The Mad Cat - Main Character Energy - BattleTech Reaction

[@EndlessInfinity1]

2:28 So, when Comstar thought the clans were Cool Dudes ™️, they sent over Focht as an envoy. He had front row seats to everything clan... until Comstar realized the clans weren't about to share...

[@bthsr7113]

To be Fair, Comstar wanted to use the Clans much as the Clans wanted to use Comstar. Both saw a junior subordinate instead of a true partner.

[@weirdferretthing]

Elementals do indeed rip mechs to pieces like a pack of wolves going at an isolated moose. However: it is specifically Clan Ghost Bear that likes football. They won a planet with it.

[@brothersgt.grauwolff6716]

Rasalhauge Dominion ftw!

[@trollkinggnash9867]

The Bears and the Vikings getting along is just perfect.

[@drakkenmensch]

Ghost Bear felt so bad for how they dominated the inner sphere players that they let them have ONE touchdown out of pity so they wouldn't be completely shut down from scoring at all. See, the clans can play nice sometimes.

[@shauntempley9757]

More velociraptors. That is a better description of what the Elementals do.

[@Jonnyg325]

Cleanest game in history, 35 to 3, because the bears felt dorry for the home team

[@SSKazega]

19:45: An "Identified Build" in this context is an Official Battletech Record sheet from the designers of the the Battletech Tabletop Game. Battletech and Mechwarrior prides itself in the ability to design and customize Battlemech Chasis and so several of the novel's main characters have a customized design. Because Aidan Pryde was the center character of the "Legend of the Jade Phoenix" Book Trilogy, they released the special Timberwolf loadout that he used in those novels. Several Mechs have "Identified Builds" based on the pilots and the stories that they are in.

[@Gustav_Kuriga]

Clan Sea Fox Merchant here, Tukayyid was the best thing to happen to us. Killed off all those dumbass Crusaders and put our Merchants back in charge. Now we make bank off selling to the Inner Sphere. Best part: We made a Mad Cat Mk II, assault size Timber Wolf/MadCat, the Homeworld Clans took offense that we were selling it to the Inner Sphere, we gave them the middle finger as we left.

[@bthsr7113]

Not sure how you guys manage to pull mechs out of hats in the Ilclan era, but I do love that you have dropped pretty much all pretense of fealty to Wolf and continue showing that business and logistics are the real superpowers.

[@brothersgt.grauwolff6716]

Dezgra Stravig

[@DoomStarRequiem]

Dark caste here from a spectral bear.. now a mercenary. I would like to purchase moar of the MK2. Angry kittens

[@schaddenkorp6977]

@@Gustav_Kuriga man Gustav I keep running into you every couple of years somewhere online lol.

[@Gustav_Kuriga]

@@schaddenkorp6977 It must be a horrible experience lol.

[@Lorlic1138]

For those who dont get the joke at 6:30. That was the merc group called the Wolf Dragoons. They were clan spies who became sympathetic to the inner sphere and tried to warn of the coming invasion but no one believed them.

[@quartz_gg9090]

From what I understand from the couple of fanfics I read (I am not a loremaster), in the Inner Sphere's defense the Wolf Dragoons were really bad at warning them.

[@TensuMakadi]

​@quartz_gg9090 sort of, Wolf's Dragoons had no idea about the invasion itself. They knew one was likely to happen but not when or in what form. So yeah they warned hell was on the horizon but with what they could say at best for the Inner Sphere even if they took it seriously what does that mean... "something sometime somewhere is going to maybe attack us so we need better tech and alliances? We're almost constantly fighting each other no duh." Edit: it's not so much they were bad at it but had little to offer

[@EmperorPylades]

Clan Wolf were staunch Wardens and absolutely opposed to the idea of invading the Sphere at all, and came up with the Dragoons plan as another stalling method - it was such a reasonable suggestion that even some Crusaders crossed the floor in the vote. Because there were still no actual invasion plans when they were dispatched, there was very little that they could do to warn the Sphere. The problem with the whole plan was that once the Dragoons started kicking ass and taking names (because they were still the products of the absolute hell that is Clan training, with Star League era mechs) they were getting more money, glory, reverence and sex than they ever imagined possible - hell, they were handed an entire PLANET - so they went native. They were all 'freebirths' after all, and were typically treated like crap back in Clan space, so there was nothing to keep them loyal. The other issue with them trying to warn the Sphere is that the bad blood and distrust between houses is legendary - if someone from House Liao was to tell a Davion what the time was while they were seated in the same room, they still probably wouldn't believe each other, and that problem only gets worse with some feuds, like Marik v Liao, or Kurita v EVERYONE.

[@shauntempley9757]

Not true. The Wolf Dragoons fully warned them, because they had Natasha Krensky leading them. She revealed herself to the Houses. Because the Successor Houses remember the name Kerensky, they knew they were coming, and believed her when she saw them individually. It was simply bad luck that the Invasion took place right in the middle of the Fourth Succession War, which started when Yorinaga Kurita returned from exile to fight the Kell Hounds for the heir to the Lyran Commonwealth, that was betrothed to Hanse Davion, and was a plot concocted by Kurita, Liao and the Free Worlds League, because Comstar wanted the war to happen. The tragedy, is the battle with Yorinaga and the Kell Hounds had already happened when Wolfs Dragoons warned them the invasion was coming. The only one that did not believe them was Comstar itself.

