once the 567 accepted the tone, it in turn sent a pulse to a 555 timer set to single shot mode. We could adjust the length of the final trigger pulse that way, so as to control several different types of transmitter, sound effects boards, or whatever.

On the way to working the bugs out of the prototype, Dave found an odd thing happening. He would tune the circuit so the 567 would recognize the incoming tone, get it to work repeatedly, then run the board from his workbench out to his living room to show to his girlfriend. Whereupon it stopped working! He would take it back to the bench, retune the board, take it back out and it would work. But once back on the workbench for more than ten minutes and it would stop working again.

Dave finally figured out that the strong halogen lamp he was using to light his workbench was heating up the capacitors used by the 567 to set its frequency window. When he took it away from the workbench, the capacitors cooled slightly and altered the recognized frequency! We ended up ordering special tantalum capacitors with zero temperature coefficient – that is, their value would not change with the temperature.

(I later figured out that this was the major stumbling block in my early attempts to create a LazerTag land mine which would set off Worlds of Wonder sensors for our North Seattle games in 1990).

Nowadays I would probably try something like the Next Gen console using a dedicated computer or a microcontroller (same thing), but the business of detecting the touch of a finger to a smooth surface would pose the same problem. I would use Plexiglas instead of glass. It doesn’t filter IR like glass does. You can project an IR beam through the side of the pane of Plexiglas and a touch of the finger to the Plexiglas would give a strong reflection to a sensor on the backside. However, a dedicated emitter for each sensor would be better.

But who would want such a thing?

Sad Relics of a Happy Past

I have two boxes out in the garage filled with Star Trek props I tinkered with. One holds the finished products, the other a small selection of Playmates ST toys that were the basis of my tinkering. I cannot imagine anyone wanting them now. They represent a lot of wasted money and time.

Oh, I tried to get the word out. When I realized few were able to do what I did, I decided to create my own tutorials. The biggest Seattle Star Trek fanclub at the time was founded on the ‘Mirror, Mirror’ episode of the Original Series and (at the time) called itself Imperial Starbase Seattle (ISS). It was run by a couple of fellows who are still around in various forms – Michael Montoure was one of them. I think they have a Facebook page up now. We had a falling-out in 1992 over publishing rights to a tutorial I’d written – the Chief Engineer’s Manual - and I was left to publish it on my own. I copied the cover style of the existing ISS publications as best I could and made twenty copies. I sold all but one, though I don’t really think anyone used them to make a single costume prop.

I continued to deal with the ISS’s satellite fan clubs, and that is when I met up with Dave Pinney. I continued to write tutorials for making electronic costume props (on an ISS BBS). Eventually I published those tutorials in one volume while making another for upgrading the NG Tricorder.

So far as I know, no one ever used them. Though they were written with the beginner in mind, they also assumed a few basic skills – using a VOM, soldering and reading a circuit diagram, or schematic. I have come to the conclusion over the years that 95% of the people out there who might have come in contact with this information never possessed any of these skills. Nor desired to. I gave up trying to get the word out in 1995 when a printed tutorial offering to teach you to upgrade Worlds of Wonder LazerTag guns fell flat on its face.

Nowadays, if the bug struck me, I would blog the hell out of it, as while those skills still do not appear to be common, I can reach a lot more people through the Internet.

Then again, maybe not. In all the years since, I have been installing electronic special effects in Warhammer:40K models and BattleTech displays. Only one person has ever asked me to help him make something similar:

And that was five years ago.

Control Line!

Here is the progress I have made so far on the Double Bean. As you can see, I joined the tanks together to make two larger units. I used some braided wire to bridge the gap in the center and installed some longer copper tubing to pick up the fuel. So far, so good. I also cut some thin plywood in the shape of the ribs in order to replace the two that will support and anchor the bellcrank.

Next up will be a stiff horizontal stabilizer and elevator, along with an extra vertical stabilizer and rudder. All the parts needed are just about finished. Soon it will be time to actually assemble the model. I will cut the rib location notches in the center section’s leading and trailing edges, and locate the horizontal stabilizer mounts accurately in the fuselage. I don’t want a warped wing or model!

Below is a 1964 Gilbert .11 Control line engine running for the first time in decades. It is turning a wood 7-3 propeller.

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

BattleTech Game Report and More TRO Art

2010-10-05T20:46:00.000-07:00

Howdy.

Weeeellll, we’re back with some additional stuff. Not as much as I’d hoped for, but the payments are slowly going out.

- Daniel Cherng has reported in as having returned from Utah and working on his commission. However, I have seen nothing of this continued work. We are close to dropping him as we can’t seem to get anything but promises out of him in a reasonable amount of time. Let’s face it – he’s had months and months to produce something for the same amount of money I pay to a fellow who turns out stellar work in a matter of days. Lee Madison is worth the wait – Mr. Cherng, not so much.

- And speaking of the man, Lee Madison has already checked in requesting details and parameters on the background work. I gave them to him, along with some samples of work done by other artists along similar lines. I don’t need photo realistic – that would be a waste of effort by the artist given the final setting. You’ve seen his prototype sketches for the White Knight. Expect more goodness in about a month.

- Seth Kurbound (Chris Seymour) has submitted a first draft of the Draconis Combine’s Nemera based on my requests and preferences. I am tweaking the image tonight, but as you can see, it is shaping up nicely even for a rough.

- Stephen Huda did an astounding 50+ pieces for Catalyst Game Labs’ TRO:3085. I had not guessed it was such a large number, but that explains the speed and excellence he brings to the table. The drafting table, that is – he has finished the Capellan Guandao and has started on another piece, the Federated Commonwealth’s Pershing A-57.

This machine carries a Johnston Mk II Sniper artillery cannon and effectively follows the lead of the Star League’s original Marksman, with some improvements. The main gun is turret mounted with a hull-mounted small pulse laser – and it is available in quantity, something that cannot be said of its predecessor, which is a carefully hoarded museum piece.

- Karl Olson is working on one remaining piece. He should have a rough draft ready in a few days.

- Eric Ou has had a computer crash and is tied up with schoolwork. He will be working on the Outworlds Alliance’s Werewolf when he has time.

I have had another emergency come up in the meantime – dental work for my wife, whose previous fillings came out and which requires pulling the offending tooth and updating her partial denture.

Meanwhile she is in a lot of pain.

The other option was a root canal ($1200) and a new crown ($600), neither of which I can afford even with dental insurance. We will be hard-pressed to afford even the elected procedure, and it will set art payments back a bit. I am going to concentrate on paying for what we have ordered and hold off on new commissions for the time being. There are only a few left in any case.

- Bill is still struggling with InDesign. I hope to locate a good tutorial for him as soon as possible.

BattleTech!

The game in Redmond was... interesting. Our opponents were a Daishi, two Thors, a Vulture and an Uller with three points of Elemental battle armor. Battle Values for both sides were identical. You have already seen what I drew up for our OpFor troops. We started with 3025 technology; short-ranged main guns, single heatsinks and slow machines.

CLICK ON IMAGES FOR CLOSE-UPS

Turn One

When the game was over (in about seven turns), we hadn’t lost a single machine and had notched our belts with the Daishi and the Uller, and had the Vulture on the ropes. Very much NOT what I was expecting.

Our opponents were the Ghost Bears and were operating under Zellbrigen Level One rules. This was a comparative disadvantage to them and in future games the OpFor will be 75% of the Clan forces. However…

Turn Two

Turn Three

Our opposing players were still thinking like Inner Sphere Mechwarriors and were quite passive. They were there specifically to earn Honor points in the pursuit of more effective machines and better combat skills. The Clan would not have won that battle in any case, but they could have gone out literally covered in glory if they had acted like haughty Clan Mechwarriors and simply gone for their targets with gusto.

Turn Four

Yes, we would have trashed them. But they would have taken several of our ‘Mechs with them and gained the Honor points in following strict Zell. Instead… we hemmed them into the corner of a single mapsheet and hammered away while they mostly stood still.

