It's all good. She'll get to prove that in the days to come since from the snippets I've picked up from your posts, you and I might both be flying the same bird.

Yes, Eileen is actually not suppose to enter combat often, she's suppose to be a paper pusher.

If she does, it's usually in a Ferret, though she can sludge mud, pedal savanah masters or tromp about in mechs fine.   She's a 3rd Gen Military Brat, so it's sort of in her blood.

Thought as much, yeah Mike and Co. are a Ferret crew too.

Eileen does just about everyone on clover by herself.  She's less of a Ferret and more of a victim of her mad experiments.

She was trying to work out the spec to improve the perfection that is the Ferret with a Fusion and Engine ... Endo and Ferro... which should yield assorted improvements.

Maybe something to spend her sign on bonus for.

We have a bunch of savannah masters... its.. not impossible to maybe borrow one to experiment on, though buying one with her sign on bonus would probably work better.

So my potential mod check list is a small fusion engine, 1/4 ton of endo steel and a ton or two of Ferro.

Owning a Ferret is like owning a tiny house.  The modifications and upkeeps are alot cheaper and easier to do :D

Yeah, I wouldn't mind taking one of the Savvie engines for the Dragonfly if we end up combat lossing one since they're the same size on both craft, but for the moment, I am just happy to have a craft to fly, and maybe an employer to fly it with.

The rest depends on what you want your Ferret to do. Gunship? I'm partial to the quad RL-10 once that becomes available, SRM-2 and ammo before that. SAR bird like the Dragonfly? Light MG and ammo. Scout? Beagle probe and duct tape to double the armor. ;)

Agreed, presuming you have an enviroment, it's a very versatile toy.

Eileen thinks and plays with concepts a little out of the box when mucking around with the Ferret, we'll see how much the GM lets me actually practice, they're grounded on the notion of what you SHOULD be able to do as opposed to what the RULES say you can do so, we'll see.

ie.  We have a Union, with two Aero bays, but no Aero Fighters...

We should be able to slot a Ferret in each bay, and once the union lands open the bay door and fly out.  Quicker deployment than unloading the ferret out of the cargo bay to assemble and go.

Logic says you should be able to do this, but... there are no rules for it.

I think the Campaign Ops books has a section for hot dropping, to including launching fighters once you break atmo.

Logic and roleplay are the golden rules. The rest... Optional

If you play it out, only the sky is the limit. And with a Ferret ... The sky isnt

The best kind of rules.

Aeros yes, conventional fighters maybe, vtols... no.

The way it looks right now all players will have signed a contract by the end of thursday.

Meaning that at the end of thursday we conclude our prologue, and will be starting Chapter 1.

What I would like everyone to do, is select 5 different skills they find fitting for their character, and add an extra point to those skills. Please pm me your selections.

Also, select 1 primary skill, and add 3 points to that one.

So by the weekend we should all have a character with some skills! Yay!

I'd like to also take this moment to thank all of you for the activity. I know I pulled a few fast ones on you all, and tested your patience, but you stuck with me. That, I appreciate!

Im off to bed now, last bits of prologue will be tomorrow, mostly for the three in the convention centre. The others... Eat your fill, have some drinks ... Pretty soon it will be just rations ;)

Hello all. Ill be playing Roland Skinner. Prefer real name OOC - Tom.

BattleTech is one of my all time favorites and I have always loved the roleplay aspects which we neglected in my opinion. Im excited about the opportunity to play this game. And thanks to the GM for letting me in at the last second.

'ello Roland.

*waves*

In reply to GM (msg # 70):

So that a total of 6 skills (primary get +3 and 5 others get +1)?

I guess I should ask is this before training with the unit or after training?

As my character wouldn't have pilot as she has not actually done it yet

Welcome Roland!

The 'primary' skill should probably be something your character knows you are good at and have done before.  Some of the other skills you can probably fit in as 'natural talent' but never actually used so you can surprise yourself at being better than expected.

In reply to Candice Rohdes (msg # 74):

Doesnt really matter too much. Its more like last minute update to your character so if you decide she does have pilot after all thats good

In reply to Eileen Sutherby (msg # 62):

So after a long night of brainless work that left me time to think, I’m not sure up armoring/ up gunning the Ferret is worth it. Fusion yes because fusion makes everything better, but the rest… not so much. I’ll elaborate when I get home.

Also hello Roland!

So in my thinking, I remembered something important. A VTOL's survivability is directly tied to how much armor its rotor has, since half the hit locations are 'rotor'. Yes, it gets some magic protection that means that you can survive 3-5 rotor hits depending on what's hitting you, but that's your lifetime in a VTOL.

3-5 hits.

After that, you don't become a pillbox; you become a crash site.

Enter 3051.

Starting soon, and for something like the next thirty years in canon, everything, everything that mounted an AC/10 will be mounting an LB-10X. There's no reason not to. Better range, better heat, lighter, smaller, more versatile. Only C-Bill cost keeps the AC/10 around long enough for specialized ammunition to enter the field.

And the LB-10X is murder on VTOL's. -3 to hit with cluster rounds, and an average of 6 fragments hitting, each one in its own location.

Which loops back to my point about armor and hit locations. An average LB-10X hit will chop the rotor off a Ferret. You have a better chance of surviving a Gauss Rifle or Clan PPC hit than an LB-10X hit. And they're everywhere. Urbanmechs, the joke of the game carry one. Cheap ICE tanks use them as main guns. The FedCom is about to roll out the Centurion upgrade with one that's as fast as a Bug mech. Any and all of these can end a Ferret in one shot.

You only have three defenses, really.

1: Something solid between you and the gun: Preferably a mountain.
2: Never touch the bubble: With a Ferret's speed, staying away from LB-10's is possible, but sometimes the objective is inside the radius.
3: There's always a bigger fish: If you can't put something between you and the gun, and have to go inside the doom bubble, your best bet at living to fly back out is to convince the gunner that there's something better to spend his shot on every second that you're there. Otherwise you are relying on RNGeezus (All glory to his cubic goodness!) and GM fiat to live.

That's why I'm starting to think up gunning the Ferret is a bad idea. Nothing you can mount outranges the LB-10X, and every gun you add to it makes you a bigger fish. I mean, sure, on paper, the quad small laser/dual medium laser versions can do some extremely nasty things to targets, especially if you can get Clan guns, but they also exponentially move you up the threat scale.
This message was last edited by the player at 11:42, Thu 02 Mar 2023.

In my experience there are effectively 3 VTOLs on the field.  Meaningless ones, Dead ones, and that annoying thing with a clan ER large laser that is always out of range.

Luckily we are in an rpg, and not on tabletop ;)

Yeah, I'm not looking forward to being a meaningless PC. ;)

Are we going to be using the straight BattleTech combat system?? Or no?