[@masterlink2319]

if you're ever wondering weather a mech is omni capable or not; it's in the Variant designations Both clan and Inner sphere Omnis have the initial Variant as "Prime" and subsequent models listed Alphabetically. (TBR-Prime, TBR-A, so on and so forth) Clan battlemechs are listed numerical and IS Battlemechs are a mix of letters and numbers of which I have never bothered to decipher.

[@Jonnyg325]

For IS mechs, R variants were sold to the Hegemony first, Rb variants are Star League Royals with all the fancy toys and different handling for only Hegemony pilots. K variants are usually Draconis Combine homebrews, D is for the Fedsuns, L is Capellan crap, and X is "somebody thinks they can do better so fuck you" And anything IIC is a clan refit replacing anything the clans no longer make like non-er lasers or standard autocannons.

[@Atlas3060]

Poster child Mechs of Battletech usually are the following: MadCat, Atlas, Battlemaster, Warhammer. Now that is not to be confused with fan favorites which would be some of those and Marauders plus Rifleman. If I didn't mention the Marauder, the fanbase would Turtle Bay me so hard. 6:30 Ah the Wolf's Dragoons, what Tex is getting at with the Dragoons is their history. They were effectively Clan spies. Posing as mercs, they fought for every nation to send back data to the Clans. Then they stopped, they also supported the Inner Sphere when the Clans came. Tex is salty that they could have said something earlier. Out of universe reasons, they couldn't but still its a fun In Universe thing to scream about. Yes the Madcat/Timber Wolf is pretty much a fun and maneuverable glass cannon depending on variant. You ride it to fight and kill, not to take hits, or at least not a lot of them. Pretty much the Cyberpunk Edgerunner motto of: "You're remembered by how you died, not lived." On the topic of customization, you are not wrong there. We do love our Mecha Barbie dolls. Armored Core folks are like our more hyperactive cousins in this regard. We like sitting with them at the dinner table and talk shop sometimes. There are so many variants and designs, again Big Gulp, ocean, drown. Tex is not wrong about the Rakshasa. It is a Timberwolf Temu, the essence of the "Can we have X? We have X at home, X at home" meme. I think some people try to defend it, I don't understand how, I guess someone always finds sympathy for that one ugly dog in life. Whatever. The Bounty Hunter is a title, a legacy, a famous name known throughout the stars. Basically as Tex said, you have one Bounty Hunter and a cadre of supporters, out of those supporters someone is groomed to be the next Hunter. When the old one leaves, they take a portion of the shares, loot, and walks away. Then the new Hunter takes over. If the old one dies, well they are fondly remembered by the new Hunter, who takes over. It is sort of our Samus/Boba Fett/Dread Pirate Roberts Out of universe a lot of the designs we see are basically record sheets released. In universe probably military experts who can identify weaponry as they are fired, combat data gathered from survivors, etc. Ah yes the Tiger tank, I remember the old history joke of "The Tiger was worth 10 Shermans, but the Allies made sure to make 12 Shermans each time" war is a numbers game and the Inner Sphere sure does have that on their side at times.

[@schaddenkorp6977]

Sorry man but Glass Cannon and Timberwolf are two words that do not really add up when you consider it has, iirc, near the maximum amount (.5 ton short of max) of armor you can fit onto a 75 ton heavy mech - which is by no means inconsiderable. Sure Mad Cats do go down but rare is the instance they go down easy.

[@kazekamiha]

Funny enough I got to play Mech 2 in an arcade with VR headsets (In the 90's... no joke) and we both picked the Timber Wolf. We just kinda... circled and fired randomly. XD What makes the Mad Cat so iconic, aside from the cool shape, is that it's highly balanced and close to a jack-of-all-trades. Long range support? LRMs. Brawl? Lasers. Infantry? Machine guns. It's well armored, quick for it's weight class (It can outrun some IS mediums) and hits like a truck.

[@Gustav_Kuriga]

25:45 Clan Sea Fox Merchant here again. Without our Merchants, the Clan Invasion's already lackluster supply chain would have gone from merely insufficient to completely nonexistent. The reason for this being, of course, that most Clanners viewed anything to do with such "mundanities" as logistics or garrisons as "dishonorable". We're one of the few Clans that actually value our Merchant Caste at the same or sometimes an even higher level than Warriors, and thus we understand how vital (and profitable) providing logistics is.

[@Razgriz148]

Always thought Sea Fox was the most reasonable. And thanks for the Mad Dog sale, love the Mech

[@EndlessInfinity1]

27:33 You won't get into tex's spiels about warships for several more episodes, but it's worth noting that the clanners did have warships with wmd capabilities while the IS had long since lost the ability to make orbital strikes. The thing is that, after a certain event during the clan invasion, the clanners held off on using their warships offensively specifically because the IS had lost theirs.

[@LanceLeaderSawyer]

The Mad Cat/Timber Wolf and the Atlas are the two most iconic 'mechs of Battletech. The Mad Cat is super fun to play as on the tabletop. Elementals are pretty damn scary in lore and super annoying to deal with in the tabletop. As for their penchant for football, you'll find out in the Clans two parter.

