Battletech Thread

Mechas ARE a nine year old's fever dream.
Where do you think you are?
The point of vidya is to make that fever dream come into reality.
Additionally,

Where do YOU think you are?

I can appreciate over-the-top mecha but a battletech thread is obviously not the place for that kind of thing.

It's like wandering into an Arma thread and demanding to know why no one wants to talk about Halo.

Young kids these days don't know jack shit.

If you think your problem is that a mecha thread has a >no _
then you actually have a different, much larger problem.
Not only that, but is there any game that actually does over-the-top mecha combat well?
Every game I can really think of is old as shit and has aged a fuckton, or is simply made by Platinum exclusive to the Wii U.
There has been a good amount of games doing small scale mecha combat with neat UI's and all, but I feel the same vibe from them as Elite Dangerous and Scam Citizen in a way.
I think I'm in a thread discussing a game that has a very high chance of being shit, and I'm making fun of it regardless of the fact that it probably will be shit.

Only ever watching entry level trash doesn't get you accepted.

Finally, a thread where i can shitpost on gurren lagann and prove that GaoGaiGar and GetterRobo are million times better, from which this shit stole a lot of ideas. Entire part from GaoGaiGar final is written just like Gurren Lagann's second part of the tv series.

Gurren Lagann is a mashup of super mecha usual cliques, even copied entire parts of the story, even from Eureka (main bitch reminds takes same part of the story, being an alien sent to investigate humans) and Nadesico (Kamina is essentially Gai).

Even faggot mechanic with cyan hair was stolen from Tekkaman Blade!

Gurren Lagann is a bad written parody, not an anime that you need to take inspiration from. Gainax is full of overrated hacks.

Oh come on, one good LLAS hit and it's smoked.

The closest thing you can get to deadly is a 35 ton Puma mounting dual Clan PPCs

I like Gurren Lagann but fuck off dude, stop shitting up the thread for no reason.

There's a distinct difference between, for instance, asking "does anyone know if there are any Spartan or ODST mods for Arma" and saying "LOL UR GAME SUX IT DUN EVEN HAVE MASTUR CHIEF HES SO COOL HE COULD KILL ALL OF U".

It's not that you -can't- discuss certain subjects in a battletech thread, it's that there's literally nothing TO discuss when all you have to work with is an autist demanding "why isn't X more like Y?".

I'm looking forward to a not shit singleplayer experience. The AI available for MegaMek is garbage. The campaign options are, interesting, but for the most part underdeveloped.

Also, easier online matchmaking. MegaMek has always been a pain in the ass to get games going for, both in terms of scheduling or technical bullshit.

I beat that as a kid when it came out - I'm old and it's like they never implemented 9/10ths of the game and padded it out by making the last part of the game in the cache some of the most tedious bullshit I've ever gone through. Even if you play it today with a FAQ telling you the optimal solution you'll probably still find it intolerably tedious. And in the biggest cockblock I've ever seen, at the end of all that, literally the last thing in the game, is a copyright check where you enter information from the map. I did not have the map.

I'll certainly concede on those points.

I love MegaMek, it compromises (by its own nature) certain quality of life things for an incredible breadth of options.

I'd be happy if this new BattleTech game had half the features of MegaMek if those features were presented in a package that could actually be used regularly. There's no real point having some of the more in-depth options in MegaMek if I'm never going to play a game against someone else who wants that very specific option.

That being said, I will be upset if the game is missing non-mech units.

I do worry that the majority focus will be place on the "big name" mechs and we'll end up with, at best, two tanks and a missile carrier.

I love the Timber Wolf and Atlas as much as the next guy, but one of the big draws for me has always been that there's more to the game than -just- mechs.

It's going to be set pre-Clans, so no Timberwolf.

I too hope they use the entire 3039 available list. There's no reason not to.

Though there are many mechs I wouldn't miss as their designs are pretty dumb and are outclassed by other mechs in their tier.

Also, that cunting thing had better not use the bullshit hardpoints system. I want to be able to build my mech my way, damnit.

But an0n, TTGL *IS* shit.
Everything about it feel like it's made a for a toddler.

Now, if you enjoy it, that's all fine and dandy, but some of here are mentally more developed.
You don't see me claiming jingling keys are fantastic entertainment because babies like it, now do you?

It literally looked and played like tabletop, and that asien dude clearly knows how to play tabletop

the dude with the beard is an adhd moron

I have a good feeling about the game now, time will tell if adhd moron ruins everything

Check out a firemoth h nigga

As I said, one good LLAS hit, and it's toast.

A lot of the options in megamek come from two sources:

People playing RPG style games and needing some extra detail tracking
People playing competitively and needing to rebalance some rules

Well that's why you move fast enough to avoid letting them get one good hit.

Firemoths don't get hit

Never ever put your faith in dice. They will always betray you.

Here's your (You)
This thread is already shit. Already other posters are talking about vaguely related games, as if to say "Yup this game is coming out, probably going to be shit. Remember __? That was a good game!" and then continuing like normal.

Here's your (Wall of Text)
Have you even watched the show? None of the ladies are actually aliens, Nia included. Hell, none of the characters except for the Anti-Spiral are actually aliens. Lordgenome's folk is just artifically modified humans.
Kamina doesn't even have a big role later on in the story fuckwit, it's early on that he goes developing Simon's path. The show brought him up to be that generic fucking protag with all the desirable traits and badly ripped story arcs so that babies like you would give up the show on the seventh episode. The show makes it a point to rip off all thoughts off "Kamina is the main character!" and forcibly staples on "He's a fucking side character."
While it's fucking obvious that the last few episodes had been incredibly cut and mutilated because of "muh gook budget", and I actually agree with criticism over it, the rest of the series was just fine. Ironically the movies were worse because they cut even more and they were only good to anyone who was stupid enough to orgasm over the slight mention of it.
Gurren Lagann had some deep thought put into it, at least at the beginning, (it's undeniable that they DIDN'T thought into it because they had enough gall to put a "future scene" (which never made it into the show because "muh gook budget") in the first episode.
It seems like YOU have the shit taste here, user, as demonstrated by your self-named, (and accurate) shitpost.
Where fucknugget? Just because GetterRobo did the whole combining thing early, doesn't mean other shows can't use it and have fun with it. Honestly, being original never truly existed, and I regret saying such a line, but I think I truly mean this: What do you call countless fantasy shows/anime/media forms in general? What do you call different forms of elves represented in media? Of dwarves? Of different fantasy races inspired or directly ripped from Tolkien or other similar series of books and fantasy novels? Rip-offs of Tolkien? What if they're done well? That line of criticism doesn't work well at all, especially when looking at something critically.
For GaoGaiGar on the other hand, I could probably see more of where you're coming from.
Even then, however, the only similarity I can see between the two is that they both have alien enemies and combining mecha to combat them. That's it. When do they go into space, grow to the size of moons, then to the size of multiple planets, all to take down a literally omnipotent enemy? That's right, they don't. It's like it's a cheap usual rip-off of Animorphs set in a space mecha.
I'm not saying it's bad- GetterRobo and GaoGaiGar, at the time, were great, original, fun shows, but you can't compare them well to Gurren Lagann
It runs with them, breaks a few, and generally has fun with them. I don't see anything wrong with using cliques in a interesting way. They're cliques for a reason: they work.
You're the faggot user, Leeron was a fantastic character with backstory if you paid attention and I'd let him fuck me in the ass any time.
While this is your opinion and I'll leave it as so, as I should, you can take inspiration and lessons from anything.
Be it failures, draws, victories, unless it's a "You win!" button in a glass box, the things you can take inspiration from are plenty.

cont. because the bully was too long

Fuck you, TTGL was a good show. I bet you get laughed off of /a/ all the time with your shit taste, don't you?
I bet you unironically like Re:Zero, and I bet that the new Beserk's artstyle is appealing to you.
You are literally trash. Whenever I look in the garbage, it's a reminder that YOU exist.

How is that remotely close to what I said?
I guess, in retrospect to how retarded Holla Forums is sometimes, I'll just have to rephrase out my point as this:
What is honestly going to make me play this game for more than maybe a couple hours?
Does it have solid combat and satisfying combat? Especially considering it's the main focus of the game? Or is it's focus aimed more so for "muh immersion" faggots who unironically play Elite Dangerous because they think it's fun.
Is there any interesting concepts thrown in here, seemingly done well at that?
I don't see any interesting concepts in this, nor do I see existing ones done well. It looks pretty, but I don't see much sustenance after that.
If it turns out to be good, wonderful, but until then I'd rather not give it the attention it appears to not deserve.

god it's one of the most retarded mech designs I've ever seen, but nothing even comes close to a firemoth h carrying rogue bear battle armor into a flanking position on a missile boat design

lol, the trick is LOS bud

Firemoths aren't for running int the open - you prone them behind hills and shit during their movement phase so nobody can touch them even if they want to

Preferably you play double blind so your opponent doesn't even know you have a firemoth until it's backstabbing something and dropping elementals

What's the record for most retarded posts by a single user? Did we ever get anything higher than that one sperg bitching about piracy?

Also, lurking a mech thread.

shitposter has a point.

Scoffing at some mecha weebshit because it's over the top is ignoring that the entire basis for the genre is a completely impractical concept that we accept because giant fuckoff robots with action missiles are cool.

To add to this, the same concept of fulfilling childhood dreams of crazy exaggerated shit applies to sports cars that look straight out of a hotwheels collection, yet it's the dream of many mature adults to want one.

How much do you pay for that VPN, samefag?

(checked)

Did I trigger you? Is my superior taste bothering your testes?
all semblance of discussion is focused on concepts of a shared-universe/other games entirely.
not on the actual game.

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ayo where da robots at

I guess I'll at least contribute to the battletech discussion.
web.archive.org/web/20160816134158/https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/webeharebrained/battletech/
At some point it had a kickstarter?
I smell jew-kun here.

I don't think what basically amounts to bipedal tanks is that crazy of an idea.

It's the same guys who made the Shadowrun PC game, and the core of the game was already financed by the company, the kickstarter was to get money around to do extra shit.

