This site is dedicated to the construction of Battletech units (Battlemechs and Combat Vehicles), which are used for play in the eponymous board game. In order to play this game, you're going to need a copy of the rules. And frankly to make much sense of anything you'll find here, you need to go pick up these two source books which explain the rules and usage surrounding all the equipment available to you.

So what's the point? Well, constructing these designs has always been somewhat math and labor intensive, especially with the introduction of the experimental rules found in Tactical Operations. As a result, industrious fans over the years have developed excellent programs that ease this process by handling the heavy lifting behind the scenes, allowing the players to focus on the design itself.

While these tools typically provide copious amounts of canonical units, the program itself is run offline, and that often relegates new designs to the creator's PC. This site takes that same type of tool and moves it entirely onto the internet, where it can be used from any modern browser. Furthermore, it creates a persistent backend where designs can be stored (so when the browser is closed, work is not lost). As players expand the design catalog, designs could be stored, accessed, and shared without any specialized software. New designs could also be checked against existing ones to minimize redundancy (no reason to reinvent the wheel). Similarly, as new rules and errata are released, those changes could be folded into the data without the original designers needing to make any changes themselves. The system would expand with the game.

Originally, this site only concerned itself with constructing standard Battlemechs, but now has expanded into other designs. You still won't find air vehicles here, nor will you find Industrial or Proto" mechs.  Battletech is complex, with the code for this application now comprising over 20,000 lines of code (not including HTML markup). I have a standing invitation open to anyone who wants to help expand it into any other areas. If you're interested and familiar with the tech shown at the bottom of the page, by all means, drop me a line.

Below you will find brief outlines of each section of the site. Returning to this page within the context of these sections will offer a more detailed explanation of the functionality. I hope the community enjoys the site. It's a fun challenge building it and I will continue to update it as much as I can.

Catalog
Search
Record Sheets
Workbench
Design
Misc
Legal

This section is just what it sounds like: a catalog. Here you will find a paginated listing of all published combat vehicles in the system, both canonical and custom.

The search section is incredibly useful for finding designs that conform to what you need with any level of specificity you want. Equipment is listed on the left with corresponding checkboxes. Clicking any of these checkboxes updates the results on the right side of the page.

All record sheets are generated on the fly and rendered with HTML/SVG, so no specialized software is needed to view or print them (though depending on your system/browser settings you may need to scale the output).

Printing record sheets varies from browser to browser. For Firefox, choose "Print Preview", then select "Landcape" and adjust "Scale" accordingly. Chrome works much the same way, with the scaling found under "More Settings" in the "Print" menu. However, if a scaling option is not present (as us the case on older versions), in the address bar, enter "chrome://flags/#print-scaling" and change it to "Enabled" (h/t Vallerio).

This is where any unpublished designs are kept. The contents are tied to individual accounts and will not be visible until publication.

A single page for full construction. Incompatibilities between and amongst areas of construction are prevented, with messages displaying what the issue is. If a change to an underlying system is made, other systems will be recomputed or resolved based on this change.

There is a self-imposed moratorium of 60 days on any new material that is released. While names and models may be reserved by the system so that they cannot be entered, the designs will not be viewable until after this period expires. This is similar to the policies of the BattletechWiki and an excellent practice.

The BattleTech intellectual property is owned by Wizkids Games and they have sole discretionary power over all things having to do with it. Many of the products detailed and much of the information on the Machine Shop comes from material created by Fantasy Productions and/or Catalyst Game Labs, who hold (or have held) the license to produce such materials as BattleTech. The Machine Shop should not be seen as a challenge to those copyrights.

The BattleTech titles and associated names are the sole property of Wizkids Games. The administrators of the Machine Shop believe that the operation of this website falls under the definition of "Fair use" under United States copyright laws.

MechWarrior, BattleMech, ‘Mech and AeroTech are registered trademarks of The Topps Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
Catalyst Game Labs and the Catalyst Game Labs logo are trademarks of InMediaRes Productions, LLC.