Putting the cart before the Horse...

Yeah, i did it!
No, not the conversion work. I have made the necessary researches for the name downsizing! That means i have now 191 (there was a duplicate i did not catch) names for my Battlearmors! Some are rather straight forward like the "Crusader" who becomes a "Pilgrim", others were not so easy and needed some late night/morning sessions for research.
"Lao-Hu" for example means Tiger in Chinese. Now try to find something that downsizes a tiger and translate it to correct Chinese... "Māo", meaning cat, should do... and the list goes on.
Then you sometimes come across a Mech like the "Clint". The name has no meaning and therefore can not be downsized like i normally would do. So i come up with "alternative" connections. What do you think of "Eastwood" as a name? ;)
Of course all of this is, as the title says, a little bit work on the wrong end, but it leaves me with a big chunk of research out of the way that would otherwise interrupt the actual conversion work.

Now i only have to find me some software solution that does all i want.

• Heavy Metal Battlearmor works great, but seems to have BV2 issues.
• MegamekLab does not support all possible weapons there are (i tried it with the Support PPC...nope not there). 
• Found an Excel Sheet on the CBT/Forums which seems to do a good job, but has no print/export options, so i would have to construct all record sheets by hand... I have contact the author, my excel-fu is not great enough to change this i think... 
• Read about a software called "BattleArmor Factory" that i have to look into aka find on the net...

And i would really like to have the conversions in some format that you guys could download, print and play with...

Nevertheless i give you some hint of what is comming at you with my conversion of the Battlemaster, done in HMBA so it may be changing over time:

Next thing, there is a new BA in town i was not aware off! IWM released the 28mm Hauberk on HistoriCon and  there are pictures i assure you, that make me wanting to ring IWM all night about when its going to be released at there online shop!!
Man, when they keep up with this, my project may even be useful in in some kind of BattleTroops environment...

What needs to be done, needs to be done...

I had long look upon the work i did the last time i opened that Excel sheet of mine, and i must say, sometimes i am really obsessed with details. When i started to think about the project back in the days i had this Battlemaster in front of me and i immediately had a name for the Battlearmor it should be. "Skirmishmaster". It somewhat "downsized" the name and still left the 'Mech behind it reachable. Soon i flipped through my TRO's to search for Units that could be converted. And i found a lot! Hunchback, Enfield, Black Knight, Warhammer, you name them. And nearly all of them could be name wise "downsized" on the Spot! (ea Bendback, Browning, Grey Knight and Battlehammer). Others were harder and needed a good portion of research. What does Lao-Hu mean? (Tiger) When i can not downsize a name like Zeus, which of his many offspring's could i use?(Ares). Today i went down some more TRO's that i didn't had at that time or which simply weren't in print back then and added some more machines. And i did quite some research for names.
I'm by far not finished, but i am getting there.
Next on my list will be a weapon exchange list. I want the machines to be in the same weight class there Mech-cousins are in and i want the weaponry match the original in appearance and mode of function.
So an AC of some kind will be exchanged with a Bearhunter BA scale slug thrower. LRM X will be LRM(OS) Y and so on. This will get me a helpful thread to cling to when in need.
At the moment i a have 192 Machines to convert. Maybe i will add more or drop some, that depends. What i will not do, or lets say, what i have not planed to do, is variants. I will most likely take a base design, mostly one a miniature is available of (since thats the main objective, to get this stuff to the table) and thats it. If i find a way to automatize things or if i find a way to make things easier,... who knows. But not from todays perspective.
Ok that's it for today, maybe next weekend i have some more for you
Flashhawk

Hy fellow Battletechers,

several years back i was able to buy me the HeavyMetal Battlearmor Software that was at that time just released. It arrived shortly after and i began to play around with it.
Soon i realized that i could make a loot of different BAs but other than custom Mechs i could not imagine myself to sculpt them or make adjustments to the existing ones. Fan funding was far away and so i thought of using proxies to do the job. But that was very unsatisfying and so it hit me while i was in my workshop: there was a 28mm Clan Elemental waiting on my workbench and right next to it there was a Battlemaster... I think most of you know now what went through my head at that time: "what if every humanoid Mech could also be used as Battlearmor proxy material?" And so "Project Re-Arming" was born. Sorrily I left the project undone after several month but kept all the files and pieces. Since then, several rule changes have come and so i have to redo some stuff but most was never done in the first place so there is not much "double effort". Steven Satak made the TRO 3063 happen and went straight to a new project which he calls "Infantry Primer". This brought back memories and so i will try to provide you all with my thoughts and finished products from now on. Hopefully i can put some kind of Record-sheet-collection together at the end.
I am pumped and i hope you are too!
Flashhawk