I didn't back it, but have been watching closely.

Just because mechs are inherently impractical, that doesn't mean you can't be critical of their designs and themes.

Practically ALL fiction, to some degree, features concepts and ideas that are either impossible or impractical, it's just some stories do a better job of handling it than others.

It's the same reasoning behind why we can accept magic and dragons in a fantasy game, but we call bullshit when a villain uses some completely undocumented, unexplained deus ex machina to escape an otherwise-inescapable situation.

HBS has been pretty decent off their Kickstarters. They even did a pre-painted miniatures semi-computer semi-board game that I thought would be an absolute dumpster fire but it supposedly turned out alright.

I wouldn't go throwing cash at them, but I'll go as far as cautious optimism.

While I certainly won't believe you, as at this point I don't believe any good (anything) coming out of a kickstarter, past maybe the first two games that really started the trend.

Mecha's are all around outclassed and useless.
Maybe I could see a few construction bots running around, but beyond that, a crane and a crew will do you better. It really is just a weapon that only looks cool, and nothing else. I'd bet that a large bipedal weapon idea would get anyone kicked out of any sensible military R&D unit.
Especially the older shows, they tended to go all out and stack mountain-tall mecha on top of a city, and call it a day.
To be fair, I can see the angle of "rough terrain maneuverability", but even then tanks and shit like that always come out on top. MAYBE it might be effective as a scare-tactics if the enemy can't take it down, but so will a tank of the same size.
The concept is just too stupid to be brought to life without the forefather thinking it up first in young childhood.
Tank > Mecha
Plane/Jet >> Mecha
Satalite/Future orbital bombardment tactics? >>> Mecha
Our current naval technology as it is progressing? >> (Add two more >> soon after railguns and laser weaponry is finished) Mecha
Not only that, but most early adaptations of the idea WERE crazy ideas.

forgot to add on
>while I certainly… it doesn't mean I won't watch this I guess. I simply don't give money to publishers and developers anymore

HBS actually self-publishes, so at least there's no big suits making fat stacks of cash off smaller devs work here.

Feel free to not give them money, lord knows I won't until I've sampled the product myself.

That doesn't really match what I'm seeing on their kickstarter page unless you consider single player and multiplayer to be extra shit in a vidya game.

Yes, but if it's consistent in-universe then it doesn't matter. If the baseline for the universe is outrageous world bending magic or planet sized mechs, then it should be fine in an of itself.
Considering oneself enlightened and superior for preferring a universe with lower-powered magic and thinking it's more realistic when the entire idea is crazy to begin with is odd.

I really hope they keep battle armor and infantry in mind for the engine.

I know it's set before battle armor even show up, but they're an absolutely critical piece once they do, and if this game is successful they'll probably want to expand a little further into the clan invasion era.

Given how Shadowrun went, we can probably expect an Expandalone for the Clan Invasion.

titanfall mechs are the best mech designs I've seen, tbh

They're basically up-scaled infantry with the firepower of an IFV/attack helicopter; I really dig it

3025 setting. Power armor is pretty much lost tech outside of comstar. This game is set in a point where they haven't even found the helm memory core yet.

At this point the successor states are only just now starting to realize it's about time they figure out how star league tech works and comstar is often one step ahead to sabotage progress and keep secrets out of the hands of the barbarian successor states.

Mechs are old, handed down the family and often times not in the best repair even at the best of times simply because the factory that made the replacement or the mech itself is a radioactive slag pit. Hell half of the variants used during this time exist as refits replacing weapons and or tech they can no longer produce or afford to produce.

I'm hopeful that it won't suck.

[Citation Needed]

Play Hawken if you want a simple game. I fucking hate you CoD fucks. I want a difficult complex game not a fucking CoD with giant mechs

Hopefully flyingdebris is doing the art again because he's about the only artist I've found that can make Battletech mechs not look like shit.

Also, cautiously optimistic for the game, but no buy without a pirate.

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And this is why I no longer participate in mech related threads on Holla Forums

Welcome to real life kiddo

You're not the focus of everyone's life, shit doesn't revolve around you or what you want to do.

Deal with it

okay shill dude

Do you want to look like an idiot or something?

do you stroke your soul patch and tip your fedora in disgust when people like pizza too?

No sweat off my brow. Just means I won't be releasing the games at all now since there is clearly not an interest.

Maybe people didn't bite because you are such a whiny cunt?

Ever thought of that?

this tbh

don't expect a dicksucking just because you got a great game idea. put it out and get some real criticism or fuck off.

If you do want a dicksucking, go to reddit.

Might be my favourite artwork from shimmy. If only because the Falconer is such a cool idea that so often becomes goofy as fuck.

Anyway, first game worth paying for to show them there's interest on it

If it doesnt turn out to be MWO on the battletech games

The biggest issue I have with battletech designs at this point is their rigidity - you can see it in the video for the new mechwarrior game, too.

Animators and artists never take into account the fucking ball joints and hip movement necessary for bipedal animals to walk. You literally cannot walk without tilting the hips and none of these people seem to have taken a course in kinematics to understand this.

I feel like that's a long standing problem with Battletech

Triggered weaboo detected.
All those walls of text defending his shit taste. Wonderful.

Nigga, why would I even want to go to /a/? That board is shit.

Never watched it, so can't comment.

An0n, that's not a trashcan. It's a mirror.

It's a scale, faggot.
And don't compare fantasy and science fiction.
One is supposed to be rooted in fantasy, the other is not.
And even in fantasy, familiar elements tend to operate how you expect them.

The guy that did the redesigns for MWO is a saint because he managed to make Battletech mechs not look like complete trash.

Still, I never liked the setting much, it's a lukewarm version of 40k without all the boisterous grandiosity of the setting, the factions are meh, the mechs look retarded.

I imagine the only reason it got as popular as it did was because it was the only proper mech thing in the West for a long time, and because MechWarrior came out before Armored Core, that features far more complex mech customization dynamics.

Oh well, maybe it will scratch the Front Mission itch I've been having for years now.

What? MWO mechs look all the same shit
On mechwarrior 4 they didnt look really good but at least each mech had some uniqueness, MWO designs are all mechs built using the same lego blocks, different cockpit and expensive as fuck color customization

you're the one posting an anime reaction image faggot

What's up with Battletech attracting such autists?

Because the old community for Battletech is dead. Quite literally. They are in the grave.

Fuck you I looked at it.

Whats up with this thread anyway? Most of you are acting like faggots.

Anyone remember how the D variant was banned from the CCG?

TTGL is a homage, you can't really blame a homage for doing similar stuff to the original as long as it does it well.

I like TTGL, but GaoGaiGar is superior in every way

You are a nigger. The fact you like something doesn't mean that you have to shit up an unrelated thread with it.

Perhaps you might agree more with my rephrase of what I (actually) meant.
If you read more of my posts, maybe you might have held your post.
So, I'll say it again:
What is honestly going to make me play this game for more than maybe a couple hours?
Is there any interesting concepts thrown in here, seemingly done well at that?
I don't see any interesting concepts in this, nor do I see existing ones done well. It looks pretty, but I don't see much sustenance after that.
Battletech seemingly doesn't do anything truly original, and the concept of a small-scale mech battle has been done before. It looks boring and it only looks pretty on the outside.
If I am a nigger, you're a jewish shill who doesn't know when to quit with his shit taste.
Go fuck yourself.

I wasn't on Holla Forums a few days ago, would you mind posting it again?

Always loved battletech and chunky, unwieldy mechs.

can you repost those links?

oh no, it's retarded.

And on that scale we have hard scifi at one end, and giant fighting robots of all kinds at the other.

*giant humanoid fighting robots

40k titans actually make a retarded sort of sense.

They are so big, so well protected and so powerful, fielding spaceship tier weapons, that there is basically nothing but something as equally big and powerful that can take them down.

Also, being fuckhuge lets them ignore most landscape obstacles.

Is it gud?

Closest we'll ever get to a Starship Troopers simulator.

Look, I am excited too, but I know to keep my expectations low.

m8 i'll fuckin cut u

I'll probably throw my bandwidth at it when it releases in full. I don't care much for the beta versions of games, I'd just rather wait for whatever classifies as a full release in this day and time. I doubt the multiplayer will work worth a damn/at all during the beta anyway and that's what I'm here for.

Square cube law would like a word.

You sure?
I know you're talking about the book

Combined with the fact their armor isn't actually what makes them so sturdy, it's the starship tier dark age tech void shields.

Battletech's setting is kind of garbage, I have to agree.

They tried, but there's way too much that doesn't make sense - the scale of it for starters. It's really typical of stuff that gains traction without having been planned out ahead of time. Drop the factions to maybe 10-20 planets each, give the clans JUST their 5 worlds in the kerensky cluster, between ALL of them. Keep the distances between planets the same so you really feel the isolation. Keep the clan invasions to something like

And then the D variant turns out to be ass in the actual tabletop

In terms of what it can actually DO, it's pretty fucking great. 5 hex short range and 10 hex medium range really makes the sucker fantastic at harassing and backstabbing from so far away you can't do anything about it.

But the BV system overcompensates for too many guns on top of speed on top of MASC, so you end up with a light mech dealing medium mech damage at assault mech prices. (seriously, it's 3000BV compared to a more typical 800-1500 for heavyweight lights)

Battletechs mechs aren't 'chunky and unwieldly'

All the vidya get the depictions so wrong it's hilarious. The things are supposed to move fluidly, like animals or people. The ONLY media I've seen that got it mostly right was this youtube video I'm linking.

Is this based on the tabletop thing? Because dice based games are fucking dull to play

Video related: youtube.com/watch?v=0pyCsu0QRO0

Nah, the only thing the vidya have gotten wrong is not including the ability to punch cockpits in.

Ever actually watched the video?

Excellent analysis.

Another facet that needs a shitload of work is why exactly the mechs are so fucking special. I've already posted about 40k Titans and why they work despite being so goddamn massive.

Them being fuckhuge actually works in their favor because there is little that can walk or drive on a planet that can bring them down before they decide to unleash hell on them, and the fluff always states that they are followed by their own dedicated formations of infantry and armor, whose sole duty is ensuring that nothing gets too close to the Titan to breach the Void shield.