Turn Five

To be fair, the Uller got into the mix immediately, a Thor followed and the Vulture advanced to his doom. But no one accomplished their goal of destroying their opponent and the other Thor and that Daishi sat with their backs to the edge of the mapsheet nearly the entire game. I think they could have lost the battle and won Honor points, but instead they lost the battle – not having any apparent battle plan – and gained no Honor, or very little.

Close Combat

There were cries of foul from Turn Three, one directed at my choice of the four Hunchbacks. Apparently no one thought it reasonable to field a lance of these machines to act as a single unit. I believe it actually intimidated a few of the opposing players. I was right – a lance of ‘Mechs made up of a single type IS something not often seen on the gaming table. But not because the lance is an unusual formation, or because Hunchbacks are rare machines in the Draconis Combine.

Endgame

Another issue was the speed with which our forces closed. The original setup called for two mapsheets, with the OpFor placing its units anywhere on the second sheet. We chose the side closest to our opponents, knowing it would put us immediately in their sights but needing to close as fast as possible. We began with a flanking run on Turn One, getting into the Clan backfield and firing on the Daishi on Turn Two, faster than even I expected and a real shock to our foes.

They insisted we start further back next time. Unless their tactics improve, the outcome may still be the same.

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

A Little Exposition While We Await Developments...

2010-09-30T20:28:00.000-07:00

That is, I am going to talk about stuff that bugs me while I wait for the next load of art to roll in.

The piece above is the Capellan GuanDao Heavy Mobile Tactical Vehicle (HMTV). Done by Stephen Huda in such a short time I think the man actually reads minds.

He's hard-working, anyway.

Next time we'll have an after-battle action report! And some pictures!

Putting on My Andy Rooney

And now I’d like to take the time to address a few things that have been sticking in my head for a while. You might say they are sticking in my craw, but that would be as harsh as calling them rants, and they’re not really even that strong. No, these are just things I find a little disturbing, or odd, or objectionable.

Men In General Are Stupid and Married Men Are Infantile Idiots

Let’s start off on the right foot with the objectionable. I grew up in a family where Mom and Dad were there for my brothers and I nearly all the time. They’re still there; I suppose them being in Oregon while most of us boys are in Washington doesn’t really qualify as ‘being there’. But I know that if I call my Dad or Mom and ask for advice, the chances are pretty good I will get something sound from smart, wise people. Mom took care of us three boys for all our lives, and Dad? Dad put on Chief after seven years in the Navy, then went to college and became an officer – he retired as a Lt. Commander and I have always been impressed with his smarts, his education and his drive.

Now let’s step over to the land of radio advertising. I work in a small office, alongside people who are, for the most part, congenial and hard working. We all listen to the radio and the radio can be tuned to any of a dozen stations we get from inside the building. Some of the stations make you want to go get a rope and hang yourself after a while, so we really only have a few choices.

It doesn’t really matter because these stations all feature the same advertisers – Verizon, Chase Bank, Wells Fargo, Taco Time, American Express, Car Toys and so on. And these guys in turn seem to run a preponderance of commercials with two things in common. If the ad has a lead male who is single, more often than not he will act like a shallow frat boy: that is, doing stupid things at ridiculous expense for equally ridiculous reasons. If the ad has a lead male who is married, he will act like a complete idiot in front of his wife and kids. You can hear the children rolling their eyes, and wince as the wife sensibly takes charge, often at the expense of the fool she apparently married but does not respect.

Whenever I hear these ads, I cringe. Who are these ads aimed at? Women? I don’t know. Is this how they empower women these days? By painting Dad as an ignorant chump who is good for a paycheck and an occasional babysit? By portraying young men as airheaded testosterone-charged animals? If the radio advertiser ever reversed the roles of male and female and broadcast that, people would be up in arms.

My son says he’s seen this consistently in cartoons, especially the Simpsons, and it’s even to be found over at TV Tropes. So I know it’s not just Steve getting old and cranky. What a hell of a message to send to young boys and girls. Boys, because this is who they are supposed to follow and pattern on, and girls because their relationship with their father is where they learn to trust men.

Since when did men in general and fathers in particular earn that kind of treatment from the ad agencies?

Martin Luther once compared the human race to a drunk riding a horse – once he has fallen off the left side, he takes such exaggerated caution not to do so again that he ends up falling off the right side. I think that is where we are now with respect to portraying the sexes in advertising. ‘Father Knows Best’ was once a wry quip, making the point that no one is really always right while gently reminding us that in a family someone has to have the deciding vote. Now it appears ‘Father Is Never Right’ to the point of scorn.

The Same Old Songs

Next up is a little tidbit, a mere nothing on the scale of things, but something which is a bit objectionable. Have you noticed that many of the radio stations today play music from thirty to forty years back? When I was a boy back in the late seventies, I would grind my teeth as I was forced to listen to Jay and the Americans alongside Paul Anka, Englebert Humperdink and other gems from the Lawrence Welk era. That is, the late fifties to early sixties. But that was only reaching back twenty years at most. You almost never heard the big bands, although their tunes still lingered on in various formats (mostly muzak).

Now we are forced – and I use this word deliberately – to listen to music from our own youth over and over and over. I used to like Boston and AC/DC and Rush and Led Zeppelin. Now I find myself grinding my teeth all over again. I have heard these songs for forty years, for pity’s sake. How about something new? But the stations – there are several in our area – cannot seem to get past playing Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band at least twice a day.

I realize Coheed and Cambria, Linkin Park, Muse, Stone Temple Pilots, Sean Kingston and Justin Beiber are not to everyone’s taste. But music exclusively from the 1970s and 1980s top forty lists? Is that really all people of my age listen to anymore? It’s like a cross between a clown car and a treadmill. I’m getting sick of hearing the ‘oldies’, not because they’re old or because they’re bad, but because that’s all the sonsofbitches ever seem to play.

Kids Don’t Build Stuff Anymore

Here is another piece I file in the ‘disturbing’ pile. Disturbing to me personally, that is. Some of you folks probably noticed that games in general, and games involving pencils and paper in particular, are on a downward slide - if indeed they have not already begun circling the drain.

These are not the only things in decline among our nascent youth.

Take plastic models, for example. When I was young, that was what you got for Christmas if you were a good kid (and sometimes even if you were not). That and cool toys like Johnny Astro. But my generation was the last to really get into them. The generation after mine? Born in 1980, they grew up to Commodore 64s, Nintendo 8-bit machines and a gradual decline in ‘do-it-yourself’ as technology steadily became more and more disposable. By the time the generation after mine – call them Generation Y – reached their teen years, the Motorola Star-Tac was the cool phone to have (it was the Razor of its time, or for you youngsters, the I-Pad).

But by that time (1993), all the Commodore magazines had vanished from the shelf. No one wanted the bother of programming their own computer, and as computers steadily increased in power and complexity, this became impossible. Gone too were 90% of the Electronics Now-style magazines dealing with hobby electronics – you know, where you took some parts and actually built shit.

Then came the Internet.

And where were those beloved plastic models? Increasingly, they were expensive limited runs appealing to narrow-interest groups. Those that weren’t, were shopped to – well, guys my age in their mid-30s. And the average age is climbing. I recently asked a hobby shop owner in our area – the only such shop on the Kitsap Peninsula – exactly who bought those models he had in such quantity. He replied “mostly guys in their 40s and 50s”.

It goes on. Control line flying is something you have to explain to kids now, because all they have ever known is radio control. Built-up wood kits for radio control airplanes have to be explained as well, because all the youngsters have ever known is ARF (almost ready to fly) planes, cars and boats. No one seems to see the building part as challenging or even a possible source of pleasure. My own son readily talks of the skills he has acquired in playing Halo Reach, or Modern Warfare 2. None of them appear to be related to building anything but a character on a TV screen.

Ask one of them to sit at a table and actually put a kit of a P-38 together. Or an F-14. Good luck with that! No one in my son’s demographic seems to have the patience for such things anymore – as if patience were the key, as if building the darned thing were a chore to be gotten over as quickly as possible. The models don’t even spark an interest in the real thing. There’s no desire to know what it was like to fight in one or anything else related to these machines or even the era when they were the pinnacle of technology.

