And yes, this stuff is important on a micro scale. If you are playing a merc unit that wants to go from the LA to FS, that's a -several month journey-, which can be off-set a number of ways. I'm not talking "I want per-planet charts!" - not at all. I am saying that important universe concepts should take precedence over incredibly nuts rules surrounded in walls of texts. Previous editions of MWRPG were much cleaner.
That's not micro scale. That's campaign style supplemental rules for a wargame. a player centered PRG really doesn't need to be accounting tech for unit organization.
"In a game that tracks your carry weight down to the kg of your underwear, not a single person will care that transit times aren't even addressed with a single paragraph in a book about running an RPG, where most of your time will be spend on dropships." That's what this feels like.
The game has rules for managing personal equipment, because a RPG is centered on the very micro scale—and such tracking is only going to be used when its significant to the game. No one expects players or GM’s to track power consumption 24/7. But when you run a scenario where cut off players have only a handful of power resources to use over a prolonged period, then it becomes important. Your gaming time won’t be spent on dropships (well, unless you play a dropship crew.) That's "Ok..you arrive on <insert planet>"..and that's about all the time you need. The GM moves the game date forward based on approximations of travel time. Of course, most games won’t involve planet jumping. Travel is occasional, with most game time focused in detail on the events where you arrive. Unless your campaign is recreating a campaign and an accelerated speed, with each session being an adventure in a different system or scenario—again, none of which requires detailed travel rules. The RPG system is not a wargame management system.
I am not sure if peacetime campaigns are all that common in BattleTech. I'm not even sure if peacetime is all that common in BattleTech.
I wasn't speaking of a peacetime campaign; I was speaking of trying to use an RPG system as some form of campaign tracking system for resources. That's not what an RPG is for, and its a tedious waste of RPG gaming time.
It feels like focus that's all put in the wrong places.
It may not be where you want the focus, but from what I'm seeing, that focus isn't really an RPG focus.
I've never seen an RPG need nearly 5 pages to explain the basic concepts without actually providing bits of missing info at the same time. It's crazy.
Many games go into far greater length on damage systems, nor have you established anything is missing from it.
Once you have people rolling modifiers like +7 as par for the course, the system forces you to just start sending TNs through the roof or expect people to win, always, at everything.
Its the GM's responsibility to pace progression.
I will admit that scaling and progression has always worried me. It is the problem of going to a 2d6 system, but for some reason that is what players wanted. I feel those demands weren't based on the needs of an RPG, but from a needless adherence to the Battletech boardgame mechanics. As a result, I have paid close attention to keeping XP awards, and how I allow them to be spent. If you hand out XP too fast, player who only focus on a few combat centric skills can get TN's that make them very effective in limited combat roles, while having terribly limited skills in other areas. If you don't force a bit of spread, players can, for example, focus only on piloting and gunnery skills that give them elite level scores in those areas, while not having the skills to meet the full challenge elite level characters should be able to face—which should be more than just rolling two combat based skills.
You can make up TNs but making up increasingly ludicrous TNs to make the game interesting at an ever creeping attribute bonus is something that all modern systems have shyed away from hard, for a good reason.
Games quite often focus on delivering harder challenges for more skilled characters. For D&D games, you can expect opposing numbers to go up, numbers on traps get harder, Enemies get better. If you feel it takes a ludicrous challenge to make your players work, then perhaps you need to review just what resources and XP you have been giving your characters.
shouldn't take hours and hours to figure combat system out in an RPG.
And it doesn’t. If it is taking you hours, then maybe you need to go back and get more experience with the rules. Personal combat in ATOW goes fairly quickly. It’s probably easier than many systems I’ve played. Given how quickly deadly it can be (especially when you start using location rules) and how easy it is to drop people once you hit them, player group sized engagements should be very manageable.
I play SR quite a bit; if anything, ATOW resolves faster thanks to far less dice shaking and counting needed with handfuls of d6’s.