[@reecedignan8365]

23:47 Oh Tiger Tanks were a ferocious beast for sure, but as one problem became extremely clear with them… it was less “how would they do when they saw combat?” And more “will they actually see combat?” For the tiger had a quite bad problem of breaking down… a lot. One example of this comes from France where an entire battalion of them were sent to the front. Of said company half didn’t make it. Why? Because their engines went before they even got close and of them the majority were killed by allied air power as they tried to repair. Of the others that made it many were lost on the battlefields due to Anti-tank guns or tank hunters such as the Sherman Firefly or the British 17Pndr. Many were also taken out by the simple and terrible PIAT who would destroy their tracks or get a lucky hit on the engine disabling said tank and forcing their crews to abandon them in battle. While games make them the king of tanks, the reality is, while extremely good at being able to take out enemy tanks, their very poor reliability and ease of repair usually meant the majority of them were lost to being abandoned or knockout by allied air power, and the rest were usually either held in reserve or most prominently in the later war after the allies had a time to note which weapons were effective to take em out, they began to get knocked out in numbers just due to how the allies learned to deal with them. Interestingly, the majority of “Tiger” calls by tankers and infantry were mostly not actual Tiger. The majority were usually Panzer IV and Stug’s with another more semi-common one being the Panther. Tho, even better was when units would say they had encountered entire company’s and platoons worth of Tiger tanks… only to find out said position… was just a handful of anti-tank guns. Why such call? Mostly as crews just knew the name and reputation of said tank and when engaged by an unknown AT round it just became common for tank commander to make the call that it was a Tiger when full identification could not be made. 24:05 ah yes what you refer to is the dummy tanks. Misconception when people hear this is they were designed for combat. No. They were made for Operation Overlord and keeping it shrouded as to where the allies were actually planning on landing. They would use these tanks alongside “fake” units - sometimes a mix of actual units just give fake designations on camera/parade walks, or civilian volunteers wearing military gear for parade/camera show. These fake units were posted around the shortest gap of the English Channel between Europe and England as it would give the impression our invasion was to take place there. This entire fake army was even given over command to General Patton as they believed he had a high reputation amongst the Germans - not really tho they did see him as an overly aggressive commander so it did somewhat work out. And… it worked. The Germans believed our forces would unite and go for this shortest point and didn’t expect at all Normandy was our main objective. This is why most of your SS units were posted more up towards Caen - and this is why is brits have a slight rinkle with Americans who always like to say they got the worst or Normandy and always put down the British and Canadian advance for being “slow and pondering” when the reality was, the yanks faced primarily green-regular divisions who’s NCO core was made up somewhat of veterans, but the majority were just green and semi-inexperienced troops from German or worse obstruppen (essentially people from captured nations who were “willing to help”) On the British and Canadian side you ended up having the majority of the SS in France facing us down alongside many experienced and veteran tank formations. While a lot of the SS troops in Normandy were also quite young and inexperienced troops, they were extremely fanatical. And trying to fight your way through them was bloody and costly at every shift. As such, with Monty’s experience in Africa, Sicily and Italy alongside having such opponents to face and not wishing to just waste Commonwealth soldier lives, he played it as safe as possible in his advance, which seemed to thankfully do the job much better.

[@EmperorPylades]

To add to the issues with the Tiger tank, by the time they were in service, the Wehrmacht was using horse drawn carraiges for much of their logistics, because they were now THAT short on oil and fuel. Which means that introducing a heavy tank that guzzled fuel like the Tiger (which was an absolute vampire, even by the already horrible standards of Heavy Tanks), was an even STUPIDER move.

[@kazekamiha]

On Tiger Tanks, look at Lazerpig's video 'Something, Something Tiger Tank' where he goes into details. They supposedly were easy to operate... when they operated.

[@bthsr7113]

And in the Pacific, the Yamato is another great example of resource demands turning a supposed apex predator weapons platform into a joke. The Yamato spent so much time in part because of inadequate fuel reserves that she became known more for being a hotel that hosted senior naval officers. And then on her final mission, they couldn't provide adequate escorts or air cover for even a mission to ram her into an island to serve as a fixed fortress. Also, there were times where the Yamato failed to actually do anything meaningful because she was deemed too valuable to risk.

[@refurbishedtechpriest9076]

The Mad Cat/Timberwolf has been my personal-favorite omnimech since I first played MW2 back in the early 90's.

[@Nightmare_52]

armored core 6 mentioned, vaatividya here we come as for how crazy solaris can be at times, you havent known fear until an urbanmech sprints around at 200kph firing a gauss rifle

[@bthsr7113]

wait... how do.... is there MASC or a supercharger involved? I know you're at least using an XL engine, but I wouldn't be surprised if you had to do an XXL engine to swing this.

[@Nightmare_52]

Yeah it had a special Solaris Supercharger and a much bigger engine than standard

[@JetBalrog]

At the start, usually I personally think of the Atlas, but that's because of a PS2(?) game I played ages ago where you could hop out of the mechs and climb into other ones, and there was an Atlas on the PvP mode map I can vaguely remember, I think? It's been ages, but the Atlas was just so cool I always think of it first.

