User:Frabby

Well, here's me

I started playing classic boardgame BT and reading the novels in 1992, back in a time when I had plentiful of spare time in the army (Luftwaffe actually). Not knowing anything about the game universe or the 'Mech designs, I randomly affiliated with House Liao because green is my favourite colour and chose the Archer as my 'Mech for the first training battles because I thought it the most beautiful picture. I did not know how it was different from a Stinger... funny how I remember that after so many years.

Preferred time period: Third/Fourth succession war (pre-Clan)

I liked the early LosTech flair of the BT universe and started to lose interest in the storyline when the Clans arrived because I do not like their in-credible story and the associated tech and rules and general munchkinism. Accordingly, my BT interests primarily cover the time period between 3000 and 3050, and the inner workings of the BT universe at that time. Always enjoyed playing the Liao underdog.

The Clans broke it for me.

I have no experience with MW:DA yet nor expect to have any as I hardly play anymore. CBT is enough for me. However, I think bringing the story to a full circle, re-installing the Federated Suns and the Lyran Commonwealth, and bringing about a new era of Lostech was probably the smartest thing they could do to the franchise and now they should leave it alone. It can only get worse (see countless TV series that started out good and then ran until they were outright lousy - I won't even go into B5 or BSG). Trimming superpowers like GDL and WD appealed to me - better let them go down in flames and glory. I am not really up to date on the DA storyline, however.

Preferred Factions

The preferrence for House Liao stuck - I always liked to play the underdog, at least in games.

If I were to name a favourite Clan then it would be the Ghost Bears, or perhaps the Snow Ravens.

<rant>But the Clans themselves suck, as do their tech and rules. Where CBT was on the edge of dystopic futuristic space soap opera, the Clans pushed it way over the line to the silly side of things - Clan tech is pure munchkinism, quite the opposite from the original Lostech. Their invasion a Yuuzan Vong ripoff. Why did they not introduce technomages who can mutate into BattleMechs right away. Mumblegrumble...</rant>

Sources

I have read all BT novels up to Ideal War and some others, and between individual players our RPG group owned a plethora of sourcebooks and technical readouts. About half of this material is German. Much, but not all, of it is still at my place.

Recently I have been acquiring lots of stuff via ebay in an attempt to complete my collection, and the opportunity to purchase PDF files was one I could not resist especially considering how strong the Euro was vs. the USD at the time.

What I am doing on the Wiki

Generally, being a general information spotter who has diligently collected and put together bits and pieces from various sources made me an obvious victim to wikipedianism. I started adding bits and pieces here and there and I really would not say there is any specific favourite area I am working on.

Canonicity

Delving into the CBT forums on classicbattletech.com (the Catalyst site) I found myself in debates about what is canon and what it not. Although I managed to squeeze a not entirely unclear answer out of Mr. Canon Herbert A. Beas II himself ([1]) his answer is somewhat unsatisfactory - not for its sub-par clarity (it is actually more than somewhat grey around the edges!) but for the verdict itself.

I am totally galled that the rights owners licensed away stuff and then refused to accept the licensed material as canon. Not only does this de-canonize lots of good and sensible information, it also requires me to go all over my information again and weed out the alledged non-canon. I fail to understand why they would not default to "canon unless countered", but it has been made abundantly clear that in fact, the policy is "non canon unless sanctified by core canon". Which causes no end of problems, to me at least. (As is evident on my attempts to bring a Canonicity debate forward at Template talk:NonCanon.)

Administrator

To my own lasting surprise I have been offered Adminship on BattleTechWiki. I normally seek to avoid any form of responsibility in my spare time activities but decided to give it a go nevertheless. I both hope and expect that being an Admin will change essentially nothing for me, and if the added rights and privileges are helpful to me in grooming the integrity of the BT universe then that can only be a good thing.

The Harbingers of Doom

Besides boardgame 'Mech combat we did a lot of scifi roleplaying in the BT universe back then and eventually played our own merc unit (with periphery bandit background), the Harbingers of Doom, where I was largely the GM and not a playing member.

