Quick and Dirty Air Support for BattleTech: Beyond Electrodrome
<In a thick Irish accent> First and foremost, a hearty thank-ye-kindly to Alex, aka “Abiogenesis” for kindly letting me use his piece of artwork (Close Air Support) as the cover for this post. If ye would be so inclined, click HERE to view more of his killer work.
ALSO, the following resources (the “Aerospace Support” PDF) and fiction are a part of my own personal (and ever-evolving) home-brew gladiatorial BattleTech module, BattleTech: Beyond Electrodrome.
Think of it as the drug-addled, hyper-violent, gonzo lovechild of John Carpenter, Paul Verhoeven, Ridley Scott, and George Miller.
Here’s some musical inspiration:
Flowers for Daisy
The fans loved him. How could they not? The nights he had spent with them, the gallons of synthetic tequila he had poured down their throats, enriching their communities as he gambled away his winnings on cage fighters and underdogs, and endless hours of naked, sweaty, debauchery.
He came from them. He was one of them. And he made sure they never forgot that.
Calhoun looked up with a wordless, indistinct prayer in the back of his throat, caught in the constricting grips of his favorite kaleidoscopic drug. His vision swam like a neon watercolor as the rain and debris pelted down on his canopy, mingling concrete dust and blood and…something…blue? Soap? Had he crashed through a communal shower? Or was it a single unfortunate person taking a bubble-bath?
Gravity gently pulled him sideways in his seat. He felt the ground vibrating beneath him, beneath the armored monstrosity he wore as a second skin in this deadly, glamorous place.
Something else, a monster like himself, a metallic ogre, movements made languid by the street-engineered alchemical cocktail racing through his veins, hove into view. He watched curiously, appreciating the artistry of it all, the technology and industry and goddamned awful humanity that made such wonders possible.
Daisy Roykopp, the biological brain inside of the mangled Centurion, look down at him coldly, her autocannon levelled at his cockpit. Rents in her violet and pink-striped armor spat sparks as the rain found its way in and danced in brilliant arcs upon exposed conduits.
There was a gash across her armored face; he’d nearly won, had nearly evaporated the spirit in the death-machine towering before him. Had he aimed a meter to the left he would, even now, be drowning in adulation, the promise of wealth, women, and fame swelling in his chest.
Instead, he was promised a ignominy. Where his large laser had met Daisy there burned a glowing slash, deep enough to open her cockpit to the toxic fumes of evaporated armor and the fresh air that rushed in and no doubt saved her life.
“Get fucked, Calhoun,” she spat.
“When I get back to the stable, I’m gonna show Josie what a real lover…”
Her voice faded out of his consciousness as his attention was drawn to two strange things, impossible incongruities hanging in the air high above their heads.
The first thing was a sort of propeller-driven bird. It must have been huge, seeing as it was cutting through the low grey clouds above but was still quite distinct in its hard-angled outline.
The second thing was much closer, yet was harder to make out. He felt the muscles of his eyes tense, painfully pulling the object into focus as it drifted down towards them. It was a…can. No, not a can, a barrel. No, not a barrel. It was an oversized canister, hanging from an…umbrella? No. Parachutes. Hanging in the air above and behind Daisy, a few hundred meters away, glinting in the sun beneath the canopy of parachutes, it spun, slowly enough for him to see that it had been decorated in huge cartoonish flowers. It reminded him of a garden mural he and his classmates had made in the alley behind their kindergarten in the slums, all brightly colored petals, bursting from the tops of long green stems.
“…final words, you miserable little shit?” her voice drifted back into his ears as the canister drifted ever closer.
Calhoun smiled dreamily.
“I knew it, Daisy. I knew they loved me!” he said, with the honey-sweet thickness of a dozing lover. A smile crawled slowly across his face.
Daisy’s laugh sounded like an executioner's axe burying itself in a gore-soaked chopping block.
Then there was a flash.
And then there was nothing.
Lets Get Quick and Dirty
Battletech is already a hell of a complex game. Math, charts, referencing and cross-referencing reference books (thanks Catalyst). Its as much an exercise in tactics as it is in brute-force basic mathematics.
I have always wanted to incorporate aerospace and other off-board assets into the game. The chaos, the madness, the thunder of high explosives raining down from the hells above.
Problem is…I’m a bit of a Neanderthal. I like simple. Sleek. Dumb. Give me a dead panther over cryptocurrency any day.
So naturally if I ever want to ever use something so fun as artillery or carpet bombing, I would have to make them as simple as possible.
The Aerial Support PDF
Below is a link to the Aerial Support PDF that I have created to reconcile my love of high explosives with my native laziness.
Aerial Support PDF
Quick and dirty, just like me.
The PDF contains a basic set of rules on how to EASILY/LAZILY incorporate aerial assets into a BattleTech scenario without having to track extra ammunition, altitude, fuel, armor, vectors, fucking…ailerons…NONE OF THAT SHIT.
Just as long as you drop all of your bombs on a single pass, you ain’t gotta track SHIT.
Speaking of bombs, I have provided over twenty separate ground support resources, including laser strafing runs, supercoolant bombs, rocket pod strikes, carpet bombing, and daisy-cutters. Ideally these will be printed on individual cards and then shuffled to allow for randomization (which is fun).
To use these resources, check out the BattleTech: Beyond Electrodrome Spectacle Rules (not yet posted) to better meter out and slow the utilization of these assets. They’ll make things more interesting and cohesive for certain. But as I said, I’m a Neanderthal, so I’ve included some easy workarounds in the rules.
Also, I recommend using Mechwarrior: Destiny characters converted to CBT rules for this supplement, as the Communications and Artillery skills will have a potentially massive impact on the deployment of these cards.
But, AGAIN, Neanderthal. Those options are OPTIONAL.
I encourage you to house-rule this shit to make it as fast, wild, and fun as possible.
And if you DO come up with something kickass, share below in the comments.
Ciao, Baby.
-Rob
