Messages

1

Fan Designs & Rules / Re: Energy Artillery?

« on: 27 March 2013, 16:02:02 »

Another complication: if you need lasers to create an ion channel to guide your charged particle artillery shot to the target... what happens when it gets to a battle site full of enemy and FRIENDLY forces firing lasers and PPCs at each other, all of whom are venting waste heat as large clouds of superheated, RISING air? In such a scenario, the ion pathings will be so mixed and confused that the charged particle, laser guided artillery shot is just as likely to home in on a friendly target as a hostile one... assuming it hits anyone at all and doesn't miss or dissipate into uselessness.

So it might hit a friendly in the midst of a fracas. It's not really artillery if that isn't an option.

2

Fan Designs & Rules / Re: Energy Artillery?

« on: 27 March 2013, 12:48:57 »

Maybe you'd have a height restriction.  Your lasers fire over the hill, creating a path through the air from your mech, over various obstacles, and they stop once they run out of LOS.  But by that point, your energy channel is close enough to the target that the big lightning bolt will probably just streak towards the big metal mech below it.  So your beam path ends like 50 feet over the mech's head and you just keep your fingers crossed.  You could have a height restriction, maybe the accuracy depends upon the intervening height of the obstacle (4+ to hit if it's a lvl 2 target and lvl 2 terrain in between, 6+ if lvl 3 terrain, 8+ if lvl 4, 10+ if lvl 5, can't hit at all if more than 3 levels intervening height difference). -1 to hit if target fired or was hit by a PPC that turn.  Or something.

I really like this one. It's nutty and probably not physically possible, but it's more possible than most of the other ideas here and it feels like artillery.

3

Off Topic / Re: Simcity

« on: 26 March 2013, 14:48:52 »

I really don't know and I don't feel I want to be part of the Origin service in the meantime. I trust them a lot less with my licenses than I do Steam and, well, there's a lot of new and exciting games from a lot of sources. I might spring for a Bioware game in the future, but only because I'd be supporting an acquaintance who just got hired on.

You, Challenger, and a few other guys on this thread are a couple of about a half-dozen folks on the internet who've had the temerity to suggest not buying from EA as a result of this debacle. Kudos.

I've read dozens of articles claiming that EA is mismanaged, that it doesn't respect its customers, and that it only cares about money. Then the author comes to a full stop, as if starting an extended gripe-in was the end goal for their utterly justified tirade. Sometimes, they'll mention how they wish EA would quit doing any of that stuff, as if they expect a member of the audience to find a genie in the near future.

There're a few saying they won't buy SimCity, but my impression has been that that particular ship has already sailed, what with the game having sold enough copies to crash EA's anticipated infrastructure. The idea of boycotting the latest Army of Two or Battlefield games or anything--anything that suggests the player base can somehow affect the people who rely on them to continue releasing these games doesn't seem to have taken hold.

While well-placed, is the outrage against EA is as shallow as it seems or have I obliviously missed the active arm of this body of detractors?

4

Fan Designs & Rules / Re: Energy Artillery?

« on: 24 March 2013, 22:37:10 »

If artillery is a heavier weapon designed to inflict damage over an area, then--oh, you specifically want an indirect fire weapon.

If you count ammo-fed energy weapons, then that, but bigger. If you can shoot fictitious energy balls 300m, you can shoot them 3km.

As far as other options, lasers are almost right out because the arc is caused by gravity. You could probably cobble together some kind of completely macguffin gravity lens, but if you can create a device which can bend massive amounts of light, that might be the better thing to fight battles with.

If you're using particles, you'd have to keep them focused. Again with the handwaving scaling issues, but you could probably arc it with improbable magnetic field technology that would render said weapon moot instead of more improbable gravity manipulating technology that would render a laser-based weapon moot.

I'm not trying to be rude about that. If you can bend the arc of an energy weapon, you could make a shield against enemy energy weapons at a minimum. Of course, it's quite possible I'm just not clever enough to think of a system where the restrictions would be limited strictly to the shot fired, like a magnetic pulse generator that could only deflect an Artillery PPC shot if it's delivered through a specific area at a specific time by generating a powerful, completely made-up standalone magnetic field.

So just the one clever idea.