In the fleeting hope that somebody is actually interested in this kind of fan-fiction, their background story goes along these lines:

Inception

At some point just prior to the Succession Wars, a colony was established on an arid but habitable world coreward of the Lyran Commonwealth, in the general region of what would much later comprise the Oberon Confederation. Since the colony had no functional HPG yet, it was cut off after the last JumpShip left the system, never to return. From what they had learned from that last ship the colonists only knew that war had come and decided to concentrate on their survival on this world. After some time they were actually happy to be apparently forgotten and ignored in the war.

By the early 2990s, the colony had flourished. It had grown to a population of several millions and achieved a modest industrial base on a tech level reminiscent of 21st century terra. At this point, a ComStar Explorer Corps expedition chanced upon the lost colony. While the ComStar crew was overjoyed to find this world, the population was not. They had largely retained their technological knowledge (although of course had no high-tech industry to speak of) and had not suffered Lostech, and as such were alienated, even frightened by the mythical outlook on technology that ComStar had. The horror stories of the succession wars did nothing to ease the colonists.

In a desperate attempt to maintain their veil of secrecy and keep out of Inner Sphere politicking and warring the people decided to fake cooperation but then capture or kill the crews to prevent ComStar from learning about their colony. In this they succeeded, and captured the Invader class JumpShip as well as one of the DropShips (a Union) intact, including two lances of light and medium ComGuard 'Mechs that the Explorer Corps had brought along for training and as reconnaissance vehicles in rough terrain. The colonists unceremoniously named the JumpShip "Space Needle" and the Union "Screwball". The death of the ComStar Primus in a shipping accident at around this time followed by the ascendancy of Primus Rusenstein and subsequently the upheaval within ComStar may have had a part in ComStar being unable to determine when or where exactly they had lost the expedition, curtailing their fate.

If the campaign is to be continued then I think the player's mysterious home planet will turn out to be one of the less-well known Oberon Confederation worlds (possibly Ferris). I like it better to pick up and work with loose ends than to invent yet another lost colony world.

Actions and Performance

The storyline of our RPG campaign kicked in shortly after this prelude, around the year 2995. The planetary militia had learned to operate the starships and came into the Inner Sphere as mercenaries or pirates - the Harbingers of Doom, our player unit. One of the characters was a disillusioned former ComStar adept who had been "exiled" with the expedition and sided with the locals in their coup, another was a high ranking planetary noble (the whole planet was treated as a land grant under the MW2:Mercenaries RPG rules). The planetary industry would provide the players' unit with a base and a steady market to purchase small amounts of low-tech vehicles, fuel, ammunition and also to recruit infantry and other personnell with low-tech training, but the planet also demanded imports of food and other items.

From a GM point of view, the obvious catch was that the unit had to be extra cautious that ComStar would not recognize the starships as former ComStar Explorer Corps ships, and that the location of their true home base world had to remain a carefully hidden secret which made supply runs risky. I also intended to get the players involved in the ComStar actions in the periphery following the year 2999 up until the Jolly Roger Affair in 3004, but they never learned the big picture (the story had not quite unfolded when we stopped playing).

The Harbingers made first contact with the Oberon pirates and agreed to work for them in the countless feuds that plagued the pirate-infested periphery, subduing other pirate tribes into submission. They may have played a vital part in the eventual formation of the Oberon Confederation, laying its foundations at this critical time. As a relatively large and cohesive unit (by periphery standards) they fared exceptionally well among the ever-quarreling periphery lords and acquired not only intelligence on the Inner Sphere, but also a stockpile of spare parts and a number of additional 'Mechs. Ultimately, they became so powerful within the Oberon faction that they became feared and mistrusted; they were soon sent on increasingly hazardous missions and received less and less support until they decided to break away, stealing a number of heavy 'Mechs and a Leopard class DropShip in the process. This earned them the wrath of the Oberon pirate king. (The Oberon Confederation proper did not yet exist, as it was only founded in 3012 by the grandfather of the later pirate king Hendrik III of Oberon.)

After falling out with their erstwhile pirate lords, the Harbingers' combat record shows mercenary contracts with Houses Steiner, Kurita and Marik who usually sent the unit on diversionary raids and (rarely) on objective raids or pirate hunting missions. They performed adequately (for mercs, i.e. poorly) in the defense of Suk II against a Kurita raid, where their heavy but slow 'Mechs were outmaneuvered by lighter Kurita units and they lost the Stalker which had been their payment for the job.

