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. Yuuzan Vong ripoff. Why did they not introduce technomages who can mutate into BattleMechs right away. Mumblegrumble...</rant>

Sources

I have read most BT novels up to Star Lord, 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.

I will compile a list at some point.

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:

Sometimes just prior to the Succession Wars, the Star League established colony on an arid but habitable world rimward of the Lyran Commonwealth, in the general region of Oberon Confederation. Since it had no HPG, it was cut off after the last JumpShip left the system, never to return. 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 forgotten and ignored in the war. The colony flourished to a population of several millions and achieved a modest industrial base reminiscent of 21st century terra.

Inception

Sometimes in the early 2990s, a ComStar Explorer Corps vessel chanced upon the lost colony. While the ComStar crew was overjoyed to find this world, the population was not. They had secured and retained their technological level and 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 the people decided to fake cooperation but then capture or the crews. 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 'Mechs. The unceremoniously named the JumpShip "Space Needle" and the Union "Screwball". The ascendancy of Primus Rusenstein may have had a part in ComStar being unable to determine when or where exactly they had lost the ships, curtailing their fate.

Actions and Performance

The storyline of our RPG campaign kicked in somewhat after this prelude. 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 former ComStar member who had sided with the locals, 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 player's 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.

As a GM, the obvious catch was that the unit had to be extra cautious that ComStar would not recognize the starships as theirs, 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).

Following an early period of cooperation with the Oberon Confederation, and getting involved in some pirate quarrels, 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 a Stalker. Later, they managed to capture several DropShips over the course of their adventures (including a second Union and a Leopard for themselves).

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 way behind enemy lines, 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.

However, when unchecked by liaison officers and operating on their own, the dishonourable and quite ruthless unit showed remarkable combat prowess as well as tactical and strategical skill and achieved great feats. 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 inflicted and accepted tremendous material losses, but their determination (or stubbornness) paid off more often than it cost them. Their name alone may eventually have been a deterrent to would-be attackers.

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 lost its head
• 1 Enforcer
• 2 Vindicators
• 1 Blackjack
• 3 Phoenix Hawks, one of them modified (replacing the MGs with Flamers)
• 1 Hermes II, without the usual advanced avionics suite
• 2 Centurion, both AL variants 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 taked 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.

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 (they only managed to salvage one of the ships).

BattleTech MUSE

Around 1996 I played as Liao MechWarrior Frabartolo in a text-based online BT community. It may have been the BattleTech 3025 MUSE but I am 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 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.