My last suggestion if you want to use indirect laser fire to kill enemy troops on the ground is to use a ground-based naval laser on an enemy warship and make sure it lands on an enemy ground formation. Just remember that anyone capable of making that shot would likely be skilled enough to render most of your other weapons moot.

5

Ground Combat / Re: Troubleshooting an Abbreviated Battle Campaign System

« on: 06 October 2012, 14:51:43 »

Yes. I've read that. I've got Sword and Dragon and Wolf and Blake and Blake Ascending. I've borrowed a lot from them, but their fundamental structure doesn't provide the consequence, game setup, and rewards I really want out of a campaign.

Parts of what I'm talking about address the problems you had from the other thread; "How does each side know they won?" The issue is that winning depends on the circumstance. If you took 60% losses, but saved a supply depot from being leveled by an enemy force, you won...if that depot was worth more than 60% of your lance. If it's not, then you just lost a big chunk of your metal for nothing. I wanted a little something more than "if you take out 50% of the enemy force, they vanish immediately because you won and somewhere else, another lance can start a specific mission that we assure you is related to this one."

I would love to use the campaign tracks to cobble together something like Subset Games' FTL, where the campaign is nothing but a random gauntlet of scenarios, salvage, and supplies, like The Warriors with 'mechs, but that's another thing entirely.

Thanks for the help though.

6

Ground Combat / Troubleshooting an Abbreviated Battle Campaign System

« on: 29 September 2012, 13:52:45 »

So, I've been working on a simple campaign/RPG/Battletech system for not-so-dedicated players. Ideally, I want it to center around lance-on-lance battles with the many factors of a Battletech game (starting/home edges, map orientation, objectives, etc.) determined by the context in which the combatants engage one another. It accommodates more than two players, so I'm trying to ensure that there's not more than one Battletech game per turn (so that each player gets equal amounts of play time). However, I wanted to run the central campaign framework past regular Battletech players, not for any consistency with Battletech canon, but for general soundness as the centerpoint of a campaign system.

Rules:
The basic setup is that an invading company lands on an enemy planet. The planet has its own company of defenders and a few facilities--simple buildings that provide the planet's controller some benefit (For example, Supply Depots, Factories, Communications Buildings, etc.).

The Attacker's goal is to have a Raiding lance hit one of these buildings to either steal something from it (supplies, captured mechwarriors, etc.), destroy it, or scan it for intelligence. To do this, each Attacking lance receives orders to Raid a target facility or to Screen those Raiding lances from interception by the defenders. There's no set objective; a lance that reaches its target isn't bound to a single action. For example, if a Raiding lance reaches a Supply Depot with the intent to steal Supply Points, but they find a lance of assault 'mechs defending it, they can instead shoot the Depot up, scan the enemies for intelligence, and withdrawal.

Defending lances can Hunt or Guard. Hunting lances travel afield to try to identify or engage the invaders while Guarding lances remain at a single facility and defend it from any attack.

After actions are declared, Hunting lances roll to intercept Screening and Raiding lances, with modifiers based on each lance's movement points, equipment, orders, and a few other things. Successful interceptions result in an Engagement, as do any Raiding lances that slip past Hunting lances to reach a Guarded facility. Only one Engagement results in a Battle that's played out that turn, with Raid v Guard Engagements taking priority over Raid v Hunt Engagements, which take priority over Screen v Hunt. All Engagements that aren't played out as Battles are resolved as Skirmishes.

Obviously, this system is rough. There are problems with ensuring only one Battle happens per turn. Restricting attackers to one Raid order per turn would simplify things, but impose (yet another) artificial restriction and cut down on the flexibility of company composition. The interception rolls seem like they would total up quickly (with a maximum of 9 rolls per turn, using modifiers from six lances). The system doesn't account for two different players attacking a third player's world simultaneously (it's not like there's going to be an invasion queue in orbit).

I could go on, but this post has already gone on long enough and I'm sure there are other problems with the core of this system and the underlying concept that most of you have already seen and I would be happy to hear about them. It's better than fleshing out the rules and then having players poke holes in it.

7

General Discussion / Re: Habitable Planets and Game Effects

« on: 27 September 2012, 09:45:48 »

That's what I was looking for. Thanks folks.