Honestly speaking Battletech has less justification for the existence of mechs than Gundam does. At least Tomino, despite being a shit writer, understood the ridiculous rangers of missiles and energy weapons can achieve, and especially against targets that have such a high profile, so he just bullshitted his way through with the Minovsky Particle that scrambles sensors and non-hardend electric components severely limiting engagement ranges.

Battletech has none of that beyond a paper thin excuse they can't figure out how to make a decent missile that could outrange what we had back in the 80s. It's not even 40k "if we poke at this blueprint rape demons might come out", which keeps the Mechanicus from getting too curious about things, it's straight up humans are too retarded to figure out 20th century technology, despite being able to produce far more advanced weaponry and vehicles.

I never bought the silly veneer of grimdarkness they tried with the setting by painting it as some galaxy wide Dark Age of Technology, because there is virtually no reason why it would be, and especially not concerning the laughably primitive tech the setting considers "advanced".

It's not, although they won't (and don't need to) be bipedal tanks.

First of all, going by what we know of land animals on earth, the upper range is around 90-100 metric tons. We haven't yet seen anything bigger than that, but there's a lot that goes up to that scale, though most are under 30 tons and the only ones alive today are 15 tons or less. This immediately destroys the idiocy about "muh ground pressure" – usually the people repeating that argument don't even have the first clue as to the difference in function between a wheel and a leg; e.g. a leg that is 'stuck' in mud isn't fighting a lack of friction like a wheel, it's fighting suction. This inability to actually look at the situation objectively is what makes so many of the anti-mech fags arguments fallacious and ridiculous.

Second, if you want to know what sort of things a mech would be doing, you simply need to establish the basic characteristics and what roles they can fill in a military based on that.

Once you start doing this, you'll quickly find that mechs are basically infantry with IFV-scale weapons, armor, and mobility. That makes them great at avoiding artillery, exploiting terrain, breaking through infantry, and providing recce. The joints allow mechs to change their profile at-will, and make them more resistant to immobilizing damage, as even lacking an arm or a leg, movement is still possible to some degree. Limbed locomotion allows ease of travel in otherwise impassable terrain for regular wheeled vehicles: Swamps, mountains, forests. That's a large degree of flexibility, and having something functioning like a cross between a Marder and an Infantryman moving through, securing, and attacking along a frontline otherwise impassable to heavy firepower (e.g. mountains) exemplifies that.

Another way to look at them is asking, "What if an Apache had legs, could take and hold ground, and didn't need to refuel every 4 hours?"

To conclude that this is useless in a military role is just obtuse.

Even in tabletop it is more effective to just field a bunch of tanks and anti-armor infantry than mechs.

It still begs the question: "Why do we need them?"

Anything a mech can do other military vehicles that exist already can do, and better.

A mech would need to be several magnitudes of size bigger than a tank to achieve the same firepower, not that even that matters because without air superiority everything crawling on the ground is fucked anyway.

And this is ignoring costs and upkeep. An AH-64 might need to refuel far more frequently than a land vehicle, but it's also far less complex than a bipedal walking machine. Helicopters have been around for 50+ years, we've yet to actually manage to make a viable vehicle with legs that isn't some engineering curiosity.

Also, this is ignoring the fact that many analysts consider both helicopters and tanks to be extremely vulnerable in the current battlefield. The tank is an expensive rock outside of maneuver warfare against proper military formations, and the helicopter is only ever useful outside of proper war.

It's not useless, it's superfluous. That's two very different things.

I… prefer not to think about it too much. It's 18th-ish century europe in space, they hate each other, aircraft stalemates force the deploy of mechs, ECM prevents missiles to reach more than a few kilometers

Faction motivations are a real issue though, they just hate each other

That's why it's shit to PLAY. It's fun to WATCH, but it's not fun to make perfect decisions and then lose because of dice rolls

When 40k makes more sense than your setting then you really need to start questioning the quality of your writing.

In 40k the factions don't just hate each other. Well, okay, they do, to a genocidal degree even, but at least there is an ideological reason behind it.

The Imperium is a theocracy that believes conquering the galaxy and wiping out all xenos is their God given mandate.

The Eldar are salty at everyone because they fucked themselves into near extinction and are butthurt "upstart" races now rule what was once theirs.

Chaos is somewhat more complex, because there are very different reasons why each of the Traitor Legions became traitors, and the Chaos Gods are merely a reflection of the sentient that give them form and purpose.

Orks are a biological weapon gone rouge, and the Tau are just fucking retarded.

The biggest reason for the proliferation of mechs in battletech is their adaptability: Being able to traverse and function in pretty much any kind of terrain, whether it be a desert, airless vacuum, lush forest, hive city - a mech can handle all of it in much the same way infantry can.

So if you want a rapid reaction or invasion force that deploys primarily via space, you want that force to be adaptable, fast, and easy to resupply logistically. Mechs would compose the backbone of skirmishes, first strikes, feints, etc. - with the help of a dropship, you can quickly redeploy around a planet faster than conventional defense forces can organize an effective response, which keeps you from getting bogged down by numerically superior forces and lets you fight on your own terms. Thus, you end up with the home team trying to counter you with their own dropship and mechs, and thus the focus of mech vs mech combat in the setting.

There's less chance of your mechs getting stuck in terrain the way a tank would, and in the latter eras of battletech the mechs can carry up-armored infantry (battle armor) into the fight just like regular IFV's with infantry.

The entire strategic concept is fast maneuver both tactically and strategically, with moderate firepower.

This also provides a reason for the distinction between aerodynamic plane-shaped dropships and the egg-shaped ones. Being able to more efficiently operate within an atmosphere at 'low' altitude allows rapid redeployment while avoiding anti-orbital weapons, but with the disadvantage of being much slower.

I already explicitly laid out multiple things mechs do better, and how, and why. I can't help you if you choose to close your eyes and plug your ears about it.

NEVER SHILL

NEVER!

works for linux?

THIS HAHAHA

So can a fucking tank, and even better because tracks offer a much wider surface.

The whole point of tracked vehicles is their cross country performance compared to wheeled ones.

And you're still ignoring the wear and tear such marches would put on the joints. There's a reason why tanks go long distance on trains and special trucks.

You and I have very different understandings of logistics. Mechs are incredibly complex machines, they are anything but easy to resupply.

That has fuckall to do with mechs and everything to do with orbital superiority.

That explains fucking nothing. Why are mechs more logistically easy to supply when their method of locomotion makes them the most complex machines around? The more moving parts a given mechanism has, the more prone to failure it is, and the heavier a burden it puts on the logistical chain.

Why? A mech is just as heavy, if not heavier, than a tank, while having far less surfaces to evenly spread its weight, and on top of that it's a machine manned by a single person, while a tank can simultaneously move, select targets, aim and fire, all the while maintaining battlefield awareness, specifically because it has more crew members.

Why not just use the infantry for terrain a tank can't move throughout like we've been doing for the past century?

Again, this has fuckall to do with mechs and everything to do with the fact you have dropships that can ferry troops around quickly.

How do I get into Battletech? I would play a Mechwarrior but I don't have a computer atm. Anywhere to start with the books?

What's the point of them again?

A tank on two legs just begging for a proper tank to slam a SABOT round into the cockpit?

Nigger, the one thing you never do is attempt to justify mechs using IRL logic. It doesn't work and makes you look both extremely autistic and extremely stupid.

Nobody is seriously bothering making mechs IRL for a reason.

If you're losing because of dice rolls, you aren't making "perfect decisions".

Here's some veteran advice: Stop playing the to-hit numbers and block LoS entirely. The enemy cannot kill what they cannot see. Secondly, always have backup strategies and be able to deal with shit on-the-fly. Thirdly, never give up just because it looks grim.

I see a lot of new players do stupid things like running a mech 2 hexes in the open, then complaining about the stupid RNG when someone headshots that mech, as if the actual problem wasn't them running 2 hexes for a +0 movement modifier on top of a +2 shooting penalty.

Quite frankly battletech is the most skill-intensive tabletop game I've ever played, and the skill floor is pretty high as a result. Even when you think you've figured it all out, you haven't; did you know you can run for a +4, and then go prone for another +1 modifier? Do it in a light or heavy woods for another +1 or +2 and now your opponent is looking at a 40% chance to hit even if he's a clanner standing still at short range to you.

I've even seen someone do this tactic with depth-1 water hexes.

Battletech is full of tricks like this that your average player never even sees as a possibility in a regular game.

P.S. Always plan 2 moves with a unit: Consider the 'best' movement option. Then consider another 'best' but different movement option. Half the time the second option ends up being the better one.

Outgunned by tanks, but more maneuverable than them, and still able to kill them.
Not outmaneuvered by helicopters - I already explained how and why.
Do what power armor infantry do, but bigger, faster, and can carry power armor infantry into combat to bring greater weight of firepower to a fight.

Like I said, you refuse to listen to anything and just plug your ears and go "LALALALA"

What is the point of discussing this further with you if you think literally the only things that matter in combat is how much armor and how big a gun is? Tanks can be taken out by infantry with RPG's, Helicopters can be taken out by MANPADS, that doesn't make tanks or helicopters useless.

There is nothing on the modern battlefield that is magically impervious to weapons, there are a lot of considerations beyond just sheer firepower and armor.

If someone comes up with an excuse to why the average heavy mech can resist 10 times more damage than a tank, then the setting would be acceptable. But why can you blow up a tank with a ppc and even the lightest of mech can take a few hits before going down?

This, please I couldnt find a single book anywhere and I've been wanting to read the warrior trilogy for months

I got started literally by jumping into a mekwars server using the megamek client and playing the game without even knowing or understanding the rules.

I learned the game by osmosis; first I read some novels (without even knowing anything about the setting or game), then pirated the rulebooks, played more games, then bought the rulebooks, played more games, bought more novels, started using solaris skunkwerks to design and play with my own mechs, played more games, and then started getting into more competitive megamek matches.