[@Rhiawhyn]

So, elementals are surprisingly close to space marines. Sure they lack the organs, but instead of being engineered after birth with a selection process they are vat grown super soldiers that are similarly hardy and surprisingly large. They are trained from birth and never stop training, and only know combat as that is their whole life. Birth to death unless they leave the clan. Which happens but that's not common. In their battle armors (basically powered armor) they are about the same height, carry full scale vehicle grade weapons, jump jets (so assault marine basically) and importantly, standard mech armor. Elementals can take direct hits from battlemechs and not care. Not MANY hits, but they can. Combine that with them having what is basically an armor piercing power claw on their other hand. you can see why they are known in the inner sphere as terrifying pilot removal systems. As far as confirmed builds, battlemechs are capable of fully identifying and logging not just the mech itself but it's weaponry before it fires. So it's surprisingly easy to mark off a build in universe, literally any mech that spots you and calls home or just finding a black box in the smoking remains can report what you have. That and, being shot at it's pretty easy to tell with what. PPCs are like thor taking a shit in your general direction. Lasers are color coded based on wavelength and surprisingly accurately too given NIR lasers are short ranged but usually high damage (for the size/weight/heat anyway), while large lasers are NUV/Blue and tend to be inefficient for heat but usually longer ranged. You can generally tell you are being shot at by a gauss rifle when you hear an industrial accident impacting your mech as well so, usually you can tell lol.

[@schaddenkorp6977]

Elementals can also flunk out of the warrior caste during their Sibko training, it’s exceedingly rare, but it does happen.

[@alfagamingnl1815]

Nice reaction it's really fun to see you become interested in Battletech. If you're interested in more battletech lore channels I can highly recommend Mechanical Frog and Big-Red40TECH for mech breakdowns (with Big-Reds longer video's being especially interesting) while Sven van der Plank is the king of conflict breakdowns/explorations. I really hope you end up reacting to these guy's aswell they deserve it.

[@plaguegroup7066]

The main character mech...for the clans!

[@WolfHreda]

A big problem the Clans faced during the invasion was that their invasion corridor ran right through a stretch of space that had only become nominally less contentious about 25 years before. On one side, they had the DCMS, who do NOT suffer slights lightly, on the other they had the Steiner half of the Federated Commonwealth, the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful successor state in the Inner Sphere, and in the middle was the Free Rasalhague Republic, a fledgling empire formed as a buffer zone between the other two out of worlds that had become a thorn in their sides for so long that it was just easier to grant them their independence than to keep trying to put down rebellions from a people of primarily Scandinavian ancestry.

[@tv_tim]

The Bounty Hunter Tex mentioned isn't a single person, it's basically a title passed down from hunter to hunter. They use various 'mechs and tactics, but always claim massive bounties with little effort while taking out everyone in their way. Science Insanity did a video on them, The Bounty Hunter is a fun series of characters.

[@Yacovo]

6:30 That's the Wolf Dragoons. They're the ones with the Ultramarine like Plot Armor in case you were wondering. Thanks for the video.

[@Nostroman_Praetor]

Something important to note about the omnipod system is they are default PARTS configuration. Configurations of the omnipods don't simply let you change what weapons are in the hardpoints but also what hardpoints are in the mech. Personally, my favorite config at the moment is config A with a B Torso for more center durability. Edit: This is specifically for the recent mechwarrior games. Omni-pods in lore and on tabletop apparently work differently. :P

[@БогуславПозняк]

This is wrong. What you describe is just a MWO and Mechwarrior 5 interpretation of the system. In lore (and tabletop) there is no such thing as "hardpoint". Basically in omnimech there is a base structure (unchangable part) and pod-space which you can fill however you like.

[@Nostroman_Praetor]

@БогуславПозняк Oh. I was unaware of how it worked on tabletop so thank u for telling me. :)

[@БогуславПозняк]

@@Nostroman_Praetor Yeah, Mechwarrior games have different implementations of mechlab and the way mech outfitting works. In tabletop and lore the main difference between omnimech and battlmech is that due to omni-pods you can change mech's loadout very fast. Changes that takes days for battlmech will be done in hours for omnimech, as in battlmech all equipment is hardwired, and thus changes will require major reassembly. Omnimechs generally have only armor, structure, engine and gyro as hardwired parts (rarely some other stuff), and the rest is contained in omni-pods that are easy to install/uninstall.

[@punpundit5590]

It's OK, you can say "us". The Sol system is at the center of the Inner Sphere after all. I think the reason so many people really like the Mad Cat is that they play Battletech games with limited deployment slots. In that instance, it doesn't matter how many urbies or Black Knights you can buy for the price of a single Mad Cat, because all you want is the best 'mech for each slot. I've played a bunch of the BTA mod for the turn-based Battletech game from HBS. In that mod, you can maximally deploy 12 'mechs. I have about 6 different roles for these slots. 3 and a half of those roles are best filled by the Mad Cat (The half is because missile boats can be indirect-fire with LRMs or VRMs, or direct-fire with MRMs or ATMs. For indirect-fire you don't need the mobility that the Mad Cat provides so well, and would prefer a heavier 'mech that provides more weight of fire - such as the Dire Wolf.) Whenever I fight the Clans in that game, I am on the lookout for Mad Cats that I can shoot the cockpit out of and capture, or shoot the legs off of so I can combine it with a second Mad Cat where I didn't manage to hit the cockpit before it was destroyed. I rarely fight Clans because I find Elementals very tedious to deal with, so you could say that I go after Clan fights once I am ready to start capturing Mad Cats, and stop once I have a sufficient amount of Mad Cats. So I can see why some people would not look past that and conclude that the Mad Cat is the perfect weapon system... Much like wehraboos (like weeaboo but for the wehrmacht, you see) only see the paper stats and game performance of WW2 German weapons of war, and ignore the maintenance issues, drivetrain problems, supply issues, etc. that plagued these machines in real life.