Painting miniatures is another part of the hobby whose fans are getting old. Fantasy miniatures come pre-painted and so do miniatures for other games such as the discontinued Mechwarrior click-tech game. Painting your own would seem to be a big waste of time when the pleasures of building and shaping something yourself has been edited out of our culture. It didn’t sell enough stuff, so it had to go.

If our youth are not willing to take an interest in history – that is, the things that happened before their time - and their need for gratification as consumers is so strong they just can’t wait, who the hell among them is going to take up something as boring as writing? Or master the skills needed to illustrate a book? Or organize people who can do these things?

I do this TRO because I like the challenge of putting it together, manufacturing the parts from raw words and buying other parts from artists who have the talents I do not. Make no mistake, it is work. But it is also like a model, one whose components sometimes exist only as an outline on paper. I have as much fun researching the fictional universe in which BattleTech resides as I do adding to that fictional universe. I like shaping the parts, sanding here and tweaking there, until I have something which, like my control line airplane, will eventually fly.

When our youth are done with their games, when World of Warcraft and the texting phones and the abyss that is the Internet and social networking sites have become their past, what will they pass on to their kids? Who will build? Create? Invent? Someone tell me, please. I honestly don’t know.

Something Odd…

And now that I have had my monthly whine session, here is a tidbit I have had occasion to think on recently. Everyone will have heard by now of the retired Air Force personnel who have finally decided to come out with what they heard and saw thirty years ago regarding UFOs.

Or maybe not. I notice with some alarm that the whole thing appears to have been swept under the carpet by most of the media outlets. Interesting. You would think this would have a major impact, but it seems to be quietly slipping away.

Now I don’t know if there are aliens out there or not. I don’t know if they are paying mind to us or not. Many incidents since the exploding of the first atomic bomb have been reported. Many have been plausibly explained away as mundane events – but not all. The Valentich incident is one that sticks in my mind. Other events which have not been explained away share something in common with what happened over the Bass Straits – the observed vehicles, if that is what they are, do not appear to be bound by the laws of physics as we understand them.

What strikes me most though is the attitude of those commenting on this ‘coming out’ of otherwise-sober minded individuals. They portray them as curiously suffering from mass delusion, or hungry for attention, or victims of conspiracy theory, or any number of things. The blogosphere is rife with folks who go the other route, attacking the very idea that we should be significant enough for an alien culture’s attention.

The weird thing is that lots of these critics hold two apparently incompatible ideas up at the same time and don’t notice the forced dilemma. The first is that the aliens are so advanced and - well, alien - that they could not possibly hold an interest in primitives like us. Fair enough. The second is that they are after all just like us, right down to littering, for example, and if they were to come around, it would be with sirens going and an entrance that would put Hollywood to shame. Since we haven’t seen that, they must not exist. Fine. But which is it going to be? Are they aloof aliens that are morally and technologically superior or are they interstellar frat boys on a tear?

I think these retired Air Force people are telling the truth as best they know. What they say, stripped of the out-of-context quotes and silly buzzwords, jibes with what I have read in other publications – and not the UFO websites, either. It has a feel to it that, despite the spokesman’s personal opinion that ‘aliens are concerned with our nuclear arsenal’, rings true. Maybe they are looking in on us from time to time. Or testing our defenses. Or just warning us.

CS Lewis once wrote that if a star-faring culture that had broken the bonds of the speed of light ever encountered us, they would have to kill us or put us in quarantine. We have been broadcasting our intentions for the past eighty years, after all. And our intentions are not very good. If we ever broke the bonds of physics as it is now understood, we would still be doing wretched things to each other and anyone else we could find out there. Maybe those aliens know it. If Lewis was right, and we’re still here to talk about it, maybe we ARE in quarantine. And isn’t this what quarantine would look like?

BattleTech's Inner Sphere put in its place

In BattleTech men travel between the stars all the time. There are no aliens, but men have still not found a way to live in peace with other men for very long. I once wrote a BattleTech story based on this idea, a piece titled ‘Orbit’. Think what you will of the writing, but it took first place in a writing contest. The stories that followed were not nearly so well received, though I believe their writing was at least as good.

And that got me to thinking of other things which follow a similar pattern; namely, movies which were wildly popular when they came out. And when sequels made by the same producers and directors followed these films, the follow-ups were not nearly so successful. They lacked something the original had. In at least three examples, I like to think of that ‘something’ as a bit of the Truth.

Not a truth we see published in science periodicals, but something the audience almost instinctively recognizes, something that resonates through the movie. Something that is utterly lacking in the rest that follow, almost as if the scriptwriters themselves do not realize the quality of that ‘something’ they captured in the first film.

The examples? ‘The Sixth Sense’, ‘Men In Black’ and ‘The Matrix’.

I will not babble on at length as to what I thought was the particular Truth found in each of these movies, but they follow a pattern: something in them reflects the world as it really is, not as we might like it to be.

As for the alleged cover-up by the government of incidents related to mysterious flying objects? I think Tommy Lee Jones’ character said it best in the movie ‘Men In Black’. Will Smith’s character, ‘J’, has just shot at a tow truck that is towing away a van containing the Bug’s flying saucer. He successfully detaches the van, but does a lot of damage with his ‘Noisy Cricket’ in the process. ‘J’ is brought up short by his partner, ‘K’, played by Tommy Lee Jones….

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

‘K’: We do not discharge our weapons in view of the public!

‘J’: Man, we ain't got time for this cover-up bullshit! I don't know whether or not you've forgotten, but there's an Arquillian Battle Cruiser that's about to...

‘K’: There's always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet. The only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they do... not... know about it!

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

Personally? I’m not particular about the neuralizers, but I think this quote explains a lot.

Last But Certainly Not Least

Most of you reading this blog are adults. That said, is anyone out there getting sick of our culture of entitlement? You know, the one where everyone ‘deserves’ a home of their own, ‘deserves’ a high paying job, ‘deserves’ a nicer car and has a ‘right’ to health care?

When I was in the Navy, every few years they would send us off to a class called ‘NR&R’ or Navy Rights and Responsibilities. One of the things they taught was the difference between ‘rights’ and ‘privileges’. Rights were based on you being who you were – a sailor and a human being. Privileges were based on what you did and whether you’d earned them.

The interesting thing is that nowadays, a lot of folks I meet and some I am forced to listen to, speak almost exclusively in terms of ‘deserves’ and ‘rights’ when they are referring to things which are (or were) normally earned. For example, I have a right to equal opportunity for a college education. That does not mean I can afford it, or that I will ever be able to afford it. But if I can get up the money with hard work – that is, earn it – and achieve good grades in high school – again, by earning them - I should have the same chance to get into a college of my choice. It is a right of every American citizen.

What is the problem? Well, when you say someone ‘deserves’ something, you mean they should have it regardless of what kind of person they are or what they have done – or failed to do. Just being alive is enough. To argue that a person does not ‘deserve’ something, be it citizenship or free health care, is no longer a statement about their immigrant or financial status but rather an opinion you hold about them as a human being. You quickly get labeled ‘racist’, ‘homophobe’, ‘elitist’ or just a very mean person who hates people because they are poor. In other words, you are no longer working one end of an argument based on reason, facts and figures. Your position is now entirely based on ‘feelings’. Which of course, you can’t control.

Anyone can dismiss you after that, because we all know that irrational people can’t help saying those things. They are to be ignored as you would someone who argued against giving free puppies to everyone because he happens to have an abiding hatred for dogs.

We are at the point where radio announcers state that everyone ‘deserves’ a parking space downtown, or an education, or medical treatment. They don’t mean it in the sense that everyone should have equal access to those things, but rather that ‘access’ now consists of these things being granted for free, at little or no cost to the beneficiary. After all, they ‘deserve’ it. And they don’t have it. So we the rest of the people should be doing everything we can to give it to them.