8

General Discussion / Habitable Planets and Game Effects

« on: 26 September 2012, 22:20:49 »

I'm working on a campaign game and trying to incorporate heat and gravity effects from Max Tech (If I ever had TacOps, I've lost it.). However, I'm only working with planets that have long-term settlements on them.

As I understand it, planets with temperatures extreme enough to affect 'mech performance aren't consistent with people living on that planet (outside of domes or something similar). StratOps' Battleforce Advanced Rules for temperature seems to reinforce this, stipulating that unprotected infantry die pretty quickly in those conditions. Tauntaun quickly.

Gravity's a little better because MaxTech expresses it in terms relative to Earth's, but I'm not sure how much (IRL or accepted in-game) mass variance there can be amongst planets where humans can live their lives from cradle to grave. +10% Earth? 20%?

9

BattleMechs / Re: Clan Killer

« on: 26 July 2012, 03:56:52 »

It looks like it leverages reflective armor and AMS to counter Clan advantages with laser weapons and missiles. It also seems to use weapons like the gauss rifle that have performance comparable to their Clan counterparts.

There are some drawbacks to the construction options taken, but then if Inner Sphere technology was comparable to that of the Clans, the entire discussion is moot. This 'mech is one of the answers to the question, "What happens when native technologies are leveraged to produce a 'mech designed to blunt advantages of a superior foe?"

Is it capable of defeating most Clan 'mechs better than most other Inner Sphere designs? I'd say so.

Is it still likely to beat most similarly-sized Clan 'mechs? I, personally, would doubt it.

There are many AMSs, but it's strange that there would be an issue with the pod space making them 2.5 tons of alleged dead weight instead of 3.5. Sure, pod-mounting is antithetical to omnimech principles, but then, why not pod-mount everything? Hell, there are plenty of perfectly fine 'mechs out there (battle- and omni- alike) that could use some weight-free actuators in arms with plenty of free crits, just in case. I don't see why we can't just jam actuators into a Cicada, or pay the pithy 200,000 C-Bills to give the Hatamoto-Chi double heat sinks. There are a number of points of 'mech design which could be improved with coldly logical, dispassionate efficiency, especially in light of the fact that mechwarriors can't perform field modifications on omnimech hardmounted equipment anymore. After all, the sole purpose of these designs is to bump up numbers and win games.

10

Off Topic / Re: Magic: The Gathering

« on: 10 June 2012, 22:44:24 »

BTW, anyone else with me on wanting to pimp-slap whoever keeps changing the blasting wording to be even more and more vague? Like "comes into play" is not "enters the battlefield"? I thought it was bad back on Portal with idiocies like "intercept" was somehow supposed to be easier for new players than "block"... but I mean you read through some of the new oracle texts that are allegedly "clearer", and it's serious whiskey tango foxtrot territory.

Nope. I'm a big fan of the more recent terminology.

11

Off Topic / Re: Magic: The Gathering

« on: 08 June 2012, 11:42:31 »

I was not really thinking getting competitive since I do that enough in YGO already and it would be nice to play some TCG/CCG casual instead of taking it seriously all the time. Besides it would be nice not needing to care about formats and buying new cards just to replace old ones that left block since needing to do that was one reason why I originally stopped playing MtG. Other reason was elitists that could not accept other people playing other TCGs/CCGs than MtG.

Well, if you're just going to be playing with friends around a kitchen table, then I'd definitely recommend a cube, assuming you still have your old collection. Otherwise, you'd have to build one, which would be a hobby in and of itself, but might be more than you're looking for, if you just want to play some Magic.

Otherwise, playing an Event Deck on a casual night sounds like fun. Most Friday Night Magics are standard, but I'm sure there are some exceptions and most game stores in my area are casual by default every other night.

12

Off Topic / Re: Magic: The Gathering

« on: 07 June 2012, 11:22:44 »

I was thinking getting back to game with Avacyn Restored Event Decks and I considered picking up Humanity's Revenge (blue-white) and expanding around it by buying single cards. What do you guys think. Is this good way to restart?

I'd agree with Klep. It seriously depends on how you want to play.

If you just want to play FNMs with a few guys, patching up the Event Deck would probably be a way to go. If you want to be competitive, then it would be a good first step down that long, hard road.

