Originally Posted By gtsteve03:
I hope this shit stays out of Mechwarrior. I've been enjoying it's very lack of wokeness.

Originally Posted By gtsteve03:
I hope this shit stays out of Mechwarrior. I've been enjoying it's very lack of wokeness.

Originally Posted By FlashMan-7k:

Thankfully with BT, you don't need to give the current group a thin red cent to play.

Not one penny from me until they deserve it.

I don't think they are adult enough to learn their lesson, but I'd like for them to make me wrong.

Originally Posted By Ranman223:
Oh Hell ya . Me n my buds had a group .

We called ourselves the Gentlemens society .
We played all manor of games . Risk , The fantasy trip aka Melee. ( like d n d
But way better and yes  Battletech . Alot of Battletech .

My nick name was " the Heat Miser " cause I would shoot a bunch of
Weapons and take a chance.on Overheating my Mech .
We each had a division or unit of Mechs . Light , scout , medium and
Heavy . I still have mine but haven't played in years .
My buddy had a 3d hex  map set that worked Great  for a lot of
Those games . Good times.

Ps there was a.pretty good game on Super Nintendo called
/ about Battle tech .

Originally Posted By chibajoe:
Lol, do you even Roguetech, bro?

Originally Posted By chibajoe:



Roguetech vastly expands the universe and allows (limited) online play.  The AI is straight up evil, especially if you enable optional rules (like nukes).  

I have no idea what you're talking about with unity, but then again, I don't do Steam or DRM.

Originally Posted By Chowser:
Finally got around to making myself a Steiner Scout Lance.


https://i.postimg.cc/NfvdRDPg/SSL1.jpg

Originally Posted By Chowser:
George Ledoux, the renowned video game voice actor, is reprising his role as the original voice of Duncan Fisher from MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries for the next DLC coming next month.


https://mwomercs.com/news/2024/02/2836-announcing-mechwarrior-5-mercenaries-solaris-showdown

Originally Posted By Sirveaux:
Catalyst is the Star League committing the Reunification War on people who just want to be left alone.

They even rewrote the periphery history to fabricate some fake transhouse Arreola where the Taurian/Magistracy colonies were expanding.

Originally Posted By Paulie771:


I hated it when it first came out.  I recently bought all the DLCs during the most recent Steam sale and installed about 30 mods and now I can't stop playing it. I've got almost 50 hours in it and I haven't even hit the first DLC w/ the Kestrel Lancers being part of Galahad invading the Capellans, much less any of the clan stuff the modders have released. If you haven't played it since it first released, download it and give some of the major mods a try. It really does change the game for the better.

Originally Posted By Paulie771:
CGL is having a major row right now w/ the shipping costs on their Mercernaries Kick Starter from over a year ago. My $60 pledge has a shipping cost of $30.  Some guys w/ thousands in pledges have shipping charges of over $1000. It's insane and extremely amusing at the same time. I love Battletech. It will always be my first love amongst sci-fi universes, but CGL is dead to me.

Originally Posted By FlashMan-7k:

Plus I suspect everyone just houserules stuff to their liking.

The first time I saw maxtech I thought to myself "this looks like a collection of houserules."

Given what I've heard they are creeping into the story apparently last year / year before's shrapnel mag had some character whining about how hard it was to be black in the lyran commonwealth etc in what is said to have been a clear modern politics insert (I haven't read it, don't have the heart to, that stuff is NOT necessary at all, bt has more than enough of that fodder to work with without having modern day identity politics inserts).

Originally Posted By hoosierhick:
Thanks for summing up the latest shitstorm.  I had seen bits and pieces, mostly about otterpops getting banned, but hadn't seen what Valk had said.  It figures that the loons took what he said the way they did.

Originally Posted By hoosierhick:
Thanks for summing up the latest shitstorm.  I had seen bits and pieces, mostly about otterpops getting banned, but hadn't seen what Valk had said.  It figures that the loons took what he said the way they did.

They turned Mechwarrior gay!

Yesterday Battletech publisher @catalystgamelab community managers FREAK OUT and MASS BLOCK many Battletech fans, including @DriveThruRPGcreator @The_OtterPops in blind rage.

This is the sad tale of Battletech’s descent into madness:

- Firing conservative authors
- Defending violent “woke” contributors
- Defending doxing contractors
- Hostile takeover of the Battletech subreddit
- Takeover of the Demo Team Discord
- Woke Community manager running Amok!

Thanks to @Mage_Leader and @RAZ0RFIST for their insights and permission to post screencaps of their videos as we dive into this DUMPSTER FIRE in the Battletech community.

A thread 🧵

The controversies in Battletech were re-ignited when emails with Catalyst Labs customer support team leaked.

