Where's my Hatchetman?

[eigenvector001]

The game's fantastic, but seriously? One of the most iconic mechs in BT, and conspicuously absent...

And let's not forget its big brother, Axman.

[Ariko]

You're going to have to forget the Axeman (until a future expansion/sequel set far enough along the timeline). This is set in 3025, which means no Axeman. The Hatchetman, though, there is hope in seeing added eventually.

[wesnef]

...when did the Hatchetman become an "iconic BT Mech"?

[Moon Kaiser]

Hatchetman requires a unique animation. Something that wasn't budgeted for and low priority. They couldn't add the Raven because they haven't the time/budget to implement ECM properly and I believe adding that would be far more productive than spending effort on a single niche mech.

[Pherdnut]

It doesn't have to be a good animation. In fact a stupid 2-frame animation with a wacky sound-effect would work for me.

[Sentient_Toaster]

HBS is using PGI models. My understanding is that PGI's MWO doesn't have the Hachetman as one of its mechs, so they'd have to model it themselves or get PGI to do it.

[kkeeffer]

Ive never EVER heard a hatchetman been referred to as iconic, more like unknown...yes even during my tabletops days of yore

[Cutlass Jack]

Hatchetman is one of my favorites too. Wouldn't really require a unique animation The existing melee arm strike would work fine. Just give it a high melee damage rating to account for the axe.

[wendigo211]

If you watched the animated series, the protagonist had an Axman. So that mech at least is kind of iconic, I think it's also one of the Battlemechs that had a toy made of it.

[dizzy]

I found two Arm mods.+60 Melee Damage. Gonna create my own hatchetman.

I've got my mech up to 290 Melee and 160 Stability damage right now. It's a Mike Tyson Punch from hell that will totally wreck medium and heavies with one punch.

[Sentient_Toaster]

I suppose you could take an existing 45 chassis definition, replicate it, rename it, perhaps tweak for speed and initial tonnage for engine size, and assume that the hatchet is permanently attached, so increment the initial tonnage by 3 and subtract three critical spaces from one of the arms, and add +45 or so to melee damage (IIRC, scaling by 5x) and a -1 MeleeToHitModifier for slightly better accuracy. You'd have to reuse an existing model unless you went as far as making your own, though.

[Nine-ball]

The Hatchetman was garbage. At 45 tons, it could only do a maximum of 9 damage to the head with that blade, causing no internal structure damage and no chance for a kill.

The Axman, on the other hand, could one-shot any mech one out of six times, with thirteen points of damage to any 12-point head, and cause piloting skill rolls two thirds of the time with 20+ points of damage all the way in.

It was a real assassin in the hands of a skilled pilot, capable of knocking down enemy mechs from range and jumping int to finish them off from unexpected angles.

The Hatchetman could, at best, couse nine points of head damage, 1/6th of the time. It was like it was designed to suck. Just enough damage to remove armor, but not enough for a critical hit. And it was no faster than the Axman, but carried much lighter armor. That sort of mech is just asking to get cored, as it will be easy to remove it before it does any truly lethal damage.

[DasaKamov]

Originally posted by wesnef:

...when did the Hatchetman become an "iconic BT Mech"?

This.

Also, I would question the argument that ANYTHING in that horrible Battletech cartoon was "iconic".

(Seriously, it managed to be both an awful Saturday-morning cartoon AND an awful Battletech property).

[Rob'sEvilTwin]

Originally posted by DasaKamov:

Originally posted by wesnef:

...when did the Hatchetman become an "iconic BT Mech"?

This.

Also, I would question the argument that ANYTHING in that horrible Battletech cartoon was "iconic".

(Seriously, it managed to be both an awful Saturday-morning cartoon AND an awful Battletech property).

There was a cartoon?
/goes to youtube
/regrets it
/agrees with Dasa :D

[RasaNova]

Originally posted by Rob'sEvilTwin:

Originally posted by DasaKamov:

This.

Also, I would question the argument that ANYTHING in that horrible Battletech cartoon was "iconic".

(Seriously, it managed to be both an awful Saturday-morning cartoon AND an awful Battletech property).

There was a cartoon?
/goes to youtube
/regrets it
/agrees with Dasa :D

I dunno... The dialogue and voice acting was cheesey, and the animation was cheap consumer-grade. (and the "enhanced vision" excuse to use 90s CGI did not age well.) But the stories were decent and the writers were clearly fans of the game, diving deep into the mechanics and tactics of mech combat. And I'm pretty sure it's one of the few saturday morning cartoons where people were actually dying in battle (even if all we saw were explosions.)

[wesnef]

Unfortunately, a lot of the mechs I'd say "iconic" about are among the Unseen. (like, say, the Warhammer that was on the cover of the original game box).