I'm literally a noob to the setting, I've only been playing for about 6 years or so. Reading about it for maybe 12 years. There's other people who've been in it for 20+

So far the best of the battletech books I've read were the Jade Phoenix Trilogy, would highly recommend them - honestly consider those three books up there with a lot of other sci-fi classics; starship troopers, forever war, armor, etc.

It's entirely due to the game mechanics - let's just set this straight up: I may be a mech fag but I fully recognize that Battletech gives mechs a huge advantage over tanks/vehicles that they wouldn't have in a more realistic setting.

Now mechanically in the game, tanks suck for two reasons:
- They have very few crit locations
- They're stupidly easy to immobilize

They're great for three other reasons:
- Fucking massive firepower without overheating
- Cheap as fuck
- Shittons of armor

What typically happens in Battletech is a mech gets a lucky crit on a tank, immobilizes it, and then just ignores it for the rest of the match either by staying at med-long range from it, or blocking LoS, which are both easy since the tank cannot move to compensate. When a tank absolutely must die, all the firepower tends to get funneled into a single armor facing, rather than spread out across the multitude of hit locations on a mech. So every time you hit a tank from the front, that's taking out the front armor – every time you hit a mech, that can go into the legs, the left torso, the right arm, the center torso… etc.

Tanks are still extremely useful in battletech and if you know what you're doing you can wreck a mech force with them, but they're still best used as a supporting element to your own mech forces.

most of the planets in battletech are sparsely populated, the core worlds, near the center of the IS, are the only ones with billions of people. less planets would make sense though, it's only 1000 years in the future.

the books are great.
sarna.net/wiki/List_of_BattleTech_print_novels

Now, if only the game wasn't impossible to find a playerbase for and the bookkeeping and massive amounts of die rolls didn't clunk the system the fuck up.

here you go
volafile.io/get/T9JQP-yIw65B/BattleTech - 08608 - Warrior En Garde - Michael A. Stackpole.rtf

Megamek takes care of 99% of the book keeping for you.

It's a complicated game, and the transition to computers solves most of the issues arising from it.

I'm pretty hopeful for the new game; so far it looks like they're sticking to tabletop rules pretty closely. Although I'm really not sure if their new turn system is a good idea. On the face of it, I don't think it is, but I'll have to see how it plays out.

Generally speaking the game still looks like it'll play like regular battletech so far. Can't really say for sure until I'm playing it myself.

mediafire.com/download/2qulx4l3stxxctq/BattleTech_-_08609_-_Warrior;_Riposte_-_Michael_A._Stackpole.rtf
mediafire.com/download/2bpg3ycm99xwkar/BattleTech_-_08610_-_Warrior;_Coupé_-_Michael_A._Stackpole.rtf
the other two

You're correct. Doesn't solve the playerbase problem though.

I too am excited for this new game. New turn order system seems good to me. What do you dislike about it?

I think it's in danger of simplify the combat, and make backstabbing too effective. In particular the way he was apparently able to queue up two simultaneous backstabs with a light mech - there are light mechs out there that can absolutely fuck up a unit with just one backstab. Give them two and they'll kill things left and right. It's also ambiguous so far whether or not their new system will have problems with some of the more classic battletech turn-order issues.

In more detail: there's a lot about battletech that revolves around turn order and movement. One of the pitfalls in current battletech rules (that is largely fixed by additional rules) is that weight of numbers gives you too much effectiveness in a fight.

For example: You can 'box-in' a mech with 100bv hovertanks by moving the tanks into the front arc to block movement. This cuts the mechs' possible movement options and modifiers to basically nothing, which eliminates the benefit of maneuverability and allows you to fight in terms of attrition. Basically nullifies every advantage from having light/medium/heavy mechs and turns the game into assault mech slugfests.

There's initiative rules that force numerically superior forces to move more units at once so the opposing player can take advantage (e.g. backstabbing) if they win init. So if it's 10 vs 3 you get something like: AAAAABAAABAAB; now this was implemented because without init balancing you instead get: ABABABAAAAAAA - so A gets to move last even though B won initiative, but the fix still ends up actually assisting the numerical force in the end, due to the moved/not moved dynamic. A unit which has moved, cannot react to anything. A unit which has moved, can react.

By being able to block a unit's movement, you take this choice away from your opponent and force the move/not move decision for him. So if he has a light mech waiting to move last so it can backstab your assault mech that plopped itself in partial cover, you nullify that advantage entirely when you drop your hovercraft in that light mechs' front arc and nullify the movement advantage or possibly even immobilize it (if you cover all hex directions) and basically make it fucking dead before the other player even had a chance to do anything.

It's a bit long-winded, but basically this turn-order and movement shit can get a little complicated. Battletech has pre-existing rules to compensate for these issues (in the above case though, it's generally limited to someone moderating the game and telling you to fuck off with your bullshit), and introducing a new movement/turn order system without taking the old issues into consideration is "dangerous" so to speak for the gameplay flow.

Basically, I'm just wary of them changing up something that's broke, but a known quality of broke and fixed up with duct tape already. This sort of stuff is generally something you'd only even be aware of if you've played the game in some competitive fashion and had to deal with intelligent players going out of their way to 'game the game', and while the one fellow seems to understand CBT rules and clearly plays megamek, I'm not so certain he's had first-hand experience dealing with player bullshit.

HYPE

This, right here. The game will be shit and not-battletech if they don't include any vehicles or infantry, like power armor or jump infantry.

The alpha video they showed had two striker light-tanks (armed with LRM's) in it.

So vehicles are confirmed. We don't know about regular infantry yet (I'd hope so), but battle armor are right out because of the timeline - they're tech that doesn't get reintroduced until the clan invasion.

Comstar and the great houses should still have some old nighthawks kicking around, but they're rare and basically 'specops' tier, not the sort of thing you'd regularly see on the battlefield, and not exactly comparable to battle armor, either.

its going to be 3028.
All the old unseen stuff (everything directly from anime) will be in it.

Well, you have to account for the fact that it was kinda hashed-out in the 1980's. Yeah, not everything was pre-planned. The clans were only added to make the virtual simulator mechs apart of the in game lore. That was about 10 years after the first edition of Battletech. Wiesman, the guy that made it all, said he planned it kinda like an author would plan a book. so characters "go missing" or "into hiding" so that would put them out of the main picture and allow him to create a new threat that has a history aside from pulling shit out of his ass. Another thing you have to take into account is that this is a product that is to be sold. No one could figure out if it would do well or not at first. So starting BT up, or anything new, is a jump in the deep end. They could've sat down one day and said "Ok were actually staying afloat here, might as well hash more of our setting out."

WMD's are used a lot in lore. Shit there is even a mech that can fire a nuke. The fluff reason for a lack of WMD's was because they had 4 inter-galactic wars after their Space UN fell. And those were only in the span of 200 years. The first Succession war killed trillions and destroyed numerous planets.
Accounted for, once space travel got cheap and people could go to Earth 2.0 they fucking left. Technology is on the decline due to warfare and people leaving known space. On most planets the people live in a quasi-1900's society with the tech of that era.
Yeah, aside from space "ethnicity/culture" they are blank. They do have some uniqueness to them. Like the CapCons are a totalitarian state that is heavily inspired by Stalinist communism, they are the smallest nation and thus have to cooperate with the two lesser powers beneath it so they can gang up on the big guys. The FWL is kinda like America but with more shit to buy and every state has more power and they use that power to try and either split off or become the group in charge.
But no, aside from nationalism and how each leader wants to be the next dude in charge of everyone; the factions are just flavors.

I'm cautious about this as much as you guys are. First thought when I saw the thread was "oh fuck its too soon!" Saging for retarded bullshit.

...

Weebs are the worst thing that's ever happened to mechs.

You must not have played any MechWarrior games.

It's not out yet. You haven't even played it. You can't know this at all.

There are literally people on this very board right at this precise moment who believe japan invented "mechs" in fiction".

I love things like Gundam and ZoE, but I'd agree with you.
Have you ever see the type of people who think the pile of absolute bullshit known as Eva is a good mech franchise? They don't even care about the robots, no matter how shitty they might be, instead they only care about the female characters to claim them as their waifu.

That's because mecha anime isn't about mechs, it's about characters.
And characters suck shit because japs can't write to save their lives.
So in the end you have neither hardware military porn nor a good story.
Everything is terrible.

...

And MW3 still holds the trophy for the best vidya intro of all time.

amazing intro as always.

Good to see some reasonable anons in here.

Except what you outlined is based on a fantastically naive understanding of the capabilities of what you're comparing to and the engineering and physics involved.

eternally in your debt, user man

If only I could run it, graphics glitch and makes it impossible to play otherwise runs fine

Anyone knows if it runs properly on a win98 virtual box?

mediafire.com/download/5zp5tpdfr22662d/mw3Loader0.01.zip
Makes it work and crash much less on win7.

I find the ones who are absolutely naive about the engineering and physics involved are the people who are utterly convinced of the superiority of wheeled locomotion over limbed locomotion in spite of the fact their own bodies, and in fact almost all other life on the planet, have limbs.

The way the anti-mech fags act, you'd think anything with legs would be regularly tripping over themselves, sinking to the center of the earth from 'high ground pressure', and falling apart from being 'too complex'.

It's a joke. Anti-mech fags have never understood kinematics - limbs didn't evolve for no reason. They're just about the most adaptable form of mobility you can get, and they allow everything from throwing, to climbing, to running and jumping. Wheels excel in ONE environment: Flat high-friction surfaces. Anywhere else and they will be outperformed by limbed locomotion.

It didnt fix the glitch but it added rainbow graphics
Thanks anyway

What are you playing it on?

win7, gtx card, both issues for the game from what I've read
I tried all fixes I could find but nothing works, apparently modern gpus cant handle older directx versions, running it on a win98 virtual box seems to fix that

Have you tried switching to hardware/software modes in game?

huh, right. shit I didnt think of that

Thanks, it doesnt look really good with all graphic settings on lowest but at least it works. Im gonna try to run it on win98 anyway to see if I can use my gpu

How the fuck would this ever describe mechs?