[@TheLegitWeebs]

It makes sense in a closed environment with limited slots that the Mad Cat would shine. I think it was mentioned that the arena fighters like it for that very reason. But yeah, war is very different.

[@Jonnyg325]

​@@TheLegitWeebsThe other great thing about arena madcats is that, unless your technician is completely incompetent, you can swap out all the weapons pods in 2 hours at most, combined with being able to slap on extra armor in an hour, as long as you didn't lose the fight too badly, you can be up and ready for round two

[@sempermilites87]

The Mad Cat video is an important one in Tex's content history. The videos before it were a bit casual and also short. The Mad Cat one is when he starts to drift to a bit more serious tone, but still has the memes in it. From this point forward, his videos are going to be a bit more in the same format as this one, but just longer.

[@bthsr7113]

I like to mix inner sphere reporting names and Clan original names. Whichever is cooler/more apt/less likely to be confused with another mech, I use. So while I call them Thors and Vultures, I call this a Timber Wolf. It helps the Elementals that their eponymous armor has jump jets. As if a small laser, battle claw, two salvos of 2 SRM warheads, an SMG if not AR, and enough armor to survive A hit from a standard PPC or AC10 wasn't enough. Having become more familiar with batttletech weapons, especially the heat curves and ammo counts, the prime isn't AS scary as it might first appear, but it's still a majestic beast, and the whole point of Omnimechs is rapid modularity within a certain range so long as you have proper parts and technicians. So you can tweak things to become VERY well optimized. Yes, that is a lot of firepower. Between clan weapons almost always being lighter (along with often being smaller and even having superior performance), and the Timber Wolf using ALL the weight saving technologies of the time to allow for substantial tonnage of pod space, it can wreck your plans pretty well. It's also one of the better armored clan mechs for its weight bracket during the invasion. On the upside when facing Clanner Arrow IV: they almost never use nukes. Downside, even their heavy artillery missile batteries are lighter, smaller, and reach farther. So they can fit more tons of ammunition to sustain fire longer or install auxiliary weapons for defense. AP Gauss rifles are also useful for fighting battle armor, which the Inner Sphere rapidly adopted and iterated on after being introduced to the concept by Elementals. Sure, there was that one Star League battle armor design, but it only ever saw limited use in covert ops. The Elemental was the first mass production front line battle armor, and it blew its ancestor out of the water. The Rakshasa is pretty much a perfect case study in the difference between Star League/advanced inner sphere level tech and clan level tech. Probably the only reason it doesn't cost the same is because it can't sport as many weapons. There's actually ANOTHER successor to the Timber wolf in the Ilclan era. The Savage Wolf AKA Mad Cat Mk IV. Its price isn't listed on Sarna yet, but given that it sports an xXl engine.... I don't even want to think about it. Engines are the most expensive single system on a Battlemech usually, and the 20 times price of standard equivalent of an XXL makes the 4 times price of standard of an XL seem cheap. You could probably buy 3 Timber Wolves for the price of a Savage Wolf, with enough change for a wide spread of alternate weapons for them. "And after that, it gets even better!" with the XXL being massive and quite easy to hit with shots that get past, through, or around armor. Then to top it off, these babies run HOT. Even at a standstill without using weapons, it eats into your heat budget, and movement generated heat is doubled. I'm kind of a hater for the XXL fusion engine in case you couldn't tell. Fun fact, the Bounty Hunters paint their mechs solid green with money symbols in gold paint for detail. So unlike Boba Fett (until his elder years) and Samus, the Bounty Hunters have or had a sense of humor. There are definitely stompier mechs, like assault class quad mechs or later era tripedal superheavies, and there are definitely mechs with more dakka. But best balanced is the title the Timber Wolf has strong claim to... so long as balance is referring to performance over price. The inflatable tanks were specifically for the lead up to Operation Overlord AKA D-Day. It was in part to trick the Germans into thinking we were coming in from a different approach for the main thrust of the invasion. And by Hannibal it worked fantastically! One of the reasons why the Clans had fewer mechs was resource limitations, but then they tied a hand behind their back and promised not to kick on top of their limitations. Very few clanners were warrior caste, and vast percentages of them ended up KIA to live fire training or fighting for elevate their rank/status. Then there's the issue of not all the clans being in on the mission. And of course, not using combined arms most of the time, and almost never using warships. Eh, planet busting wouldn't necessarily be enough of a strategic edge. The Great Houses have rendered worlds uninhabitable before, and they generally don't want to do that anymore because of how wasteful it is.