I spoke to community members who said that former Battletech author and Demo Team member Robin (who also goes by Valk), had been threatening people for the past year including gun violence, and by doxing a community member by posting a google map of their home.

The email was sent by someone concerned with this behavior. Catalyst Community Managers responded by immediately Mass Blocking anyone who talked about it and anyone remotely related to them in a guilt by association PURGE.

No one has any idea why Catalyst initiated a purge, but it wasn't their first, and it hit many innocent non-participants like OtterPops.

OtterPops immediately withdrew all his support for Battletech, including over 160 podcasts and game design material.

Catalyst seems to be actively trying to hide any involvement with this former contractor and is silencing anyone talking about it.

But the story goes back much further, as the community has been on fire with complaints about Catalyst's extreme left leaning politics for the past year.

Catalyst is the current licensor of the Battletech tabletop game owned by Topps, which they licensed in 2007.

Original team members from Battletech, such as authors Mike Stackpole @MikeStackpole and Blaine Pardoe @bpardoe870 generated excitement as they joined Catalyst to continue the legacy. But the authors were at odds as Mike is left-leaning while Blaine is a conservative, both active in politics on social media.

In 2022, Blaine had a well known issue with a Battletech fan named (at the time), Faith McClosky, a extreme leftist pretending to be a lesbian single mother of three children. Faith repeatedly tried cancel Blaine from Battletech, and stalked and harassed him, even threatening violence.

The issue was severe enough that Blaine had to seek a restraining order against Faith.

But when Catalyst decided to publish a short story by Faith, the community exploded, angry that they would publish someone who had gone after Blaine.

Topps ordered Catalyst to "handle it" and they did.

In July 2022, they fired Blaine Pardoe.

But they kept his leftist stalker, Faith, as a published author...

This obvious injustice further inflamed the Battletech community, a smoldering fire that would burst into flames 6 months later.

How one Community Manager stole all of Battletech.

Meet Rem Alternis, the new Community Manager and Marketing Director of @catalystgamelab and owner of diverse and inclusive content consulting company @RemAlternis

Over the past year, she engineered a literal Marxist takeover of every fan community for Battletech and made it her own.

According to an interview with Sarna, she has played a sum total of two games of Battletech.

Ever.

(Thanks to @mage_leader and @RAZ0RFIST for details)

A thread.🧵

There were 2 main fan community hubs for Battletech, subreddit, and the Demo Team. She went after the subreddit first.

The fan owned and run subreddit r/Battletech used to be very active. They had a Helldiver's like "no politics" rule.

When the fanfic "Battletech Pride Anthology" was posted, mods took it down, similar to how Helldivers took down posts about pride capes in their own game. The rule was fair, it cut both ways.

But this didn't sit well with Rem, the pride authors, or with r/sigmarxism, a well known extreme left hive that pushes politics into Warhammer and other tabletop games. They complained, loudly.

Rem, with Catalyst, started a new "official" subreddit and started to officially promote the Pride Anthology.

What happened next, happened fast. According to allegations by the community, including some ex moderators, Rem began to threaten the long dormant Battletech subreddit owner.

She said Catalyst would pull all support and followers unless he fired all the "problematic" mods and allowed her to install her own moderators.

The owner did just that, firing every moderator on the subreddit.

A new fleet of left-leaning mods were brought in (all members of r/sigmarxism and r/socialism), and Cataylst official rules were imposed on the the fan made community.

No politics was enforced only in ONE direction, favoring the left. Anything on the right was removed.

Rem closed the official subreddit and Catalyst took over running the former fan based endeavor. Leftist posts began flooding in.

Soon after, the traffic plummeted. The new socialist run Battletech subreddit became a ghost of it's former self.

Rem now controlled the Battletech fandom on reddit, what was left of it.

But there was one more group she needed to control, the prolific fan group called the Demo Team.

And things got even crazier...

The Demo Team is a very important part of the Battletech community. Formerly fan-run, it consisted of a group of hard core fans that promoted the game on cons and coordinated through their Discord server.

If Rem controlled the Demo Team and the Battletech subreddit, she would have all of Battletech fandom under her thumb.

Mary, a Catalyst employee, served as liaison and a moderator of the Discord Demo Team server, but was very hands off and neutral, letting the fans run their community.

She started to work with a troubled trans Demo Team member, Robin (aka Valk) to compile a "dossier" of "problematic" Demo Team members.

Robin was sure that the Demo Team was full of "nazis" and made a social media post about carrying guns at cons to put these nazis in "bodybags" if they came after him/her. He was compiling a list of these members, including personal information, which he shared with Rem as she encouraged him and others to "report" them.

Rem is the red Alternis logo, Valk is the purple haired pfp in these screenshots.