Who pays for it? The rest of us. If we disagree with these sentiments, the response is to make what used to be a matter of personal choice into the law of the land. We should be happy to contribute at gunpoint; if we are not properly grateful, we ‘deserve’ the punishment of a higher tax rate. Either way, we pay.

Here is a free bit of advice. If you ever happen to hear someone using the phrase ‘you deserve…’ applied to anything concerning you personally – or if you ever hear the words ‘this is for your own good’…. grab your wallet and head for the nearest exit.

See you in about five days.

Steve

Art, BattleTech and Airplanes...

2010-09-23T17:46:00.000-07:00

Howdy, folks! We have more good new to pass on!

- Eric Ou is still working on the Urugan art and some other ‘stuff’. He is in school again, so no telling when exactly we should get the finished piece, but it should be soon.

- Bill Burt went and stirred up a nest of yellowjackets while cutting down firewood. No, really. But he is doing fine (despite seven stings) and is using the templates I sent him to get comfortable with the controls. What we really need is a copy of InDesign for Dummies®. Does anyone have a suggestion?

- Paul Skowronek still loves us and is still editing. He has just about finished the Capellan vehicles and I was right – they were in a bunch. Geoff and I have filled the gaps in the work Paul corrected with accurate Notables and some additional work on deployment. With the extra room, we’ve actually been able to go into some detail over stuff we had to gloss over previously.

- Ian Stead is recovered from his computer woes and is working on the Tomahawk. Below is what we have so far:

…but this IS a work in progress…

- Karl Olson has nearly finished the Centaurus armored car. Take a look at the fifth draft:

- Daniel Cherng has not reported in on the changes to the Katana. I will get with him tomorrow.

- Chris Duke is feeling poorly, but is still working on the Panzerfaust. I am going to take Bill’s recommendation and use the image of the Winter Panzerfaust for the cover of our Record Sheets Annex.

- Prdarkfox is having another go at the White Knight… I agreed to see what he could come up with. He is really very good if he has sufficient time.

- Lee Madison has responded with several emails nailing down the White Knight. He is also working on it [as you can see below] but has other projects as well, so I will have to be patient. He is adding backgrounds to the Ocelot and the Roland. I sent him a copy of the list of plastic models in my attic (350+!) and hopefully some of them will find a good home soon.

Lee's current work on the White Knight

- We have a new artist! Let’s extend a warm welcome to Stephen Huda! He did outstanding work for Catalyst Game Labs and their TRO:3085 and is currently working on the Lyran Kangaroo, a ‘Mech support vehicle. His work is at the top of this post!

- Chris Seymour has been paid (yay!) for the Montgomery II and is currently working on the Nemera, another piece which could use some polish. As you can see below, we are in the preliminary stages:

After selecting the features I wanted, I made some dimensional changes and came up with a machine that will serve:

I will be making a few payments this Friday – to all the artists who have been waiting, thank you very much for your patience and understanding. I have actually been mowing lawns in my off time in order to come up with the spare cash. I am still catching up on the water and electric bills. Thank you again for waiting on this.

BattleTech!

We have no airsoft games coming up, although Bill is now fit as a fiddle. Instead, I am going to play as a member of the OpFor (opposing forces) in a BattleTech game on 2 October 2010 over in Redmond, Washington. It is a bit of a drive and there is no guarantee my son can go (I believe he has another track meet) and Bill is going to spend Saturday hacking new trails at the local airsoft playing field. But we have come up with the forces we will command to fight the scurvy invading Clan scum.

Here is the list of our forces. They are all from the 3025 era, and against the superior Clan technology, they will have their work cut out for them. Our advantage? We have good armor, good strategy (at least I hope so) and numbers (the players will field six machines and three points of Elemental battle armor).

Recommended OpFor Composition for 2 October 2010 –

Draconis Combine forces against invading Clans (3050)

Lance 1 – Vehicles – Total BV1 = 2,158

Goblin SRM Tank – Tracked, 4/6, 3 SRM-6, 1 MG – excellent armor – (BV1 – 371)

Drillson Heavy Hover Tank – 9/14, 1 LL, 1 LRM-10, 2 SRM-2, 2 MG – good armor – (BV1 – 708)

Lance 2 – ‘Mechs – Total BV1 = 4,904

Atlas AS7-D – 3/5/0, AC20, LRM-20, 4 ML, 1 SRM-6 – excellent armor (BV1- 1,561)

Grand Dragon – 5/8/0, PPC, LRM-10, 3 ML – good armor (BV1 – 997)

Victor VTR-9B – 4/6/4, AC20, 2 ML, 1 SRM-4 – fair armor (BV1 – 1,173)

Lance 3 – ‘Mechs – Total BV1 = 3,630

Hunchback HBK-4P – 4/6/0, 8 ML, 1 SL – excellent armor (BV1 – 960)

Hunchback HBK-4G – 4/6/0, 1 AC20, 2 ML, 1 SL – excellent armor (BV1 – 855)

Opfor BV1 – 10,692 – exactly!

The reason I noted the total BV1 is because it matches – exactly - that of our opponents and is the limit posed by the OpFor leader. This was totally an accident, a weird sort of coincidence. I was simply selecting the machines available that would do the job.

Using BattleMechs in Lance Strength

Chris Snider, our OpFor leader, expressed surprise at all the Hunchbacks. I pointed out that in ten years of playing this game, I have never once seen any unit deployed in lance strength. Ever! Very strange, I must say, but this will probably be the first time our opponents have seen this as well. The strange part is that in the game of BattleTech, the lance of four is a standard deployment configuration.

Quite a few of the machines in BattleTech, both ‘Mech and Vehicle, were meant to be deployed in groups of four. And a lot of the complaints I have heard over the years about certain designs (such as the Capellan’s Vindicator BattleMech) stem from attempts to use that machine either singly or in pairs. It does no good to explain that such machines, while mediocre at first glance, really come into their own in lance strength. You have to show people how to properly use them.

Yes, the Vindicator is a 45-ton ‘Mech which packs one PPC, one LRM-5, one medium laser and one small laser. It is not very impressive on its own. But it was never meant to go out in less than lance strength! With a movement profile of 4/6/4, four of these ‘Mechs acting in concert can be very, very nasty! With an aggregate Battle Value 1 of 3600, these machines, in their time, were fully capable of taking on much larger opponents. The biggest advantage? There are four… and while your foe is tracking and shooting one, the other three are ganging up on him.

Control Line!

I have been working on a control line plane, the Jumpin’ Bean. Originally a Carl Goldberg model, it is now being produced by Brodak. I did not want to build the kit as-is – I’ve already made many of these little beauties. What I wanted to do was make a new plane design based on as much of the ‘Bean as I could.

The result is something that will look like a P-38 from WWII. I separated the original wing halves with a section which is twelve inches long, and made two profile fuselages based on the original ‘Bean fuse extended three inches. That should offset the weight of the two Cox .049 Sure-Start engines I have on hand. I cannot recommend these new engines enough.

The last time I bought a Cox .049, it was a Black Widow made by Estes (who bought out Cox back in the day) with an integral craptastic plastic fuel tank and cost $50. The new engines have no integral fuel tank – what they do have is a choke tube bolted on the engine backplate. That eliminates forever the tedious process of bulb priming (and maybe flooding) the engine prior to starting. And the new Canadian owners sell them for only $8 each!

I have four .25 ounce Perfect fuel tanks I got in a clearance sale. I am going to solder them together in pairs and install one in the center wing and one the inboard wing. The extra fuel should allow for starting the second engine and flying a bit longer. For comparison, a standard Black Widow integral tank had 8cc’s (or .25 ounces) of fuel and ran for about three minutes.

One engine has a left-hand prop and spring, the other a standard right-hand prop and spring. Since the engines will be turning in opposite directions, the torque from each should be offset nicely. I still have to locate a standard three-bladed 5-3 prop, but the folks in Canada should have some for sale.

My main task, after getting the wing sections built, will be to make sure the assembled wing is flat and the elevator is parallel with the wing and the whole plane squared off. Not an easy job, even with pins, a t-square and superglue! I will install a thinner plywood-reinforced profile ‘cockpit’ on the center wing section and the plane will have tricycle landing gear.