Like, in every fucking way it's the opposite. Take any vehicle. Chances are, if you have a spare wheel, it can be used to replace any wheel on the vehicle, because they're probably all the same. Will a spare left leg fit on the right side? probably not. How many powered degrees of freedom are there? How does it track the current position of it's limbs. how many fucking wires and cables are you managing. It really seems to me that most of the work you'd have to do on one should be done at the depot.

Or the one that always gets me: If it's really so much more capable off-road than any other vehicle, how do you get the supplies to it? Do you march on back to the roads every couple hours? Do you have a mech fuel truck?

If you don't need fuel, then why not an electric multicopter that flies around all day instead?

And?
Do you have a point anywhere in that void between your ears?

Anyone played the Alpha yet? because if this played like Hawken or Titanfall where the Mechs are just giant FPS soldiers, than fuck it.

Oy, the irony!

Dude, everything has been done before. I'll settle for good instead of "original".

How the fuck would it describe anything else?

Spare parts are carried in the dropship, and dropships themselves have salvage teams at hand for quickly getting wrecks off the battlefield - both friendly and enemy. The loading deck is essentially a giant mechanics shop. The mechwarrior has food/water for a week or more, some mechs even have built-in toilets/cots. The nuclear fusion reactor can run for literally years while powering energy weapons that consume no ammo. The only thing that keeps mechs from going for months without any resupply at all is maintenance - which is taken care of by a whole slew of technicians and mechanics in the dropships that carry the mechs around everywhere. Even so, mechanical failures are worked around - a broken leg actuator doesn't mean your mech is completely immobilized - unlike losing a couple tires on a wheeled vehicle. It's also harder for mechs to aget stuck in any terrain through regular operation due to inherent differences in locomotion design. As a thought experiment: Consider how you would get out of mud if you were plopped into it knee deep.

Airlift or dropship. They don't even need to land the dropship - there's disposable drop pods and jump jet packs that can be used (from orbit even) if necessary. Hell, they can even drop a pack like this so the mech itself can jump up to the dropship - yet another benefit of mechs having limbs is being able to utilize heavy equipment like this without the need for extra support vehicles.

They still need fuel, but for how long it lasts, it's not really a consideration. In any case aircraft are not able to take and hold ground. A VTOL also has to sacrifice a lot of weight just to stay airborne - it's less armed and armored, though faster. They make good scouts, but also suffer from being relatively easy to spot for nearby ground forces - terrain's a nice thing to have around you if you want to hide or take cover.

From what they showed of the game so far, it's basically tabletop battletech with some rule changes. If it sticks true to the actual tabletop game, then it'll play something like chess with pieces that shoot each other.

What garbage

To add, the closest mech game would probably be the mech commander series, or maybe something like Front Mission 3.

Okay, I'm intrigued, but still wary, they'll eventually go full merchant, go Early Access, fuck up optimization, and the fucking microtransactions, but I'll keep an eye out for this game.

Effecient how? You'd need easily twice the weight of the mech force in tanks alone, power armor are harmless unless you are in a city.
And more pressingly, in battletech the main bottleneck for the size of your military force will be the dropships you can move it in and the limited number of jumpships for moving those dropships. Even the biggest and most expensive dropships that cost far more than the entire force they are carrying, will only haul 36 mechs or tanks at a time. Thus, any military planning an invasion must make the most of every single machine they bring, since they can only severely limited number of machines.
A planetary militia who doesn't need to worry about dropship mobility can spam those little tanks to their hearts content and be dangerous doing so. But they will need to field many times more troops and material than the invading force to threaten it.
So tanks aren't more effective in terms of fighting power per unit or in terms of strategic mobility. The only way they are more effective, is in cost per unit. If you think this is the most important factor in a military vehicle, consider those modern jetfighters that cost 150 million a piece compared to their old WWII predecessors. The latter are far more effective in terms of cost per unit…

There's tons of motivations for the factions in battletech. But they change with every war.
Wobbies burned the galaxy not because they are evil fundies. Their army was supposed to be a gift for the reborn Star league as they used it to end the threat of the clans forever. Then the star league went tits up and the wobbies threw a fit over it, using said army to burn the rest of the inner sphere instead as revenge for the other groups pulling out of the star league.
And that's just an over simplification. There's far more involved.
The clans as a whole where trying to bring back star league, but they had about 20 different ideas about how it should be done and tend to get violent about their political debates. Hence, when they invaded the IS with operation REVIVAL they seemed unified, but quickly descended into infighting and petty squabbles.
Every succession war has its own political reasons for breaking out, every country had their own reasons beyond "I want to conquer the galaxy".
Most of it is buried deep in the history of the BT universe, but its nowhere near as dumbed down and oversimplified as the 40k universe is, so it can be a bit overwhelming to get into it all.

Get over it. Battletech mechs have never been plodding hulks - most of the mechwarrior games have done a real disservice to their depiction (and so has much of the original battletech artwork quite frankly). They're supposed to be animal-like in their movement, more reminiscent of Big Dog or the humanoid robots from Neill Blomkamp's movies than some archaic 1950's notion of a robot.

megamek.info/downloads
Yup.
Windows, Linux and Mac. You will need Java to make it work though.

Never forget what could have been.

What?
Nigga, tank threads are easily repaired and a multi-wheeled vehicle can drive without a wheel or two.
A bipedal mecha is toast is it's leg gets damaged.

Any defense force stationed in a region would be suited and adapted to that region.
Also, a planetary invasion in which you hold no important location is pointless. What's the point of the mech being more mobile in a swamp than a tank, when there's nothing there? If you're going to take enemy cities and bases, the enemy tanks will be there and they'll be able to manouvre quite fine.

I want a mech game where it caters to every kinda mech fan, where you're lost in deep space in a whatever kinda space ship you pick which has a selection of different vehicles ranging from mechs to submarines

I also want it to have everything actually do something instead of just details and I want to have to walk around inside inorder to get the the parts of the space ship, mech or vehicle of my choice

Bitch, don't make me step on you

How angry would you get at a lowpoly mech game?

...

Not at all. I love the first Armored Core.
Why?

minimalist white/grey/teal/orange low-poly?

so long as the normal aren't god awful it should be fine and there's an actual texture of course

Considering that the one place mechs have more advantages over tanks than any other, is in urban area's, this point really isn't in the tanks favour.
In a city, buildings will block most of your lines of fire, so a mech isn't markedly more vulnerable than a tank despite its larger profile.
When cornering though, a mech has a huge advantage in that it can poke just the arm with the gun it wants to use on a target around said corner, around the corner. A tank needs to move the whole vehicle clear of the building, exposing itself to return fire long before its turret clears the corner. Thus, a bipeal mech is better able to use cover in urban combat.
Mech legs are far better for crossing large piles of rubble and debris from destroyed buildings than a tanks treds. The tank can't get over any pile of rubble much more than 1 meter high.
The legs also have the advantage of lifting the body of the mech clear of the ground, so enemy infantry will have to try and climb up its legs if they want to place bombs on anything other than armored feet. Tanks are vulnerable to molotovs, improvised explosives and tons of other infantry shenanigans in urban combat.
The mech has arms that can move and fire independently of eachother, allowing it to fight targets on all sides of it. Another big advantage against infantry trying to surround it in urban combat. This also makes it less vulnerable to fire, allow it to walk through burning buildings or areas.

And urban areas, like bases, cities and other vital infrastructure on a planet that must be held, is where the mechs do their best work.

And I find it amusing that people are convinced of the inferiority of wheels they were embraced because they overcome the inferiority of limbs.

I'm not anti-mech. I'm just against faggots trying to present mecha as hard scifi. I'm also against hard scifi because it's concentrated autism

It depends how the colour is used, you can make really nice-looking stuff with limited colour palettes.

huh, I thought half the appeal of mechs was steely-gray metal plates with sutble greeble and grimdark setting

Anti-mech fags?
Are you really that dellusional to think people here hate mecha? Well, some, maybe.
I love the hell out of mecha, but I also poses common sense and basic understanding of physics and engineering.

Animals don't have wheeled locomotion because they are organic life-forms. You don't seem them having jet engines, now do you?
human engineering blows biological evolution out of the water in terms of specialized performance.

Can you name any winged animal that can compare to a jet fighter, or even a prop one?
Can you name any animal that can can match the speed and carry capacity of a wheeled vehicle?

Yeah, just like you're utterly and completely immobilized if you break an arm or leg. I swear to fuck it's like anti-mech fags don't even realize they have their own set of limbs and live in some collective delusion where they move around on a pair of literal fucking wheels.

Deployment takes time. Cheap options - like rail or convoy - are slow. Expensive options - like your own dropship - means moving small and adaptable forces around to counter the enemy's small and adaptable force.

You cannot just magically move 600 tanks a thousand kilometers in the span of a week. It takes a fucking week just to pack them up, another week to unpack them. Dropships do the whole thing, for a much smaller force, in a matter of hours. A full-scale invasion is difficult and gets logistically intense, but most of the fighting in the setting is just skirmishing. Hit and run attacks rather than all-out campaigns.

The concept of local superiority really seems like something completely lost on you.

we talking starfox or megaman legends here?

I like mechs of any kind but you should make sure that the style of your mechs isn't god awful

i thought mechs had to be somewhat humanoid e.g. human torso shape, 4 limbs, vert spine, distinct 'head'

And a mech having its leg blown off is better?

The leg has a smaller footprint, so to speak, making it in effect a smaller target to hit for the mine. Since the feet only hit the ground intermittently the only way a mine hits that mech is if it steps on the specific spot the mine is in. A tank covers the ground much more closely and over a larger area. The mine just has to sit in any place along the tanks path to hit it.
Further, the mechs foot can be armored much more easily than wheels or tracks, making it more likely to survive the explosion, even if it hits a mine.

You say these things, and yet you don't have the first fucking clue how biological systems actually function mechanically.

Your legs are literally springs. They're more energy efficient in almost every situation vs wheels.

You have to throw out everything we know of biology to think a wheel magically defeats a limb no matter what, in every possible situation. Wheels are fantastic - ONLY when you have flat high-friction surfaces to work with.