Rem was apparently seeking leverage and the dox dossier would eventually allow her to take over the Demo Team.




After Robin (Valk) posted the weapons threat, Mary removed him from the Demo Team.

This was when Rem stepped in. She had Mary fired from Catalyst, and using the dossier, did a purge of the Demo Team.

Not just the Demo Team. Just prior, as Mage Leader was posting his video about this situation, Rem and her community team did a mass block of @mage_leader , @RAZ0RFIST and any associated followers or anyone who complained about the demo team situation.

Mage: "It almost seemed like they had a list prepared in advance."

Rem soon moved in her own Demo Team members, and Catalyst formally took over running the former fan-based Discord.

She had Robin (Valk) reinstated. (he was later removed for unknown reasons).

Strict rules came in: no critique of Catalyst or Battletech. Mary's husband was also banned.

Her takeover was complete. She now ran the two main hubs of Battletech fandom.

This, you see, is the power that Community Managers wield.

This is a cautionary tale about why gate keeping is important. If you don't gate-keep, people like Rem will use it to invade your hobby and kick you out.

They seek power, and the spread of their marxist doctrine, under the pretense of virtue. They don't actually play or enjoy the games they invade.

This is why we fight.

Thanks for reading to this thread. It took me weeks to digest the story and put it together (as I am, like Rem, a Battletech outsider). Much thanks to Mage!

If you enjoy these exposes, please subscribe to me on Twitter.

19 Apr 2024

Welcome All to 0.49.19!

This is another MASSIVE release.

Before delving into the specifics, as one of the veteran developers (aka an old guy) involved in the projects, I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to all the current developers and contributors, both new and old. The pace has notably accelerated from the slowdown we experienced last year, and this is undoubtedly attributed to the dedication and passion they bring to the projects.

Back to the releases; we’ve again pushed a ton of code in the last two months. We realize the last few releases have had some issues in them and we know in 0.49.18 Aerospace was broken badly. It’s why we’ve tried to focus this release on fixes and some improvements. Our hope is in a couple of weeks it can become a new MILESTONE. But that’s not say there isn’t some really good stuff in here.

There is one major thing you’ll notice on opening MegaMek and MegaMekLab - they now default to the Dark Mode(Darcula). The majority of players polled are using it and it just makes sense to default it. Also themes like Nimbus, and Metal have been removed as they cause UI issues that aren’t easily fixed. We’ve started to implement this in MekHQ but given the mess the UI code is in it will take a few releases to get it done.

The big advantage is with standard themes and code between the programs we can start to look at improving things in MekHQ’s UI. This will be a long project but a needed one.

If you’re someone that likes to read the change logs you’ll notice there is lots of prep work for StoryArcs which we anticipate will be officially released in the next release (0.49.20). But here is a small bit of some of the new stuff.

MegaMek

   We now have Black Ice
   Units now understand Clan Pilots vs Inner Sphere Pilots. Details
   We got improved built-in unit shadows for units. Details
   Scenarios now have a dialog to load them. Details
   Some nag and turn timer updates. Details
   Introducing some YAML support for AS/SBF units. Details
   Add split pane to weapon panel above to hit text. Details
   Set up a simple rotating per-round save file system.

MegaMekLab

   The ability to embed fluff images in the unit files. Details
   Ability to embed sprites in the unit files. Details
   Print queue interface improvements. Details
   Print mul through print queue dialog. Details
   Implement the Industrial tripod cockpit.

MekHQ

   Adjusted retirement TN and payout values. Details
   Update planetary conditions chance logic. Details
   Added Nag for wounded personnel without doctor.
   Add lances to the force string when sending data to MegaMek. Details
   Added Nag dialog for pregnant combatants.
   Unmaintained unit Nag dialog suppressed for units set to salvage.
   Added ability to collapse/expand logs, missions, and kills in personnel unit screen. Details
   Reduced personnel table right-click menu clutter. Details
   Added scenario & mission tracking to kills, added ability to assign kills to scenario and/or mission. Details

MekHQ StratCon Alpha

   StratCon continues to be in alpha. But we got some small fixes and changes this release.
   StratCon Mapgen fix. Details
   Victory Point terminology changes. Details
   Base Attack (Defender) objective changes. Details
   StratCon Air & Arty Modifiers. Details
...

Originally Posted By FlashMan-7k:


ETA: not that CGL besides rem is sane.  There's been problems with the BT publishers for a long while now - numerous reports of freelancers -artists and authors- not getting paid as they should, when they should, or how much they should, including and up to six figures worth of company funds being wrongfully used to do work on one of the employee's houses that wound up as a "oopsie, we're sorry, we accidentally mixed work and private funds!" ... I would also like to know why ben rome left, etc.