Finally, I will have to reinforce the inboard fuselage ribs with thin plywood. This is where I will place the bellcrank mount (used to transmit the movement of the two control lines to the elevator) and it has to be strong as it is the point at which the lines connect to the plane. A weak bellcrank mount – or even a standard one – will not handle the extra inertia forces from an additional engine and a larger wing.

I will use a bellcrank larger than the standard 1/2A size, too. That way, I won’t have to worry about a twitchy plane.

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

The TRO Art Advances...

2010-09-10T18:15:00.000-07:00

Hello.

We have made some progress on important stuff:

- Eric Ou has sent me the Urugan art. Our initial artist did a good job with this aircraft, but I nitpicked about perspective and I think that put the artist off completing the commission – it has been ten days since my apology and still no word from him. So the baton passes to Eric, who has done a stand-up job. I have sent my suggestions back to him this evening.

- Our original layout man, James Devlin, is not responding again. Eric has been busy and I am not sure he relishes the idea of coming up with brand-new layouts in InDesign. Meantime, I am enlisting the aid of a local friend with Photoshop and layout skills to assist. Some of you may be familiar with the name of that friend – it is none other than Bill Burt, my airsoft buddy and the co-creator of the dropship you saw at GenCon2007. Yes, the same dropship which currently graces the back cover of Strategic Operations.

Please remember: to enlarge the images, click on them!

When you are done, hit the browser back arrow to return to the blog

- Terrance Wong has also been busy colorizing . A sample of his work for the interior plates is below. The man is doing very well and I hope the art we have been sending him continues to inspire him.

- Paul Skowronek is still editing. He has six to eight more pieces from the Capellan vehicles and my guess is that they will show up all at once. Meanwhile, Geoff and I will be working to fill the gaps left by Paul’s diligence – in some cases, we’ve had to make up nearly 200 words. Since what needs to be said about the vehicle in question has already been said to everyone’s satisfaction, we are concentrating on battle history (which we can do quite well) and Notables.

- Ian Stead is currently working on the Tomahawk. Yes, I know – it has been a month since I first reported that, but we should have something for you by next update.

- Karl Olson has been plugging away at a rework of the Centaurus armored car. Take a look at the third draft below and compare it to the original:

- Daniel Cherng should be just about done in Utah by the time you read this. As he did a very good job on the Montgomery II, I eagerly await his corrections on the Katana.

- Chris Duke and the Panzerfaust. Progress… he is still working on the black and white version for the entry itself. Meanwhile, he has provided another color scheme for the interior plate that uses the Lyran parade colors. Also included is the Panzerfaust in winter…

- Prdarkfox really tried with the White Knight. And there are those who see nothing wrong with it. I originally offered it to Eric for a re-do, but he has been very busy with schoolwork and is already working on the Urugan. However, Lee Madison has made a return….

- Lee Madison has produced some of the best art we have. He has been missing in action for nearly five months, but is now back and ready to work on the White Knight – or at least take a shot at it. Better still, he has agreed to add backgrounds to several pieces done by Ian Stead – primarily the Ocelot and the Roland. Let’s hope he stays with us this time. He really is quite good at what he does.

That is all for now. I will soon begin to send money on the art – folks have been really patient for the past few weeks, and I have made the last transmission payment. Thank you all for waiting on this.

Control Line!

We have to take a break from airsoft, as Bill tweaked his back and cannot play in this weekend’s game – and my son has a track meet. Meanwhile, I am taking the time afforded by the art slowdown to tinker with an old hobby of mine – control line flying. Most of you will not know what I am talking about, but the following pictures should provide a clue.

I have also added some songs to the Musical Box.

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

Art, New Music and the TRO Update..

2010-08-25T21:30:00.001-07:00

Hello.

I would like to report a lot of things happening, but there hasn’t been that much going on this last week. However, we have made some progress on important stuff:

- Have not heard from Eric for a week at least. Our original layout man, James Devlin, has been silent as well, despite my sending a lot of stuff his way.

- Terrance Wong is working on colorizing and has already trotted out some nice preliminary work. We are probably going to lighten up the Battlemaster a bit, though.

- Paul Skowronek returned six writeups to me with quite a few notes attached. I have already completed the changes on five of them, with the last one to be done as the week wears on. Six down, one hundred and one to go. Seriously, I don’t think he will stick with us for that long – he is a very busy guy and to be honest, this sort of work can get boring pretty fast. But I will take whatever I can get.

Try to understand – Geoff and I thought these were ready to publish. But they’re not, and it shows only when Paul does his editing thing. I can’t see it until he points it out. I will bring one to this blog to illustrate what I mean. Meanwhile, I have sent another six to eight pieces to him, from the Capellan vehicles section.

- Ian Stead is working on the Tomahawk, though I have nothing to show for it just yet.

- Karl Olson has completed work on the San-Ku-Chu, which is really nice and is our blog post header for this week.

- Daniel Cherng is in Utah - he works on the Katana when he can.

- Chris Duke is working on the Panzerfaust and making progress. He has already made the changes I asked for, and is presently working on a black and white version.

- I have already commissioned, received and paid for the White Knight, but the more I look at it, the less happy I am with the overall quality of the work. Now you know I would normally go running to Eric for a quick fix, but he is working on an aero and a VTOL for me and is sick of BattleMechs. Even so, I might beg him to redo the White Knight. The ‘Mech is good – prdarkfox did a good job with the basic design – but it’s just a bit too stiff and uneven for me.

Tunes!

I posted some new music in the player this week. I am trying to stay away from the most recent stuff; if you want to listen to it, you can turn on the radio. Otherwise you’d be hearing Justin Beiber and Jaden Smith. I put some electronica from a band whose lead singer just up and killed himself. Charming, I know. But the tune is kinda catchy.

Another piece of electronica is by Daft Punk and sounds pretty ginchy. It’s called ‘The Prime Time of Your Life’. However, the video that goes with it is probably the creepiest thing this degraded planet has ever seen. I still get chills thinking about it. Thus, I thoughtfully provide you a link to it below. Be careful who watches it; it involves skeletons and while there is not a drop of blood in it, this video is definitely not for the young and impressionable.

I have a link here so you can go see for yourself, but remember: you were warned.

LINK: You were warned!

The Evolution of the San-Ku-Chu

(Click on the images to get a better look… hit the back button to return to this page)

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

A Mystery Man Reappears... along with some progress

2010-08-17T22:03:00.000-07:00

Welcome back!

I would like to report a lot of things happening, but there hasn’t been that much going on this last week. However, we have made some progress on important stuff:

- Eric and I have been going over what the layout should look like. I was originally shooting for an older look and feel, but dropped that when I saw the company’s TRO:3075 about a year ago. The TRO:3085 looks about the same, so we are going to follow that format (for general looks, anyway).

- After a very long absence, our original layout man has responded to my emails. I cautiously included him in the work at hand, mostly because I do not know why he dropped out and do not know if it will happen again. He’s working on some pieces for layout consumption.

- I sent six black-and-white pieces to Terrance Wong for colorizing. They will cost a total of $78, which is something I can handle, but not just yet. More on that later.

- Geoffrey Butler has completed five re-writes of various Notables sections and polished another writeup that was curiously stilted. He is about to begin working on two more in a few days.

Unfortunately, there have been no updates on:

- Ian Stead, who should be working on the Tomahawk.

- Paul Skowronek, who has three writeups in hand.

- Chris Seymour is probably up for the Nemera commission, but I am not passing it over to him until I have paid off his previous work on the Montgomery II. It will be a few weeks, unfortunately.

- Karl Olson’s work on the San-Ku-Chu, which presumably is quite a ways along.

- Daniel Cherng’s tweaks on the Katana.

- Chris Duke’s progress on the Panzerfaust. I made a few suggestions for changes, but so far no response.

I will be pinging these guys tomorrow – hopefully there will be a response by the time this hits the blog.

Airsoft!