We aren't trying to make robots that wheel around the battlefield, doofus. We're trying to make them move like humans and animals - because that shit fucking works and has worked for the better part of 300 million years. It's efficient and adaptable and even at the small scale can achieve high speeds. You scale a cheetah up to the size of a small mech and 120km/h won't be an issue, and it'll do it over terrain a wheeled vehicle couldn't hope to match it over. You ever see what happens to a car that hits a boulder at 120km/h? It sure as fuck doesn't stumble and recover or catch itself from falling over. The only part of the vehicle meant to make contact with the ground is the wheel itself, it just amazes me that people like you exist who cannot see how limiting that is and how limbed locomotion has serious advantages when you fucking have limbs to see for yourself.

The mind fucking boggles.

just so long as it's imitating something organic it's probably still in the greater mecha
region. planes and some wheeled nonsense don'y really count though.

Can you hop around your room on one foot for me real quick?

even going down hill?

and why is it when applying leg muscles to a wheel we achieve greater speed, range and carrying capacity all at the same time?

you don't need to be anal about it tbh, as I said I like all kinda mechs

Try doing it offroad without even a trail. See how far you get vs someone hiking the same route on foot.

Steel Battalion has the best mech designs of all time

And lord help you if you run into any kind of steep hill, shifty shale rock, or water and mud.

If you had an ounce of a clue, you'd see where robotic development is going right now.

Here's a huge hint: It's not wheeled robots.

it's also not giant manned robots

I doubt we'll see giant manned robots ever, more likely it'll be something more like titanfall-sized at most and completely automated.

Current developments are just trying to get limbed locomotion and balance working, if there's any development done on something the size of a battlemech it's easily 50+ years away.

Needle thin joints everywhere.
Exposed joints, missle launcher and ammo box on the gun.
How is that thing supposed to survive being shot by anything?

No. Do you compare Pizza to high class food and say they are equally good?

play the game to figure that out

What part of "important planetary location will already be defended" are you missing?

And what's the max speed of locomotion, compared to a wheel?

But I didn't say that, faggot. But wheels are generally superior to military purposes - speed, easier logistics and carry capacity, less prone to damage and failure compared to mechanical legs.

You know, "just scale things up" doesn't work.
Or do you think if we scale the ant up, it will lift 50 tons?

Most organic being on legs don't recover, but just falls. And if you think something weighing 100 tons is going to instantly stop it's momentum (even if the pilot or the balance system or the mechanical system could do it that fast…and they won't) like a 70kg human , I got a bridge to Neverland to sell you.

once we get a solid system going for robots to actually be able to do what humans can do and more then we'll see actual mechs in development

He was bitching cause he did put shit up but nobody was interested, but are interested in kekscammer shit instead.

Still no reason to bitch though

You really only need to armor the core, tbh.

Limbs can be made modular and relatively disposable so you can easily replace them. Saves a lot of weight that way, too. Probably it'd be something like: Small arms protection for limbs, 30mm protection for the engine/cockpit. Active protection system as a whole as well.

The hard part's usually just hitting a target to begin with.

The entire thrust behind the development is urban environments. Getting at things inside buildings without smashing everything and risking soldiers or civilians is the entire gap needing to be filled. Multi-story robots are just as bad at that as tanks are.

Sure it does, I mean as long as the design is sound and you compensate

In what conditions? On what terrain, what gravity? Bottom line - it's sci-fi, and you don't shit on Star Wars just because some laser specs don't make any sense at all or whatever. you'd shit on it for the shit writing but I digress

Plenty of different designs in Battletech, the bipedal models are just some of the best known ones.
But yeah, it would be cool if they added some spider bots, tracked super heavies or some of those fucking transformers. Or even some melee pods

Yeah, wheeled/track vehicles are sooooo doomed…

No, it doesn't.
Square cube law. Weight. Momentum. Intertia. Material stress. Al lof these things matter and they change as scale changes.

You notice how fast and nimble small critters are, but the bigger you get the slower they become? Elephants aren't exactly known for their speed and agility, are they?

now show me something heavy going up a steep slope

that was the point being made when nerds started trying to argue that it was totally realistic and likely.

That assumes you're only ever going to fight peacekeeping missions - essentially just putting down revolts and rebellions and never actual conventional war. Once you look at conventional war, the ability to maneuver heavier firepower through "impassable" terrain at similar or faster speeds to armored vehicles, with the tenacity of infantry, the entire strategic game changes.

More importantly, infantry are at the verge of becoming useless in conventional war - with mobile mortars and rapidly deployed artillery allowing pinpoint accurate artillery fire within tens of minutes. Actual gun engagements get more and more rare since it's easier for everyone involved to just launch mortars shells at a target. You have to keep infantry moving constantly, and that simply isn't humanly possible to keep up with. It's why everything is going mechanized now - without IFV's to keep you moving around, you're literally just airstrike/artillery bait to anyone with interlinked artillery and UAV assets.

Battle armor will do a lot to help solve that problem for infantry, making them less susceptible to artillery, more mobile so they can avoid getting hit in the first place, and better equipped to launch their own mortars at any enemy infantry they see. You don't even necessarily need much else past an exoskeleton that lets infantry slog along at a steady 10km/h for 12 hours straight.

Of course, but as battlefield priorities, manufacturing procedures or even base materials change it's only natural to try and build the biggest and baddest tank/battleship/whatever there is.
Obviously there comes a golden point to weight/size but it's hardly fair to assume that our limitations are the same as those of a far future sci-fi. and it's rather silly to try and debate/compare science with science-fiction

It was and still is, big part of it being cool is just how improbable some most of it is.

Neither are giraffes, and yet they can still reach 60km/h, just like a cheetah.
Because there's more to it than simply "Hurr legs can't go fast"

If organic muscle, bone and sinew can manage 60kmh, what can titanium, and carbon steel driven by a turbine engine do at the same size?

It absolutely is - as evidenced by life on earth. Limbed locomotion of robots is literally already happening, on robots designed for the military no less.

At some point we'll actually have battle armor or mechs and people like you will say, "No, it's fucking impossible, I refuse to believe it."

You know we haven't even mastered pseudo-lightweight robots managing to navigate a set of stairs right? Making one hop on one foot would be nothing short of a fucking miracle.

flesh grows stronger the more it's used, minerals on the other hand gets weaker

We aren't making giraffe mechs. All of the designs you've posted thus far show no signs of speed or fast mobility. The point of mechs (As they are being designed) is adaptability to terrain and being compact.

Bipedal mechs themselves are a bad idea in combat situations. Anything that can, not only be immobilized completely, but made useless or even destroyed just by targetting its lower limbs, is going to be worthless.

Guess we had a miracle happen no less than 5 years ago already.

I guess that makes all infantry and all vehicles useless.

Do you even listen to yourself?

you can apply the same logic to anything else

None of you got what Gurren Lagan's about.

It's satire on the whole genre. Only at the very start it disguises itself as something that takes itself a bit more serious.

What century are you posting from?

no it's a love letter to getter robo series

Heard of jumpjets? You know, one of the most common accessories in MW games?

Don't forget flexible and adaptable in gear as much as terrain and don't go Steiner and assume everyone uses exclusively assault mechs.
These fucking things are most often used for blitzing actions, flanking and pinpoint attacks. You'd still field infantry, AFV's and whatnot.

This looks like Battletech in NuXCOM

I kinda like it.

Not really. Infantry are entirely different from vehicles, especially in how they are wounded and how they can move around. Their lower top speed and agility is compensated for by compact size and adaptability to terrain. With mechs, you aren't really getting either advantage unless you scale them down to power-suit size or close to it. A mechs main advantage in combat would probably be resistance to small-arms fire and greater maneuverability/carrying capacity. That's why we're developing exoskeletons for soldiers, afterall. Although to me, I think it is an expensive idea and not very cost efficient in some ways.

Do you? You sound like an emotional woman.

Yes, kind of. Aiming to hamper the mobility of targets is key. But infantry are fragile regardless, and vehicles often compensate by having multiple wheels instead of just two (Military vehicles), or hiding them as well as possible such as with tanks. Even so, a tank without treads may be dead, but it can still shoot. A mech that loses a leg will likely fall over, rendering it incapable of firing effectively. Likewise, being a one-man operation may also be ineffective if the pilot is wounded.

Ah yes, I remember the mech assaults back in 'nam.

Here's the actual alpha gameplay video, which I don't think has been posted yet.

Be warned, one of the devs literally acts like he's 5, consider turning the volume down a bit.

that's just an assumption that engineers aren't smart enough to solve a obvious fault like that

I still get the flashbacks

Likewise. It wouldn't be at all difficult to prove to me that you can otherwise prevent an imbalance from happening in that case. Afterall, when people break their legs, they fall over. Bipedal bots will do the same. The only kind that does not so easily fall over are quadrupeds. But then, that wasn't at all what we were talking about.

of course but then why are you using assumptions to back your argument then?

How does that work? Do the guns on its arms magically stop working when the mech lies down or sits?

You are also assuming the leg will be severed clean off and not merely damaged. If the leg is only damaged, the mech can still limp on. If a tank throws a track, it isn't going anywhere.
Or the mech could just drag itself along by its arms. Its not fast or effective and will likely damage the arms, but it can still get to cover if available.

And its still easier to armor the legs of a robot than the tracks of a tank.

It's not an assumption. It's simply the given fact. Going off about how shit that isn't feasibly possible will be solved by someone else is a weak defense. Come on, tell me what exactly the advantages of Mechs are. Address my argument, you keep addressing less and less of it as I prove my points.

how is your assumptions facts? all your "points" have already been proven otherwise on a small scale we just need to wait till the large scale happens but it wont because it's a niche till it's proven to me more effective which we're slowly getting there

Nigger, it's a shit r/bait discussion to begin with

Nice grammar faggot. And, they mostly aren't assumptions.

The proof that mechs will have to be small and compact and not really mechs, nor intended for use in combat?

Jesus christ, we've been over this. Another user already explained how scale works to you.