[@dagonofthedepths]

Armored Core 6 is amazing. My fav game from last year although I'm bias been playing that series since 2000. Honestly way more customizable that battle tech but ironically topical because Armored Cores kind of function like omnimechs. The thing with omni mechs is you can mix pods so you can take the missile racks from the left torso of A and swap them for the left torso of B. Armored Core though you can change every part on it. But it's also way faster and doesn't have that mech sim nuance. It's more like Gundam really. Another thing about the Battle of Tukayyid is Clan Wolf was almost actively sabotaging the whole thing imo. Like the reason they went last was because they over bid mainly because they knew what's what with the Inner Sphere. They also were doing stuff like supporting Smoke Jaguar by sending the 1 clan that absoultly hated their guts as back up.

[@shade8816]

Mechs can scan other mechs and get weapons loadouts, if not secondary equipment as well. One does have to survive however. Ok, so the Rakshasa has overheating problems, its true. Which is so easy to fix. Remove the Artemis targeting and pulse laser. Replace Ferro-Fibrus armor with Standard or Light Ferro-Fibrus. Add Machine Gun with half ton of ammo. Add a double heat sinks in each arm and add case in both torso slots. It can fire Missiles and Er Large without overheating, or fire both medium lasers, both ER large lasers, and one Missile system with only slight heat if it moved. Also, case wont save the mech fully if there is a ammo explosion, but now it is salvagable and increases the pilot survivability by alot.

[@avsbes98]

I would argue that there's probably three Mechs that are contenders for the "Main Character" Spot. The Warhammer (though its time in the spotlight has somewhat passed), the MadCat and the Marauder (including the Marauder II).

[@avsbes98]

2:14 Anastasius Focht / Frederick Steiner.

[@LostInNumbers]

You forgot the Atlas, who is the literal face of the franchise, as it's skull is on the Battletech logo.

[@avsbes98]

@@LostInNumbers Somehow i did, you are correct.

[@bthsr7113]

The Warhammer was the first face of the franchise, then legal nonsense with Harmony Gold. When the Clan Invasion started, the Mad Cat became THE iconic mech. In more recent times, the Atlas has claimed the mantle, having been arornd in universe far longer than the Timber Wolf while also just having and epically metal visage.

[@EndlessInfinity1]

One day, when the mecha cravings reach maximum, you should steam binging: -All armored core opening cinematics [Aldahe posted a compilation] -Armored Core 6 story trailer -Mechwarrior Cinematics Collection [posted by Blagg Zear, includes the mod Mechwarrior: Living Legends, which wasn't a full game but was the only content during a massive drought] -Hired Steel [episodes 0-3, 4 is being worked on but delayed because the team was hired to do cinematics for mechwarrior 5: clans and they upgraded unreal versions] -HBS Battletech intro [Though you might want to save it for after the Amaris civil war Tex Talks as you'll catch a lot of references] Am I missing anything?

[@Zippercdrr]

The bounty Hunter being the settings Dred Pirate Roberts is referencing the Princess Bride. A Pirate who is passed the name Roberts to a new generation as the previous Roberts retires. They get name recognition, and the old one retires with his/hers riches.

[@WolfHreda]

For a quick summary, the Timber Wolf has almost the exact same damage output as the Atlas, but it can apply that damage from further away. On top of that, its walking speed (just over 50 kph) is equal to the Atlas running at top speed. Despite all that, it breaks the combat triangle by also being heavily armored, having 230 points of armor, equal to the most heavily armored heavy 'mech in the entire 3025 TRO, the Orion. Its only "downside," which isn't actually a downside as it is part of its tactical doctrine, is that it can't fire all its weapons constantly. The Clans love their bracket fighters, and the Timber Wolf Prime is arguably the best such loadout ever made.

[@hankhill4101]

Clan Wolf/Wolf's Dragoons are the Ultramarines of Battletech.

[@TheMongral]

Y'know, it's kind of fitting that Tex talks about the Mad Cat and the very next one coming up is the Catapult, considering the Catapult is basically "The Mad Cat we have at home". Sure, it's stuck with Inner sphere stuff, so it's no clan omnimech, but it turns out that if your mechs whole point is two really big shoulder mounts, people will find a way to cram anything in there, leading to, frankly, one of the most versatile, yet surprisingly inexpensive, heavies in the Inner Sphere. It speaks volumes to how good of a mech it is that the Mad Cat was mistaken, even partially, for one (and even shows how, sometimes, a design is so good people millions of light years apart can come up with and iterate on practically the same ideas in total isolation), as while it definitely doesn't have the kind of firepower the Mad Cat has, it is somehow just as ideal for "customization" as the Mad Cat. Look forward to learning about what is essentially the Heavy Mech version of an Urbie, without any of the meme's holding it back. It doesn't get the spotlight as much as many other mechs (like the Mad Cat or Atlas), but nobody can deny it's a great mech to have on your side.

[@schaddenkorp6977]

You do know that the Catapult preceded the Mad Cat and when Kerensky left the IS along with his followers in the SLDF, they took a bunch with them?