I bailed on the game. I had issues at home that required my full attention and so I begged off going with my buddy Bill. He understood. To be honest, it was hot as hell out there (mid-90s), the field was just as clogged with underbrush as before, and this time some kids brought their souped up guns – we’re talking about guns chrono-ing in the mid-400s for pellet speed.

Then those kids began shooting folks at close range, unloading at full auto from fifteen feet away. You can break the skin and draw blood at that range. They nearly did with Bill, who took something like seven shots, four to the face, before they stopped shooting him. He still has the welts. Man, he was pissed. It’s an unregulated field but I have a feeling that will change soon if they want us to continue playing there.

Broken Car!

I mentioned earlier that I was going to have to slow the commission schedule down a bit. Here is why: after 280,000 miles, my Cavalier’s transmission began singing its death song. This is my work car, mind you. It started out about six weeks back as a low whine that gradually grew rougher and louder. I took it in to a mechanic and he concurred. This is one reason why I have been avoiding the long trips to South Seattle lately for the monthly game – I was afraid I would be stranded on I-5.

After some hurried research, I located a replacement transmission at Eastside Auto Wrecking – 2000 Cavalier, automatic, 4 speed, 2.2L engine. There are a number of trannies that were used that year, and I was very lucky they had mine on hand. Only $246. No telling how many miles it has on it, but it can’t be any worse than the one I have now, and is probably much better. [It is. Mine was starting to shed bits of metal and the fluid was an ominous color when the technician took it out. The replacement transmission has clear bright fluid and no leaks – and went in like a charm].

I talked to the mechanic (who has a good rep) and he said he would do the job for $300, plus $50 for seals, etc. I went for the swap because a rebuild would cost over $2000, something I don’t have at the moment.

We were blessed again – my wife got an advance on her paycheck to cover what we did not have in savings. Thank God - no borrowing from the Man at 32% interest. I picked my car up this evening in better condition than I left it, but I am strapped for cash until the end of the month.

As you can see from the image below, it’s basic math:

I could continue to hand out commissions, but I already own folks about $280 as it is for existing pieces and works already in progress. Which leads us to basic math again:

Although it does have a rather nice dieselpunk feel to it, I am sure no one wants to see a cross between the Kalinin K-7 and a battleship in our TRO. So please, be patient while we recover from this temporary setback.

And yes, the swap went smoothly and my little car is in fighting trim again.

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

Changes in the TRO:3063 Blog...

2010-08-10T17:04:00.000-07:00

Hey hey!

Our updates have been progressively later and later with all the work slowing down. It is slowing down because (a) there are only a few pieces left to finish, (b) because we are working on the writing, which is not something I usually post to catch your eye and (c) paying the artists off is not only slow, but makes for dull reading. I really don’t want to make a blog entry without showing some progress so I hang on a few days until I can get confirmation.

From here on in, we will be posting approximately every ten days. I will provide content for those of you who like such natterings as I provide – for the other twenty two people following this blog, I will strive to keep events rolling.

To wit:

- Ian Stead is back from vacation and working on the Tomahawk tank.

- I have sent Paul three writeups. No word from him yet. Busy guy - but we should have something back within the next few days.

- Eric and I have been talking. So far I have been waiting on his work schedule, but plan to send him what we have generated for the layout ideas so far. No word one way or the other from Josh – we are trying to get whatever he’s accomplished from him so we can carry on, but I am not holding things up on his account. He has other problems. :-/

- I intend to ask Chris Seymour if he will accept the Nemera commission. He just finished the Montgomery II and did a very good job. I have to pay him for the Monty first, though!

- Karl Olson has made some serious advances on the San-Ku-Chu, a Capellan troop carrier. As you can see from the images, there has been some back and forth on the way to a good illustration. He even came up with an alternate action pose! I will have it finished, colorized and added to the color plates we already have.

Click on the image for a closer look.

- Speaking of color plates, I have reached a tentative agreement with Terrance Wong (ThePlasticOne over at the Company forums) to colorize some of the pieces we already have in black and white. I have already seen the Scorpion II and the Jenner X in color by another artist – pending an agreement with him, we should see those inside as well. The cost is $13 a piece and I am looking at six pieces minimum, so if you were thinking about hitting that PayPal button, now would be a good time.

- Daniel Cherng has contacted me on the Katana; he will be doing some tweaks in the next few days.

- David Eugene (daveCrypt) and Mike Sullivan (thedarkbanditking) are no longer with us – the first wants a bit too much money for his excellent work, and the other cannot produce anything after all due to employment and home issues.

- Chris Duke is hard at work on another tank, the Panzerfaust. We’ve hammered out the details, based on the writing and previous work, and I should have something to show you by the next blog update.

Airsoft!

The game is coming up… we’ll see how the weather looks for next weekend. Hope it is clear, but not too sunny. The last game was a hot one. John has reluctantly agreed to go again. It is funny how I bought the M-14 to accompany him when he went off to play with his M-4 Barret. Now I have to encourage him to go with me!

BattleTech!

I participated in a game this Saturday with my good friend Chris Snider. The game objective was interesting, all my friends were there and I was honest with my dice rolls. What more could a fellow ask for?

Rather than go over the game blow by blow, turn by turn, I will note some of the highlights and some odd things I noticed:

- First off, the game started on time! I did not get there until 1330, but it began at noon sharp.

- I was fashionably late because I thought things would start no earlier than 1300. But when I got there, it was Word of Blake and Kali Liao’s Thugees against the flower of the Inner Sphere and the boys were already mixing it up. Well, okay, we had WOB nutjobs and maniac killers versus a bunch of Capellans aided by their neighbors. There were reinforcements coming in on specific turns – Five and Eight, I believe – and I arrived just as they began Turn Four, with those crazy cyborg Blakists and gauss-rifle mad White Tigers ripping everyone on ‘my’ side a new asshole.

- Turn Five, I accepted a lance of Canopian (Magistracy of Canopus) ‘Mechs; three of the four had jump jets and the fourth was fast as hell. Now as some of you know, the Magistracy is a society where women have the upper hand – think of Amazons without the distaste for men. It’s a society where the byword is “It’s good to be Queen”. I nicknamed my four ‘The Grrls’ and got to work.

First turn I ran them in a porcupine ball up the table and opened up on the biggest ‘Mech I could see, a Blakist Seraph (‘Giraffe’) standing on a Level Two hill and using C3 to beat the crap out of my fellow units. The Grrls fired as a unit, pasting the Giraffe with a Heavy PPC and a few other shots and serving notice that the party had officially started.

- I took the other lance leaders aside and asked about their plan. There really wasn’t one, so we concocted something and got to work. Still in the porcupine ball, I ran The Grrls up the left side of the maps and the others began swinging to the right. Meanwhile, that Blakist Giraffe got off that hill in a hell of a rush, not eager to face my ball of feminine heavy metal headed his way with his name all over it.

And that was one of the points I made with my compadres – the battle was only partly decided by the weapons fired and the speed of the machines and the terrain. The rest, the lion’s share, would be decided by our tactics and overall strategy because it wasn’t our ‘Mechs against theirs so much as it was our players against theirs. And we had the advantage of experience. What counted wasn’t what weapons you shot, but where you were.

- The Grrls shot at an Ostroc on the sixth and seventh Turns, got into position on that vacated hill and took the Giraffe out on Turn Eight. On the same Turn, the White Tigers betrayed the Word of Blake and began shooting everything in sight. About that time our side took out one of their Gauss-zillas (a Cerebrus) and beat the hell out of their Thunderbolt. Only a scuffed Pillager left to their forces, but the Tiger player was game, I will give him that.

- Turn Nine The Grrls piled on a Word of Blake Raijin II, doing damage. They’d moved off the hill and were headed for the opposite map edge to make their exit. They were still in a porcupine ball and amazingly enough, not a mark on any of them!

- Turn Ten was the final turn, and The Grrls moved closer to the map edge as they took on another Raijin, destroying its big gun and hammering the snot out of it. It shot back for the only damage The Grrls would take in that game – ten points to the left torso of the Eyleuka.