Their rating in the Mercenary Review Board dropped considerably after the unit "accidentially" lost their House liaison officers on two occasions: In one case an error during combat drops from orbit (blamed on a computer malfunction) dropped their liaison officer in his Phoenix Hawk far behind enemy lines, never to be heard of again; in another case a liaison officer was KIA on the battlefield under highly dubious circumstances involving the mysterious disappearance of a vast amount of combat salvage. The unit was also accused of war crimes while operating as counter-insurgency forces in the Free Worlds League, but an inquiry failed to provide conclusive proof.

In summary, they were mercenaries of the worst sort: Effective in steamroller tactics but immune to finer details of planning, unable (or unwilling) to achieve any mission objective besides search & destroy and wickedly addicted to Inferno SRMs (which they cunningly used to great tactical effect). They always inflicted and often suffered tremendous material losses over the course of their adventures, including the capture and subsequent loss of several different DropShips. When on the loose and operating on their own, unchecked by laws or liaison officers, the dishonourable and quite ruthless unit showed remarkable combat prowess as well as tactical and strategical skill and achieved great feats. Their name alone may eventually have been a deterrent to would-be attackers, and their determination (or stubbornness) paid off more often than it cost them.

I really should write a novel about the Harbingers!

Last known status report

Their last status report showed the Harbingers of Doom as a mixed troops bataillon, composed as follows:

• 1 modified Atlas with Gyro damage
• 2 Marauders, one of them the 3M variant
• 2 Warhammers, one of them a further modified 6K variant
• 2 Archers, one of them a 2S variant
• 2 Crusaders, one of them a 3L variant
• 2 Thunderbolts, both further modified 5SS variants
• 1 Catapult
• 2 Rifleman, one of them with a destroyed fusion engine
• 1 Shadow Hawk, heavily modified (Company commander's private 'Mech)
• 2 Scorpions
• 1 Wolverine that had its head/cockpit destroyed
• 1 Enforcer
• 2 Vindicators
• 1 Blackjack
• 2 Phoenix Hawks, one of them modified (replacing the MGs with Flamers)
• 1 Hermes II, without the usual advanced avionics suite
• 2 Centurions, both of the AL variant and both suffering from permanent damage
• 1 Wasp
• 1 Stinger
• 1 Locust
• 4 SRM Carrier tanks
• 4 LRM Carrier tanks
• 2 Tracked APC (25t)
• 2 Hover APC (15t)
• 2 Wheeled mobile repair platforms
• approximately 3 platoons of Infantry
• Aerospace wing: 1 Invader, 1 Union, 1 Leopard, 1 SL-15 Slayer, 1 TR-10 Transit
• One Phoenix Hawk and one Warhammer that were damaged beyond repair, to be broken down for spare parts

The Harbingers of Doom were under contract to the Draconis Combine until the end of August 3000 as a mobile periphery defense reserve, stationed on Alleghe and tasked with the defense of St. John, The Edge and Lovinac.

No further contracts are known; it is believed that the unit retreated to their secret home planet for good, and/or joined the Oberon Confederation after reconciliation.

In fact the campaign was suspended during this contract, and may yet be taken up.

The Harbingers were fairly successful on the battlefield because I (playing the enemy forces as GM) apparently never excelled at tactics, but they made up for that with spectacular lousy dice rolls like crashlanding two Unions in a row in what should have been a cakewalk to collect battlefield salvage.

BattleTech MUSE

Around 1996 I played as Liao MechWarrior Frabartolo in a text-based online BT community, the BattleTech3056 MUSE as far as I remember but I am really not sure. I eventually dropped out because my university uplink was too slow for the realtime combat simluator, leaving my 'Mech a sitting duck in the training exercises, and thus preventing me from ever partaking in any serious battles.

My notable exploits during the time on the MUSE included losing 3 Griffins in a row in ill-fated attempts to prove the design's superiority on the battlefield, later faring surprisingly well piloting a Crusader (a design I don't like) and eventually getting assigned a Cataphract, but never the Archer I always asked for. Despite merely mediocre combat performance (or perhaps because this was still better than than the average Liao MechWarrior) I was promoted to Subcommander, drafted into Warrior House Imarra against my wishes and given command of a Lance that had never seen combat action by the time I had to quit the game. <math>Insert formula here</math>