[@TheMongral]

I am aware. I’m mostly pointing out the fact that its design is so solid that the Mad Cat is literally just a Catapult with arm mounts pretty much (thus the “mad cat we have at home” comment), with next to no real difference in terms of profile despite a prolonged period of isolated development. The design was so solid that in spite of complete isolation, the only way it could be made better was more weapons (plus making it an omnimech obviously). The catapult, and the mad cat after it, are clear examples of the saying: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

[@schaddenkorp6977]

@@TheMongral Sorry the way I initially read your original post came off as if you were saying the Catapult came along after, which was my brain pulling a stupid and shows I need to get better sleep lol. I also love the Catapult, I have a Steiner merc unit in tabletop that has managed to get ahold of five of them over their near 30 campaign run so far (6 years irl since I started them), three are salvaged or captured Kuritan variants and the other two are the more standard LRM boat we all know and love (and seethe if on the receiving end of a bunch of them).

[@TheMongral]

No worries man. The extra clarification/lore info always helps anyways. More clarity and backstory is never a bad thing (provided there’s not too much of course). The mad cat and catapult do also kind of have a big stompy chicken and egg conundrum so clarifying which came first is helpful in that regard. :)

[@ObiwanNekody]

Thank you for sharing 😊

[@grygaming5519]

The Madcat think's he's "him" but he's not him. That would be the Atlas and Highlander.

[@chrisroberts7000]

Discount Dan: the Lionel Hutz of Battletech.

[@aaronhenley4741]

0:51 honestly, I’d say Clan Wolf are the Ultramarines of BT. The Madcat/Timberwolf is the X-Wing or TIE fighter of the franchise.

[@Bluetheknight21]

Ah yes, my absolute favorite mech. DA TIMBY!

[@ObiwanNekody]

Germany did not have the best tanks, that's a commonly repeated myth. Most of the German superiority in technology at the time is more or less a myth, which is part of why they lost. By the midway point of the war the 'mericans had a substantial tech advantage in many areas of the major powers... Best tank, best service rifle, best radio, best boats, best anti air shell, best radar, worst torpedo, best progress to making an artificial sun, best man portable anti tank weapon, best religious object they consider a pistol, best light duty general purpose vehicle... Well, I suppose best is somewhat subjective, but still.

[@Jonnyg325]

4:30 this was a pretty spectacular fuckup by the targeting system, most would have just called it unidentified. But Kell was using a cheap ass periphery shitbox system that hadn't been maintained since probably before Kerensky's grandpa was born, so it screwed up and kept flickering, also half the lighbrights in the panel were probably broken. 16:40 contrary to Tex's opinion on the Rakshasa, it does have a major advantage over the madcat, spare parts exist. You can repair the fucker in less than a year

[@ObsidianDragon7030]

Still find it funny that the Battletech Animated series treated these machines like Mook Mechs and not The kind of machine a main Character would ride. XD

[@ObsidianDragon7030]

Also you can pilot the Madcat MK II In the Mech 4 Series of Computer games and my god in heaven is it an Absolute Monster. Never got a chance to use it in Tabletop though.

[@ObsidianDragon7030]

19:40 Also also the Way the Tabletop game works is you get these Technical Manuals that Contain the Design Specs for the different Mechs, Usually divided up between Eras. I have a friend who has a few of them from his Dad and they're quite a fun read.

[@Lorlic1138]

From what I've seen with the newer stuff, people are pivoting more towards calling clan mechs by their clan name. The Madcat and Thor are kind of Iconic names tho.

[@cracklingvoice]

13:55 'Urbie with a Nuke' exists. The UM-AIV has an Arrow-IV artillery missiles system and can carry two tons of missiles. Standard missiles come five per ton, the 'Davy Crockett-M' type missiles come one per ton and mount a 0.5kt nuclear warhead. It's the only canon nuclear weapons system that can be mounted on a mech, and the rules outlining their capabilities also strongly advise against their use in anything other than a scenario. Nuclear weapons in battletech do not have a bv2 value, and so cannot be properly included in a game with a bv2 requirement. Nukes are very rarely used in the tabletop game, due to the extreme amount of damage they put out and the inherent inaccuracy of their platforms.

[@Jonnyg325]

Thus we get the one ever Urbie AIV deployment, in a tournament, where it was nuking players from across the room, and was canonized as when the Kell Hounds got almost completely wiped out, because when you play with nukes, people lose

[@hakuya14]

I think, when people hear Battletech, it's probably the Atlas... maybe-

[@puddel9079]

13:31 Apparently, updating my comment with the Mad Calico's (Steam) share ID hid my comment. It seems we can't have nice things. For those who asked for the build... Right arm: Vvc-760PR Left arm: Zimmerman Right shoulder: the 6 cell basic missile launcher pod Left shoulder: split (SPL-12) missile pods Head: Alba (for style matched with optimization) Core: Mind Alpha Arms: Nachtreiher (precision with negligible recoil) Legs: Mind Beta (originally spring chicken, but I had to optimize. then I remembered cats walk on digitigrade feet) Booster: Speed booster (ends in SPD | out maneuver danger, and only dodge away from your current trajectory, maybe even fall mid-flight) FCS: Talbot (long range was hosed from the start) Generator: Aorta Expansion: Assault Armor The only favor I will ask is that everyone gives their version a catlike paintjob.