We aren't, though. None of this is conceptually new or a surprise.

pretty much this

where did the mech touch you user?

Your 'arguments' have been addressed throughout the thread multiple times, the advantages of mechs pointed out multiple times. You just refuse to accept that there's any other option than mechs being useless - apparently derived out of the fact that legs and arms are inherently useless.

It's basically just amounted to: "Wheels are the best because they are, legs suck because they suck". This happens literally every time the "discussion" comes up. You literally cannot get past the idea that legs are useful for anything, in spite of the fact you walk around using a pair of them every day.

I really don't understand how people like you exist.

Coming from his dedication of trying to shit every recent mech thread in the same exact way in a bad, bad place

Indeed it seems so

moving on, has anyone played perpetuum is and how close is it to EVE online?

I bet

Yup, you'll have to accept that, my ribbitor friend

I don't go in these often. I wanted to see what th enext battletech game was like and got an autistic rant about how >muh mecha is da future!
But thanks for showing everyone how scarred you are from the past arguments with similar anons.

Except they haven't. Never has it been disputed that bigger mechs (Beyond say, the arbitrary height of 2.5 Meters) are shit and useless. It has also not been disputed that mechs are extremely vulnerable compared to any other armored vehicle. As for their speed, same thing. You assume, through no demonstration, that a mech can run as fast as a giraffe or cheetah because they both have legs.

Nice strawman. Point to where I said that, please?

Yet another strawman. Please, point out where I specified that wheels are superior. They are obviously capable of higher speeds in ideal conditons but are less adaptable thanks to the laws of physics. Or are you going to dispute that?

Strawman yet again, and please, point to the specific post where I said this or anything like it.

How ironic.

Seeing that you're a faggot of some taste and culture, do you reckon Harebrained is gonna pull a DMS on us or are they jumping straight to DF (playable) tier?

user, why don't you respect the robot?

in ww1 everyone thought light tanks were the future every country was making their own super light types and even lighter ones called tankettes

ww2 came along and prove otherwise, that heavy tanks were the future of armoured warfare till after the cold war where it is became all about dem super sonic jets yo for awhile till today where it's all a bloody mixture of everything almost under the sun, where we have lightweight apcs with turrets that shoot RPGS out of mid flight, where we have tanks with fucking explosives as their armour because some madman thought "hey you know what stops an explosion? another explosion" AND HE WAS RIGHT

Now show me a mech weighting as a tank going up that slope.
Heck, show me an elephant that could make the climb

This entire discussion started precisely because of "realism of mecha". Don't fucking move the goalposts.
The "it's fiction" argument isn't an argument, since it can be applied as a blanket to anything and everything.

So far, not much. and a giraffe is light for it's size. Mecha are as heavy as any tank, if not heavier.
Let's talk about nimble. Again, an elephant that is only a fraction of a tanks weight. What's it's speed and mobillity?

So far, not much.

wounded soldiers have other soldiers that can drag/carry them to safety, and the fall itself won't do any real damage. They can also crawl and fire even without a leg.

Heck, show me an elephant that could make the climb

No.
When 100 tons of robot falls on it's face, you think it will be undamaged?
You think it will be able to move and fire as easiyl as a human?

Also, no ti's not easier. Armoring the leg of a robot requires MORE armor. Bigger surface area. All that armor makes legs a lot heavier. Meaning movement becomes more difficult, as greater mass increases the inertia/momentum and a more powerful engine is required - and even that can only compensate for speed, not inertia.

I don't understand how people like you exist.

You clearly cannot comprehend the issues of scale, material stress or any engineering issues.
Nor the fact that bipedal locomotion has disadvantages.

You cannot comprehend that even if you could build a mech of that size, it would neither look nor behave how you would expect.

...

Not even close.

The car hill was steeper and it was sand/dirt, without grass and trees to increase traction.

There aren't issues here. Take a look at an airliner sometime.

You also have the considerably different weights in place. Although a mecha would need to have a very stable base to not fall over/tipover with ease, it'd also become very slow by that same convention, and wouldn't be able to use the advantage of a heavily armored upper body or a heavy upper body in general, because it risks the lower body's stability. Unless you armor the legs of the mecha considerably, which would reduce its speed and maneuverability; The only thing it really had going for it.

Like I said, Mechs would be small, more power-armor sized if they were going to be useful at all. Otherwise, there's just no practical battlefield application for them.

...

You keep digging a hole. You can clearly see the elephant is struggling to climb a (very small and not too steep) hill. And as mentioned, it weighs far, far less than a mech would.

you can agree though a tank would not be able to

Depends on the tank, but for the most part, very unlikely to manage a hill as in

show me some footage then nigga

Feels good.

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It's a mix of both I guess. A satirizing love letter.

has this actually happened yet?

you clearly haven't watched anything getter then since it's alot more over the top then TTGL

it already looks like a day1 purchase to me faggot

All these boston dynamics videos just show that they still haven't figured out how to accurately replicate the physical features that organisms use to walk on legs and keep balance. We don't need locking joints to stay standing and we don't need a gyrostabilizer to keep balanced.

But even so, these machines are remarkable for their ability to translate the input of location into an accurate output of motion and correction.

You have two of them in your head goofus

Maybe you do.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semicircular_canals

Don't need em.

oh shit we got an advanced human user here

looks like they're missing reactor core breaches right now.

i like doing too much damage to a mech and it turns into a mini nuke.

Do they use granular jamming on the legs?

That only happens if you get 3+ reactor crits in one round of fire and roll a 10+ on the engine explosion roll, which iirc is 16.7% chance

Thanks user, you have made it plenty clear you do not understand the square-cube law, now where's your argument for large mechs?

Square cube law doesn't exist as some kind of catch-all phrase for you to declare everything invalid except what you say.

You're throwing it around in much the same way as if I said tanks aren't possible because of the square cube law; it's nonsense. If you're going to cite a mathematical term like this, then you'd better provide some actual math showing how and why, instead of parroting it like a crutch for your lack of arguments.

Actually, it kinda of is in this case. If you understood physics (Evident as to why you are a mechfag) you would easily be able to grasp how things change with scale. What works at a certain size doesn't work at others. hence, why ants are able to lift several times their body weight, but, say, humans can't. Or why fleas can jump ridiculously far for their size, but large animals can't, just as examples. As size changes, so do the dynamics. Your vision of mecha, from what we've seen of your posts, is completely impractical, if even possible.

Nigger you're the one who keeps detracting further and further and failing to address any arguments presented. Seriously, go back to reddit where you can jerk off with other mechfags.

Why does the Marauder looks so wierd?

I'd argue that mechs in urban enviroments are as vulnerable to infantry as tanks.

That doesn't even invalidate what said ,unlike what you claimed, wheel are still more efficient than legs.

That sounds like a bold claim.
Yes there are a ton of issues with infantery and their use currently, just think of the curent equimpent load, but useless? I don't see that happening in this century.

Conventional symmetric warfare is still going to happen in the future.

Some vulnerability to rpg's and the like perhaps, but not to PBI's climbing on to it to light engine intakes on fire with molotovs and such. Reaching anything over the feet will require the PBI's to try and scale the legs of the mech, which, especially if its moving, may be a lot easier said than done.
Between its sensors on the head, gun cams and any other sensors located around the mech to let the pilot know where he's putting its feet, backing up etc. will make it easier to spot infantry trying to get close to the mech than it would be for a tankcrew. And the heigh lets a mech look in windows on multiple floors when searching for infantry, unlike a tank that can only look at street level.
Infantry still have a lot of advantage, but the mech would be more flexible and have more options for fighting infantry than a tank would in an urban environment.
Hell, if you put a small remotecontrolled turrets or sensor pods on a mechs hands and it can check any room it can reach with said hand for hostile infantry, and if its a turret with a machinegun, kill them too. A useful ability for any machine supporting infantry in urban combat.

Infantry with molotovs haven't been a problem since the early cold-war.
Even if a tank has no RWS and no infantry support even if you land a molotov right on it, it won't damage the tank.

Tanks are covered in sensors: cities are still deathtraps for them.
Most designs in battletech don't even have CITV and even if they did, a one man crew is going to be overloaded with cameras and systems to monitor.

You didn't actually say why, just "It is so".

You could fit the same on a tank, even today you can control drones with them.

ERA already does a pretty great job of accidentally killing/wounding friendly troops, it wouldn't take much work to retool ERA into both an active missile defense AND an anti-boarding defense.

All the sensors in the world aren't going to help you when an infantry squad decides to split up and ambush you from opposite sides at the same time, after all, you only have so many eyes and hands - you can't focus on EVERY sensor and camera at once.

If you care that much about preserving the building in question, why not just mount the turret on a drone, instead? Not only would it cost less, it'd be safer too - I can't imagine a single scenario where a mech using it's arms to sweep from room to room -wouldn't- leave it hideously exposed.

If the building isn't that important, then a tank can just slam HEAT rounds through each and every window until the threat is buried under a mountain of rubble or, alternatively, park itself out of line of sight and wait for a drone strike.

No, but these days you're not aiming to hurt the tank, just the people inside. keep a tank on fire for long enough and nobody will want to be in it. Plus the benefit of making any IR useless because that shits on fire yo.

As long as fucking Scooter isn't there again, I'll buy it.

Where did you get that idea from?
Very often the best way to defeat a tank is to render it inoperable so that it forced to retreat or for the crew to bail.

That isn't an issue with modern NBC protection, unless for some reason the tank just sits still and lets you pelt it with molotovs all day.

Unless you manage to get burning liquid on every IR sight on the turret the crew are going to still be using them to shoot at you, it's not like they just stop working when fire is nearby.

Unless you hit the air intake for the engine, in which case it will quickly overheat the engine.

Oh, are we talking in BT terms or hard sci fi terms? Cause in BT terms, a mech is largely immune to PBI's because its armor is an unobtanium alloy so much stronger than modern armor that even the best modern infantry portable anti tank missiles would have to be fired in salvos of 10-20 missiles at even the lightest locust to have even a remote chance of doing any kind of damage to it.
In hard sci fi terms, mechs won't be that heavily armored, but they will most certainly have CITV and some level of automation of sensors and weapons, and likely have a crew of at least 2. 1 dude to drive the thing and an extra to help manage all the various systems and weapons.