What I Observed…

While I enjoyed the game, it was apparent that even with Chris officiating and doing nothing else, ten players was just too much to go very fast. Four turns in an hour and a half sounds good, right? But I was there from 1330 until 2215, when the game ended – nearly ten hours – and we only managed another six turns. I had been hoping for a turn an hour and while Chris rode everyone’s ass, it was of little use.

I think the biggest mistake Chris made was to hand control of six machines to a player who has trouble handling two. It slowed things down horribly, though it could have been worse. This player ran most of his machines off on a wild goose chase (literally) that worked better than I thought it would. I even told the player what we were doing and he still kept right on chasing. We used two very light damaged ‘Mechs as bait to tie down four fresh machines for five turns. Not bad, considering they could have been – should have been - backshooting all my compadres. But the best part was that they were all on that player’s side of the table and he was focusing them all on one mission. It kept things simple for him.

Unfortunately for the Blakists, he was also running two hovertanks with an LRM-15 each. Rather than position them and start pasting our forces with long range fire, this guy ran them right up into the middle of a huge furball. The two tanks were burning before they’d fired three shots.

My own side began to show fatigue – some of the guys didn’t have their firing solutions ready when called on, despite having plenty of time to do so. As for my Grrls and me?

With my numbers always ready, I took less than a minute to fire all the guns. Every turn. And with an hour (or more!) to consider each collective move, I knew exactly where I was going and took about two minutes or less to move all four units and put their markers down. Most times less. Every turn. I wish more players would follow that example, but what’re ya gonna do? I concentrated an entire lance’s movement and fire towards a single target each turn and hoped volume of fire would offset lousy numbers. If you weren’t standing still or had a pilot with VDNI, it was usually nines or more to hit anything that wasn’t immobile.

No special munitions, mostly direct fire weapons, no weather conditions, clear goals and a really sweet initiative setup – by lance, not individual unit – made the game go faster than I expected, but there were thirty two units on the table and what else could one expect? I stuck it out, though. Chris did the best he could, the best anyone could, and really put a lot of work in this. It showed. I hope he runs smaller games in the future, so we can wrap it up in six hours or less. But the organization was heaps better than it has been in the past.

I will be playing OpFor with Chris from now on, as I like a challenge and being one of the ‘bad guys’ appeals to me. Maybe I will be able to bring out the best in my friend’s play not by setting the example, but pasting them one when they make a mistake.

Dissing the Lowly IndustrialMech…

I probably waxed eloquent enough in the last blog, especially down in the comments section, on what I think of AgroMechs and their ilk in the old game of MechWarrior:Dark Age (MW:DA). I like them, I really do. Back when the game was just starting out, you could field an AgroMech Mod A and do reasonably well. That changed pretty quickly when all the new rules and expansions appeared. MW:DA was also sold like a collectible card game and that meant that some - indeed, many - of the boosters had common and uncommon machines in them which were not very good even by the standards of the early game.

I once wrote some fiction that involved a ForestryMech in a flashback. The year was 3115. It seemed like a good way for a country boy to get his start in a field where BattleMechs had not been in common use for fifty years. So I began a follow-up tale, one where the young boy encountered in the first story was now nearing eighteen and wondering what to do with his life – and especially his skill at working a ‘Mech. It isn’t as common an ability as you might think. And it isn’t very useful outside that narrow field.

The story (still under construction) takes place on a planet at the edge of the Periphery. It has pretty girls, pirates and several encounters where a ‘weaponized’ ForestryMech (a big one, used on redwoods and other first-growth forests) takes on tanks and troops, a small BattleMech and eventually, the pirates themselves. There are other machines there - mostly VTOLs, tanks and troop carriers. The ForestryMech, along with another like it, work together to stop the pirate raid. The pirate’s goal is a hidden cache of ‘Mech weapons and parts which have not been in production for decades – and, of course, the town’s young women.

The story is outlined (about twenty thousand words so far) and I am working on it between bouts with the TRO. No telling if anyone will want to read it, but hey, our hero has two girls with their sights on him and I think the setting is believable and entertaining.

The point is the whole thing began with me trying to write a scenario around a ForestryMech just to see if such a thing could be done in the regular BattleTech setting. It can be done, but it’s anyone’s guess whether or not folks will want to play it.

Painting Up Armies

While I was overseas and missing my son, I decided to take the MW:DA miniatures we’d accumulated while in Perth and create several ‘armies’ which I could use to play with my son when I got home. Many delightful hours passed while I painted those miniatures in four basic color schemes – red, blue, green and yellow. The Yellow army was reserved for my son and we cobbled together rules which mixed a bit of BattleTech with many of the rules used in MW:DA.

When I was done painting, I still had another three months to go. So I began arranging the armies in set battle scenes, taking pictures of them and then adding text which described the action. I collected these ‘battles’ into black-and-white booklets that were several pages long and mailed them to my son, who enjoyed them very much.

I have no hard feelings for the IndustrialMech. Below are some pics of ‘Mechs from the Yellow army. We still have all the armies, but it has been many years since John and I played a game with them. His desire to do such things faded over the years, but I still have my memories.

Click on the image for a closer look.

Some Advice…

One word of advice for you BattleTech players out there – the best way, the only sure-fire tactic that will negate an opponent’s advantage when he’s using C3 - is NOT ECM (though it is nice).

What is it?

Simple: close with him until you are up in his grill and then kick him in the nuts – hard. The same goes for an opponent with better gunnery skills. At close range, you and he both need, as my son would say, ‘freakishly low numbers’ to hit the other guy and at that point, it doesn’t matter if he needs a three and you need a four. Low numbers are low numbers. It’s infighting skills, short-range blasting and healthy kicks that will get the job done.

Come to think of it, that’s how I deal with Clanners, too.

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

Progress in Art and Ranting...

2010-08-02T17:16:00.000-07:00

Hello…

More good work to report:

- Ian Stead is working on the Tomahawk tank, a cheap design with an internal combustion engine and a big gun; intended for garrisons and militias in the outlying provinces. He has had some computer issues but has resolved them. After taking a vacation next week, he should be back on the job.

- I have sent Paul three more writeups. He will take them on as time permits. Apparently I just keep sending them until he’s had enough. Hey, works for me.

- Our alternate layout man (Eric) has responded. It is my sad duty to announce that Josh will not be able to perform the layout tasks due to illness. He simply has too many other things to think about and his situation is not really improving. I have asked Adam Jury for a lead on a fellow who could perform the task – as some of you may know, Adam originally worked for Catalyst Game Labs as their layout artist. I haven’t a hope in hell of hiring the man – he does this for a living, after all - but perhaps he can steer me in the right direction.

- Chris Seymour’s Mongomery II is complete – some of you might already have caught a glimpse of it on the forums or over at deviantArt.

Here is the evolution of this design's artwork:

- Karl Olson has completed the Panzer X – look below for the final version.

He is now at work on the San-Ku-Chu, a moderately armed Capellan troop carrier.

- I have pinged Mike Sullivan, who originally promised something by the weekend. No mention of anything so far – I have assigned him the Urugan atmospheric fighter as he has a proven track record of really nice aircraft. [Update: Mike has begged off this one due to other commitments - I am currently fishing for other artists as you read this.]

- Daniel Cherng has done a wonderful Katana; there were a few issues I would like to clear up, but if it is in final form (and I hope not), then I may have to work the writeup instead.

- David Eugene (daveCrypt) has rejected the changes I requested as part of the Nemera commission for a price of $30. He does great work but wants $200 and this is well out of my range financially. I will be shopping this commission out to another artist in the meanwhile. Too rich for my budget.

- The artist (Chris Duke) who was to do the Urugan has been switched over to do another tank, the Panzerfaust. I have seen his work and it is suitable for this particular commission. A pity I have no room for starships, because he does a very good job on them as well!

- Eric Ou has completed the Isometrus, featured at the top of this blog entry and probably the last piece we will get from him. He is very close to going back to school again. Some of you may have spotted his work in the official TRO:3085 which just hit the streets. Well, the internet, anyway, as it is only in PDF format for now.

