I found it a little tricky to get up to speed with the gameplay loop, but once I got there I was obsessed. Without DLC the game felt a bit thin; Heroes of the Inner Sphere and Solaris Showdown are the two that help the most there (but are also the least lore-related).

I've seen some Battletech suggestions here but I think the best primer is MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries with all the expansions. Reading the briefings for campaigns and high reward quests do a great job of illustrating who the factions really are, and the in-game News gives you the big events

Shameless is a little much: FASA, who made BattleTech, had licensed art & designs in '84. A decade later, it turned out it may not have been a valid license, but that seems more like fault is largely on the licensor who sold them the rights (IIRC never officially determined, but probably not valid).

An Ace Darwin story is what I look forward to the most in any issue of Shrapnel, and they've never let me down. Thank you.

If I'm playing old PC music with my 'mechs, it's from the MechWarrior 2 soundtracks. (It helps that they're Redbook audio so you can stick 'em in a CD player and skip over track 1 - although these days that really just means they're easy to rip)

Nothing illustrates the current state of anti-trust laws better than Netflix buying WB almost certainly being the best option between the three frontrunners, what with the other two being Paramount and Comcast.

how did i go so long not knowing we were literally teaching people to read wrong. i knew something wasn't right but jesus christ www.apmreports.org/episode/2019...

As an intro? Honestly, it wouldn't be terrible given that it's about Dr Davendra Ellstone learning about the ilKhan Alaric Ward and how his new Star League will run Earth, so you learn setting details with her. (She and Alaric do plenty of other stuff, of course: it's a PG-13ish romance novel)

I like the Mustang better, because it was bad enough at high altitudes that RAF Fighter Command didn't use them... until they put a Rolls Royce Spitfire engine in it, and then it was one of the best.

This is probably why my favourite thing they do is Blood Bowl, which I'm not sure would be possible to make serious.

Them: you cannot hold back progress. You must accept your new computational overlords who need all your water. New tech is everything

Also them: Ew not GREEN tech

That Hatamoto-Chi actually belongs to an old man who was left behind after a failed Kuritan raid on Apostica; he's the temporary hire available for the Apostica contracts in the book.