Did you somehow miss the entire post listing examples of this, just prior to that sentence, despite replying to parts of it? Or are you just that stupid?

How would this NOT apply to a tank? I'm not arguing that a mech would be an unstoppable superweapon in urban combat. Just that the platform has advantages that tanks do not. Infantry would still have an advantage over the mech, but less of one than they would against a tank. And against a tank in the confines of a city's streets, a mech would have a lot of advantages against a tank, which would presumably also be its main role. A large armored vehicle for fighting other large armored vehicles, that should be supported by infantry.

And a mech could do the same with its heavy weapons no? Being able to reach into a room with sensors or a machinegun would just be a way to add quick and accurate fire support to infantry fighting room by room, not the main function of the mech.

Hopefully, we can remove canopus.

I really wish they did the pilot portraits like they were in Mech Commander, however. I don't like the artstyle of HBS's portrait guy. He was really hit and miss in the shadowrun games, read: most of them were shit.

Which intake?
If you cover the engine intake well enough it will stall the engine, if you get a cooling intake them the driver will have to get out of harm's way before switching the engine off and putting out the fire or waiting for it to die down.
Neither will mobility kill the tank and the rest of his platoon and supporting infantry will be covering and helping him out all the while.

It doesn't matter which.
Since molotovs don't work against the armor itself, it doesn't matter if a vehicle has adamantium or aluminum armor.

Two men would still leave it undercrewed.
There is a reason why no one makes armored vehicles with gunner-commanders, even with automation.

I messed up ID's.

There is a battletech/mechwarrior game who's 2 player mode was actually co-op control of a single mad cat.

Should have put
Of course, trying to burn out the crew is not the best, but if you're down to using molotovs chances are you don't have much else.
Was mostly meaning the heat build up. I'm sure modern MBTs are well insulated however, but if you can manage to keep it lit for long enough I'm not sure it will matter.
Just severely hampered, and it wouldn't be so hard to coat a turret in flames with a few molotovs.
I'm not saying they're very effective anymore, just that you shouldn't discount molotovs so quickly.

Tell me more freebirth

Fuck up the draconis combine for your clan, pretty much what you see here. In two player mode one controls the legs and the other the torso as well as it's guns. While on your own you can still torso twist a full 360 degrees it's awkward to do in unison with movement so you can actually pull off some fun stuff with it.

Lacking in music though.

So the tank isn't threatened by even sandniggers with molotov cocktails because there will more more tanks and GI's on hand to help if it gets attacked?
Dude, I think you are missing the point. Forcing a tank to run away before its engine overheats .
If you throw a molotov cocktail at a Mech's armored foot, all it will get is a charmark. The mechs engines airintakes and anything else those molotovs could actually hurt, would be well off the ground where its harder to hit with that molotov. Hence, why a mech would do better than a tank in such a situation.

And they won't, even if it is alone as soon the tank is hit it will relocate and begin pounding wherever its crew thinks the molotovs came from.
Molotovs were only ever useful as an AT weapon before NBC systems began being used and a single good hit would immediately immobilize a tank or force its crew to disembark, nowadays neither will happen and the tank will move out of engagement range of further molotovs as soon as its crew realizes they are being attacked.

The fact that no one operates armor alone is one of the many reasons why molotov cocktails do not threaten tanks.

What that translates to is the tank quickly retreating back down the street before stopping and throwing HE at wherever the molotovs came from.

The intakes would still be lower than a multi-story building's windows.
But that's beside the point: there would be no point in attacking either tanks or mechs with molotovs.

I never said it didn't, but as it stands tanks at least have the advantage of a tank crew - between the commander, driver and the gunner, you have a pretty wide potential field of view at any one time.

The fact that an armored vehicle with an entire unit of infantry attached can -still- end up ambushed by a couple ragheads with RPGs should show just how vulnerable ANY vehicle is though, regardless of the number of eyes and ears it has on hand. The benefits you suggest a mech has over a tank when fighting infantry are minuscule at best and outright detrimental at worst.

I will say this though, I completely agree with what you say about how
I honestly think that would be a mechs primary role in city combat, as their height advantage essentially allows them to really exploit the size difference of certain buildings to shoot at targets one, two or even three streets away. Performing hit and run attacks or ambushes on enemy armor would be child's play when you have legs that can crouch and the ability to peer over buildings.

It wouldn't change the fact that if your turret-hand can shoot them, they can shoot you.

It's like suggesting you take a knife and try to remove a beehive by stabbing the insects inside. If you've got infantry inside a structure, the last thing you want to do is risk an expensive, manned vehicle by having it poke around near potentially-occupied windows. As I said earlier, I feel like you'd have way more success with mounting a gun on a drone and just having that perform the exact same role without the risk of some faggot with a rocket launcher crippling a multi-million dollar vehicle's arm (or, even worse, sneaking up to a window and getting you in the torso or cockpit).

Personally, I feel like the main strength of a mech isn't as a frontline fighter in urban combat. It seems to me the real advantages a mech has over other vehicles is it's ability to change it's overall height and it's extremely high degree of weapon elevation that lets them engage a wide variety of threats.

A mech with an autocannon on one arm and a mortar on the other can act as an artillery, anti-VTOL and anti-tank system at the same time, while providing a great scouting platform thanks to their height.

They can potentially fill a lot of extremely useful area denial roles that currently either require specialized infantrymen or dedicated vehicles to fill. In my mind, they, essentially, have more in common with helicopters than tanks.

Minder that /m/ is not just for Japanese shit and has Battletech threads up

There are other, far cheaper options if that's all you want.

Pic related: an autocannon and anti-tank missiles on an extendable arm on a leopard chassis, for fighting from cover, like behind hills, buildings, etc.

Folds up like this.

The world has missed out on so much crazy/cool shit because of the cold war's end.

It also came in itty bitty baby sized version, albiet only the sight was elevated, and the missile would be guided over the intervening cover.

So what is the deal with that Heavy Gear Assault game. It came out already? Is it shit?

It has $100 DLC packs.
Make of that what you will.

But mechs are cooler looking.

(Hitlerdubs checked)
Also, those things would be rickety and unstable as fuck with the arm extended up. Like trying to drive a firetruck with its ladder extended across rough terrain.

Their job isn't to be anything but resistant to small-arms fire. It fullfills the advantage the mech might have had over tanks.

You are thinking symbolically, here. Since the cherrypicker tank is more or less familiar, the difficulties it might have are familiar. But since the giant robot is more fantastical, you assume that it will jest werk, for the purpose of discussion. But making a 30 foot tall motherfucking robot is a huge fucking deal.

Surely if you have the tech to properly aim a gun mounted to the arm of a mech running on legs, stabilizing one arm on a tracked platform is fucking child's play.

What are some books I should read (PDF links as well, please) for the essential lore?

I'm also interested in Draconis Combine lore after reading some of the journal entries in Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries.

That's what a computer is good for. Compensating for the mechs own movement, the targets movement and the like would be easy for a good computer. The same kind modern tanks already use to stabilise their guns for firing on the move.

The problem with the crane is one of stability of its center of gravity as it moves, not necessarily one of keeping the gun on target. You know why cranes, firefighting trucks with ladders and the like need to deploy stabilizing legs that immobilize them before extending their arms/ladders? You get a very high center of gravity when you extend that turret ten meters into the air, and if you are moving it easily ends up falling over. A bipedal mech can shift its stance around to change its center of mass to compensate on the fly, same as a human carrying a load does. Its harder to do when your center of mass must remain over those wheels/tracks at all times.

Are you interested in a particular period?
If you want Mechwarrior 2 era look up older stuff on the Clan Invasions (when the clans launch their attack the innersphere. I think this is where Mechwarrior 2 takes place), Operation Bulldog (The big counter attack where the innersphere bands together to push the Smoke Jaguars out of the territory they took from the Combine. This is where Mech Commander takes place), Operation Serpent (the inner sphere's follow up attack on the smoke jaguars in the clans homeworlds. Mechwarrior 3 is here), the Fedcom Civil War, (Katrina Steiner tries to take over the Federated Commonwealth while her brother is off fighting the clans. Mechwarior 4 and Mechcommander 2 take place here, Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries takes place during the end of the civil war.).
Field Manual Updates covers this period roughly. Most of the lore on this era is on the Sarna Wiki though, so no point in paying money for it.
Field Manuals will give you a general overlook over the situation in the period they cover. The most recent is Field Manual 3080 and Field Manual 3145. They both cover periods much latter than any of the computer games though, with 3080 covering the end of the Jihad and the rise of the RotS, while 3145 covers the clusterfuck that tore the republic apart.
Era Report books may be a better starting point if you know nothing of the lore. They try to give a general overview of a specific period. The most relevant would be Era Report 3052 (the clan invasion) and Era Report 3062 (the latter half of the clan invasions including operations Bulldog and Serpent).
If you want more lore about the culture of the different factions and their background, there's Handbook House Kurita, that should cover their history, different parts of the combine, ethnic minorities and all their general faction related fluff.
Field Manual Updates shield give a good overlook of what the DCMS looks like around the end of the fedcom civil war (the most recent games).
If you want to read about the individual mechs or tanks, you will want to read up on the Tech Readouts for the period in question. Wiki can give a decent overview of much of this stuff too though.
If there's some particular war or military operation you want to learn more about, there's specific source books for most of the major ones that will give a more detailed overlook.

Curtesy link to the halfchan Battletech General's PDF repository.
mediafire.com/folder/9q792hobnbpw3/Battletech
Should have any PDF you'll need. Most of the older stuff, should be covered fairly well by the Wiki though.
TL:DR
Wiki has most of the stuff you might need.
HandBook Kurita for the fluff.
Era Digest for the overview of what goes on in each period.
Field Manuals for detailed run down of what the factions have and such for their periods. Feel free to ask for more details as there is a fuckton of lore and fluff to dig through.

...

You're doing god's work user. Thanks.