[@jamesbeard5513]

On which mech is 'iconic' for the game, it depends on the era. For the initial era (the Succession Wars), I would say the Atlas is probably the top followed by the Marauder and Warhammer. The Mad Cat/Timber Wolf is the symbol of disparity between the Clan tech and the IS tech in the early invasion (it had equal armor to the 85ton Battlemaster, nearly the same firepower as a 75 ton Marauder combined with a 65 ton Catapult, and the speed of a 50 ton Trebuchet, giving it a combined capability no single IS mech can equal. Even a hundred years later, none can equal the classic design, least not without making it insanely expensive {looks at Mad Cat IV/Savage Wolf})

[@TheShardsFamily]

Tex did a stream eariler today where they ate a 30+ year old MRE LOL

[@mikewaterfield3599]

That is Timber Wolf, not ever “MadCat” you inner sphere, free birth, barbarian!

[@bthsr7113]

Aff, it's truly superior platform compared to the Thor and Vulture too.

[@weirdferretthing]

In fairness to the Clans, Nazi German tech wasn't actually THAT much better than most. They had some examples of radically advanced systems, but so did almost everyone else. Their success was down to everyone else being incompetent or smaller than them, rather than a monstrous technological and doctrinal advantage. Poland put up a savage fight, but was fighting the combined hyper-militarized might of Russia and Germany from both sides. Other nations fell because they nearly had no military to speak of following WW1. They rolled over the French because French commanders failed to take the first notice of Germans advancing through the Ardennes seriously and to act accordingly, refusing to believe their own scouts, and because French communications were frankly dismal. That being because commanders, paranoid of being overheard, all but refused to use radio in most cases. French tanks additionally, while -decent- for the time also lacked radios unless they were a command tank (and sometimes not even then) and thus couldn't coordinate properly in comparison to the German tanks, who -all- had radios. The comparison Tex made, however, is still apt; Germany's most advanced systems often relied on rare metals that Germany could not produce domestically. Additionally, many of their designs were in fact overengineered and too complex for fighting machines of the day leading to significant maintenance and upkeep issues. While the German logistics chain between supply and front line was quite efficient, that doesn't do much if your supply itself is extremely limited and many key resources are produced in conquered or contested territory far from the factories. The Clans pursued an invasion without bringing along the decades of spare men and materiel they would need. The factories were all back in Clan space, nearly 1,000 light years away from the warfront. Clan honor systems, as well, restricted their ability to take advantage of their full fighting force. Notably, after Clan Smoke Jaguar used a WarShip to annihilate a defiant civilian population, Clan Wolf responded by bidding away its entire WarShip navy for any future conflict, forcing every other Clan to do the same for honor's sake. If the Clans had fought like the Great Houses, or even the Star League before them, they could have won. Eventually. Instead, honor was judged more important. Restrictive Clan doctrines were judged more important. And when the Inner Sphere learned about all that, it was only a matter of time before they exploited the absolute hell out of it. Which leads to the Clans, of course, getting Focht.

[@Gustav_Kuriga]

Actually it was the doctrine that was better than other nations at the beginning of the war. The only military that had worse tanks than the Germans at the beginning of the war were the Polish. And the Polish did not "put up a savage fight", they collapsed entirely. The one "holding the Germans" the Polish claim to have had was entirely due to the Germans readjusting supply lines. The French, British, and Soviets ALL had better tanks than the Germans, and in far larger numbers. Their doctrines were just garbage early war, especially the French. The French spread their tank forces out piecemeal, and what sizable forces they did have were used too little, too late with little coordination among their army units. Czechoslovakia DID have a sizable military, but the civilian government capitulated when the French and British did nothing to guarantee Czechoslovakia.

[@bthsr7113]

@@Gustav_Kuriga The Poles DID fight hard. And don't forget that they got flanked by the Soviets they assumed would be Neutral.

[@Gustav_Kuriga]

@@bthsr7113 I didn't say the didn't fight hard. Just that what they did have was nowhere near adequate even if the Soviets never attacked. By the time the Soviets attacked ~2 weeks after the Germans, the Polish were already having their lines collapse.

[@weirdferretthing]

@@Gustav_Kuriga Russia's tanks sucked. Not by design, by production. The insane production schedules they had to keep up meant the slave laborers basically cut as many corners as they could get away with without getting shot for it. Most war-era T-34s were unreliable shitboxes and deathtraps for their crews, often lacking basic features like seating, gunnery sights, any kind of insulation or sealing, and generally could maybe go 200 miles before the transmission gave out and MAYBE take one single hard hit without killing the crew through armor spalling. Almost every T-34 or T-34/85 you see in museums or videos were built post-war. Russia was only saved from being stomped flat outright by the German advance by the dual fortunes of winter and the Allies turning it into a 3-front war. If Russia had been alone in the fight, sheer incompetence would have doomed them.

[@Gustav_Kuriga]

@@weirdferretthing Sure bud, I bet you believe tanks drive to the battlefield too all the way from the factory.

[@xoso599]

6:10 Slight genetic modification to have a 2.61m tall 214kg elemental GF. Slight.

[@TheLegitWeebs]

Just a wee bit of vat grown human engineering 😁

[@bthsr7113]

@@TheLegitWeebs "and expensive dates to boot."

[@plaguegroup7066]

MADCAT Great mech Woooooooo more Battletech fire 🔥🔥🔥