Airsoft!

I got my Glock AEP back from the repair shop on Friday. The technician does not know what is wrong with it, but he replaced several broken gaskets and lubed the gun; it appears to work fine in full auto, so I guess it will have to do for now. We are scheduled for another woodsy combat on the 14th of August, same location as last time. Maybe this time I will be able to work with my friend Bill instead of finding him in my sights over and over. He has a lot to teach me, and his G-36K is working again

Catalyst Games

August 9th approaches. What more can I say? Let’s see what happens. [What happens is that the sneaky bastards get it pushed back some more, to October 12th. Let's hope it was the prosecution and not the defense which requested that...]

The TRO:3085 is okay. Very big (bigger than our TRO:3063 by seventy pages, in fact), covers a lot of ground, but as it is a jump of ten years from the previous major TRO (3075) I expected no less. This is the first time I have seen a TRO appear that is ahead of the current events in the game (we are in the year 3078, I think). A lot of art is by David White (yay!) and a couple of pieces are by Eric Ou (double yay!) and of course, there are pieces by Alex Iglesias (dude!).

This jump is accompanied by a rumor (I have no exact source) that when the Jihad winds down, the… wonderful people at CGL are going to jump past Devlin Stone’s ‘peace’ and land in the 3130s. I think it’s because they just can’t make a good story around IndustrialMechs, and that may very well be the reason. It would have been nice if they’d published a Record Sheet Annex for the TRO:3085, however. Eh, maybe they will save that for GenCon. [Actually, it appears they did publish the record sheets for this TRO in a separate PDF. Good move, guys!]

MicroRant:MWDA

I know why I dropped MechWarrior:Dark age. I became aware of it only in 2002, mind you. Never could figure out what the hell we were supposed to do with the AgroMechs, even the upgunned versions.

Then I realized these were the equivalent of common cards in Magic: The Gathering and not all of them were going to be good.

That is when I fell away from the game. I can understand dedicating a piece of laminated paper to the mundane purpose of representing a crappy card no one will ever use. But the idea that someone would design a miniature, someone else would manufacture it and still someone else - probably a pretty overworked Chinese girl - would sit there and burn her eyes out slapping paint on it....

Then another guy or gal would assemble the parts and package them. Then it would get to the Yew-nited States where a guy could exercise his God-given right to free trade and plunk down his ten bucks - open the box - and promptly throw that miniature into a landfill because, in the game he plays, it's junk.

I am no tree hugger but really - what a freaking waste from beginning to end. Really torqued me off when I thought about it. No offense to you guys who liked the game, but I am glad it's dead.

I can live with conspicuous consumption - it's mindless consumption I can't stand.

Back to the TRO:3085!

Is it me or does the Heavy PPC seem to be the new gauss rifle?

There are some good machines, some so-so designs and the usual clunkers. The art overall is pretty good – like our TRO, they have the good, the bad and the unmentionable. I think Matthew Plog really tried on this one, and it shows, but the man needs to work on another way to do shading. It spoiled a lot of otherwise-standout pieces. At least he isn’t doing ‘organic’ and ‘blisters’ so much. Brent Evans… his art leaves me feeling ‘meh’ all the way. Hey, at least he got published. He’s pretty good at running a stable of artists from what I have heard.

Here is hoping the artists and writers see a paycheck. They earned it.

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

Progress, Picture by Picture...

2010-07-23T16:20:00.001-07:00

Greetings!

Progress this past week has been incremental but steady.

Thus far…

- Ian Stead is holding on to the finished Roland image and is having another fellow do some background art on it.

- Geoffrey Butler is working on still more Notables, both ‘Mechs and Vehicles.

- Daniel Cherng is working on the Katana... and making good progress.

- Paul has given the three writing samples I sent a clean bill of health. I am awaiting his decision to tackle more text in the near future.

- No word at all from our layout man. I have been sending an email once a week or so but have received nothing from him since late June. The Curse of 3063 appears to be doing its work – I will contact his understudy to see if anything has been done as a team.

I have pinged Karl Olson, Chris Seymour, Mike Sullivan and DaveCrypt. They are all due for updates.

- Chris ‘Kurbound Seth’ Seymour’s Mongomery II has passed to the secondary sketch stage; there are several issue with perspective but the overall design is promising, as is the level of detail even on the sketch.

- Karl Olson is working on the Panzer X and has submitted a rough draft that looks very good. He has firmly established the scale and will include additional troops and scenery around the tank, which is a very nice design.

- Mike Sullivan has scheduled a rough draft by Monday. However, he is very busy with work and long hours as well as wrapping up other projects and caring for his son. He is one of our more talented artists so the wait should be worth it.

- DaveCrypt has gotten back my version of the Nemera with several suggestions. I have just heard from him and am waiting to see whether he can make the changes that I requested.

- I have located an artist (thank you, Ian) to do the Urugan, an atmospheric fighter. I have not seen his work yet but Ian assures me he is capable and willing. We are in the midst of discussing the commission; I will let you all know if it pans out. Meanwhile, I am looking around for another artist to take the remaining commissions for various vehicles (I believe there are only two left).

[Update: Looks like Karl will step up to do the San-Ku-Chu LMTV and some others...).

- Vlad posted $50 to the PayPal button! Thanks, buddy! I have already sent it to David Dryburgh. Only $120 left to go!

The Evolution of an Illustration...

This is the original submission for the Panzer X.

Note the big black side guard, something I sketched

in to illustrate what I wanted.

This is the first of three prototypes. Note

the cannon is nearly pointed at the viewer.

The second prototype shows a bit of turret

rotation, but the barrel is still foreshortened.

Now we have the barrel with a better side

view, but it is too simple and tapered. Not

what I would expect to see unless I was

looking at something from the 1930s.

Mmm... better. The barrel has lost its

taper and has something of a modern

feel to it with the sleeve.

Now for some scale. Soldiers in a winter setting.

However, the tracks are too smooth...

Here they have been roughed up a bit,

much better for getting through the snow.

This is the feedback I gave to Karl, the final

touches. Extend the track guard back a bit

and move that soldier out of the line of the

main gun to balance the picture. Center the

tank in the frame, delete some space from

the right and add a bit of scenery on the left

and hey! presto.

Airsoft!

Our battle in Seabeck was mixed. I got to use my M-14 in combat (at last!), and scored at least four kills. However, the playing field was very small for twenty people; most of them hunkered down and waited for someone to wander by. My son was quite frustrated. He has a good gun and lots of determination, but the woods were an unending wall of green broken by very few trails. Walking a trail was a great way to catch a pellet. Forging through the woods merely announced to the world where you were. There were a lot of deadfalls and dry branches, blackberry thickets and so on. But our host was very accommodating and overall, we had fun.

My friend Bill had his work cut out for him – his G-36K did not operate and all he had left was a sniper rifle and a pistol. He still had fun, though, which just goes to show how much a good attitude has to do with enjoying the game. He pegged me once – but I nailed him twice! I gotta get some black tape to put over that orange muzzle cap on my rifle….

The organizer held a target-shooting contest – out of a possible score of 50, I got 45, but was beat out at the last moment by a fellow with a 47. However, he used a fence to brace his gun while I fired from a kneeling position, so I don’t feel too bad about getting second place.

Catalyst Games

Not much is happening on the CGL front, at least in a legal sense. It appears they have an extension on the license which will carry them through GenCon (in August, I believe) and allow them to publish a few more books. One of these is the TRO:3085, which has illustrations provided by many of the talented artists you will find in the TRO:3063! That is one reason our art has slowed a bit. I have seen a few of the smaller PDFs they have been selling – a lot of it seems thrown together and not really intended for general use. On the other hand, CGL really has little choice if they are to raise the funds to actually print books for sale.

August 9th they will go back to court. I don’t have high hopes – Coleman is dealing with others of his kind and knows his way around them very well, I’m sure. But who knows?

Rumor has it they have pulled fan writers into working on the new TRO. The results can’t be any worse than what they’ve done in the past. Hope CGL paid them up front!

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve