Goodwill's Grogheads - Battletech Campaign using MegaMek, all apply here!

Started by Yskonyn, March 30, 2018, 01:49:55 PM

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mirth

Quote from: Gusington on April 01, 2018, 01:25:09 PM
I'm in.

Alright if Gus is in, I am in.

Put me down as a Merc. I haven't played in 25 years, so consider me a newb.
"45 minutes of pooping Tribbles being juggled by a drunken Horta would be better than Season 1 of TNG." - SirAndrewD

"you don't look at the mantelpiece when you're poking the fire" - Bawb

"Can't 'un' until you 'pre', son." - Gus

Gusington



слава Україна!

We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd

jamus34

I'm pretty noob too. I nominate "Carne por la Machina" for our company name.
Insert witty comment here.

Yskonyn

Ok guys, interest seems to be enough to warrant an actual start.

I eyed a starting dat of 3019-3020 above, but we could also shift further back in time to play around the Amaris coup period (I had seen this being referenced by one of you in the other thread). What would have you guys' preference?

Once we've established this I will create the backstory for the campaign. If all goes well we will get a dedicated space on these forums for our campaign.
My request to you guys is to refrain from posting there until I give the go-ahead. That way I have time to prepare the threads without unnecessary clutter.

Once the backdrop has been set I will post instructions to help you all roll your units.

For your player character you can already start dreaming: If you have access to A Time of War you can use it.
Your player character will be a commanding officer within the Grogheads. If you want to play an active part in the admin stuff like negotiating deals, you can try to roll for applicable skills and hope they come out as best of the pack. NPC's will roll as well and the best rated people will hold office, PC or NPC.
Of course, during the course of the campaign positions can change based on training and upgrades.

You will each manage at least one Lance with support units, total unit about Company sized.
During missions your company might get additional units attached, depending task required.

IF we start in the Amaris Coup period we're most likely the Mercs that Amaris employed (it was the initial rise of the Merc units).
IF we start in the 3020s options are open as to what our backstory is.

As always suggestions and preferences are appreciated!
"Pilots do not get paid for what they do daily, but they get paid for what they are capable of doing.
However, if pilots would need to do daily what they are capable of doing, nobody would dare to fly anymore."

JasonPratt

I was installing the things tonight while taking a short break from editing video, and... is there any point in downloading and installing "Megamek"? It seems like the executable is included in "MekHQ". And the other things, too?
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Yskonyn

Not really. As you said, MekHQ includes the other programs.
Be sure to only use the stable version and *only* upgrade when I say we can to avoid savegame version issues.

Likely I will have a 'custom' version that I will distribute for the campaign which includes all the fluff and extra's I added.
That will be the base, so when we upgrade you only have to download a new version from the website and overwrite your files.

Personally I am still using HeavyMetal to create units, but lots of people now swear by MegaMekLab as it has seen extensive work.
I just value the database of fluff I get with HM very much and porting that to MML will be far more tedious than I am willing to put up with.

Somewhere tomorrow our child board should go live! (Huge thanks to bayonetbrant!)
"Pilots do not get paid for what they do daily, but they get paid for what they are capable of doing.
However, if pilots would need to do daily what they are capable of doing, nobody would dare to fly anymore."

JasonPratt

I'm busy tonight (and probably tomorrow) trying to get my next DESERT WAR episode up (since the current one has too many production goofs, and I want to tighten up the video-time more) -- plus a tornado-front will be passing by in about two hours or sooner -- so it could be Thursday before I'm able to get back to this.

Since I am playing the OpFor, should I even be rolling up anything yet?  ???
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

mirth

"45 minutes of pooping Tribbles being juggled by a drunken Horta would be better than Season 1 of TNG." - SirAndrewD

"you don't look at the mantelpiece when you're poking the fire" - Bawb

"Can't 'un' until you 'pre', son." - Gus

Yskonyn

No dont worry Jason. Just sit out the storm.
I am waiting for the forum section to go live.
"Pilots do not get paid for what they do daily, but they get paid for what they are capable of doing.
However, if pilots would need to do daily what they are capable of doing, nobody would dare to fly anymore."

JasonPratt

Meanwhile I am reveling in the apparent lack of heat sinks!  :D
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Yskonyn

Meanwhile I have been creating a custom build of MekHQ that will contain all my scavenged fluff like camo's and portraits.
It will be a one time download; whenever we go ahead with a version update you can just copy the new files over the original pack you got from me.
At some point you'll likely have to download some custom data as the campaign progresses, but we'll tackle that when we get there.

I will try to keep the campaign covered with as much fluff as I can. I'd like it to become a narrative and not just a technical endeavor only focussed on numbers.
Perhaps its a cool idea to keep an AAR thread running in parallel for the non playing Groggies.
"Pilots do not get paid for what they do daily, but they get paid for what they are capable of doing.
However, if pilots would need to do daily what they are capable of doing, nobody would dare to fly anymore."

jamus34

Waiting on that child board and overall synopsis as I've been working on the AAR / RPG elements a bit.

Right now working it as a journal, I'll see how it goes and possibly changing it.

Be gentle - I'm not a writer so it's not going to be Dostoevsky.
Insert witty comment here.

JasonPratt

"It was a dark and stormy night, and I was slaughtering that merc company of so-called 'Grogheads' while they flailed around like chickens with their heads cut off. Cut off by me.

"Let me tell you in detail.

"{fifty pages of detail}

"With that prologue out of the way, I shall ruminate on the philosophy of war, which shall be my main theme for this monograph. Now, if war be good...."
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Yskonyn

OK, I have decided we will have a start date of 3019, just before the signed Accord between Lyran Commonwealth and the Federated Suns. Reason for this is that we have several people who are new to Battletech and this start date is pretty standard, although not completely default.

We will play a Merc unit with nondescript heritage of personnel. That means we are a melt pot of various cultures and people. This will not only aid those new to the system to avoid advanced rules regarding personnel and interaction, but it also gives us the most room to personalize our forces. It needs to be fun afterall and I'd rather avoid random rolls for baseline stuff that dictates who we are.

We will play a Merc unit that isn't a full regiment (yet); about 1.5 battallion's worth of core units (so about half the picture below)



Our starting world will be Galatea instead of Outreach. Outreach might be the Merc world to some of you, but in our campaign Wolf's Dragoons have not yet declared ownership of the planet, let alone liberated it as a free world. That time might come, if we survive as long.

So what's the galaxy like at this point?
We're in the final years of the era called Third Succession War; as intense war has raged on now for several centuries, many world (and their accompanying factories) lay in ruin. The advanced Tech of the Star League era has either been destroyed, their blueprints lost or VERY hard to come by at this point.
Because of this many forces are now fighting with less than fully equipped and maintained forces and many struggle to keep a resemblance of a fit fighting force. Prices of spare parts are rising exponentially on the free markets and of top of that, it becomes increasingly difficult to find any at all.
This will be the situation roughly until the Helm Data Core will be found in about 8 years from now, so we need to look after our stuff and we should try to get contracts that allow us to salvage the battlefield as much as we can.

In a about a year Archon Katrina Steiner and First Prince Hanse Davion will sign an accord known as the FedCom Accords.
This is basically the start of the Federated Commonwealth as well as the planning phase for the Fourth Succession War.

This will, once again, be a time where lots of money can be made as it will prove to be the biggest of the Succession Wars in hindsight!
We'll need to decide to which power (major or minor) we'll sell our ' services ', or if we're going to try to just scour on the fringes of the known galaxy.

For the Grogheads players each of you will start as a Lieutenant commanding your own Company within the force.
You are free to roll up your character as you like, however, if you are going to use A Time of War to create your character, know that only certain rules are implemented in MegaMek (like Edge), but many others are not.
I will try my best, however, to use AToW as much as we can to govern our forum RP, if that's desired.

If you want help, drop a note here or contact me via PM.
If you want to have a say in the strategic goings on of the force, you should try to get a character with skills in that part in addition to your battlefield skills.
Promotions and Skill development will be part of the campaign, so if you get unlucky at the start, you can always retry during play at given times.

As for your force; as you can see in the table above, you will have command over three Lances.
After rolling you should try to order them into Roles (Recon, Assault, Support, etc).
Once we will go on missions we will try to make 'Formations' (p56 Campaign Ops) in order to try to get Special Pilot and Command abilities in effect.

To roll your Lances you can use MegaMek's RAT (Random Assignment Table) system, but be sure to use Xotl's RATs (included in MegaMek) for our time period (start date 3018-3020, or Late Succession Wars).
Xotl is a user who now works at Catalyst GameLabs on Battletech. He has created the most complete canon RATs available IMO.
For those wanting to roll manually from documents, I'll link his typed version instead: 3028 - 3050 RATs (The info is generally also usable for our date and I'll correct accordingly in cooperation with the player who rolled.) Use page 42
You can order any rolled Mech into any of the three Lances, as long as a Lance doesn't exceed 4 units.

I'll post the Commander in Chief later to serve as inspiration and to get to know your CO.

I hope bayonetbrant will be able to activate the child board for us soon, but I understood he's quite busy with his job at the moment, so we'll have to show a little patience.
"Pilots do not get paid for what they do daily, but they get paid for what they are capable of doing.
However, if pilots would need to do daily what they are capable of doing, nobody would dare to fly anymore."

mirth

Quote from: Yskonyn on April 05, 2018, 07:56:13 AM
I hope bayonetbrant will be able to activate the child board for us soon, but I understood he's quite busy with his job at the moment, so we'll have to show a little patience.

Someone has to tote those barges and lift them bales.
"45 minutes of pooping Tribbles being juggled by a drunken Horta would be better than Season 1 of TNG." - SirAndrewD

"you don't look at the mantelpiece when you're poking the fire" - Bawb

"Can't 'un' until you 'pre', son." - Gus