If you want to play with some friends for casual stuff, I'd suggest making a Cube. It's a common pool of cards you put together and every player drafts from it to make a deck. It puts all of the players on the same level, caps the monetary investment, and makes for varied games. If you're interested, I'm sure I could find a link to the full rundown on the Cube on the Wizards site.

13

Fan Designs & Rules / Re: working on a campaign system and need help

« on: 10 May 2012, 14:54:05 »

FM: Mercs is far too granular to manage a unit of any size, especially using Strat Ops repair rules.  For example: who really gives a crap about remuneration in a contract?  If the employer is paying for X, Y or Z in a contract, why not just front-load the whole contract payout with that value and move on.

....without being crushed under the weight of AccountantTech.  One of the major and back breaking sources of book keeping is unit maintenance and repair...One of the problems that I am grappling with is unit maintenance, be it salaries, the day-to-day upkeep of warfighting equipment or the recovery of a unit after a battle. 

I'd suggest not dealing with it at all. Your maintenance and payroll issues should be a known quantity. I don't know why they wouldn't be included in your unit's contract and happen "off screen." I can only think of two reasons you might want to include something like that:

1) You want the resource drain of idling between missions to have weight. You might want to explore roleplaying by having everyone tighten their belts, test your players' ability to juggle finances, or motivate them to take subpar jobs to further a larger story.

2) Tracking monthly expenses is part of the granularity you want in a campaign.

Which system was it that had damage classified as Light / Moderate / Heavy / Destroyed and offered costs for repairing?  What source book should I be looking in?

I know Sword and Dragon had something like that, though it uses Warchest Points, which I recommend using.

Battle Value was never meant as a a cost system (in fact I'm not sure how you pay costs for actuators or engines with it). I'm sure enough elbow grease would let you use it for that system, but it wouldn't be my first choice.

C-Bills are fine, but you hit a lot of their problems head-on. However, if you're going to be buying and tracking individual components, lots of ammo, tons of armor on hand, etc. I think it's a way to go. There are cost imbalances, and they will create new paradigms of design for your players, but I suggest one of two answers for that:

1) Create a market for it. If multiple players are buying competitively-priced gear, then you can raise the price to reflect that. If individual, cost-effective units are in demand, raise the price on them. It is another level of complexity, but it affords you the simplicity of working on a pre-existing cost system. If you want to take it far, mark the production rates of introductory (level 1) tech and raise prices or lower availability. I have suggestions for advanced tech below.

2) Make customizations difficult. It sounds like you already want to do this, but by making customizations hard, more cost-effective components would only be available on a particular chassis because the costs associated with customization would balance out retrofitting them. It might raise an issue when it comes to buying units, but you could always defer back to market forces and availability to handle that.

I admit that Warchest Points are abstract, but you'll have to have scaling whether it's C-Bills or Warchest points. What the Warchest system does give you is a flexible system that describes materiel, intelligence assets, tactical advantages, and a host of other elements with one easy score. If it suits your need for detail, you could even break it down into subcategories of Support, Tactical, and Intelligence points. Essentially, it seems that the only thing that units are using their profits for are repairs and maintenance, so it's difficult to see what additional points of granularity C-Bills offer that WP don't.

One of the goals that I've in mind is to make custom or high-technology units (C3, ECM, Clan-tech, lots of Level II+ technology) more difficult / costly to maintain than lower cost, simpler gear.  In effect, players would be motivated to NOT customize every single mech in their unit, to NOT simply toss PPCs on everything...  Or, they could do so, but the maintenance and upkeep of the unit would skyrocket.

The scenario books I've read have advanced technologies listed with their own WP, forcing you to pay the cost of a 'mech to repair/replace them. For simplicity's sake, I'd offer rare opportunities to gain advanced equipment and have repair multipliers associated with them as well. (Paying X points/C-Bills to get the equipment and an additional 20-50% to repair it)

I'd also have the cost to customize a unit close to the cost to repair the new/upgraded piece of equipment were it destroyed (repairing from Crippled for an engine upgrade or Damaged for most weapons). A "customization multiplier" for normal repairs would also be a way to curb customization as well, though I'd recommend only applying the multiplier for the first half-dozen repairs or so.

I do like your idea of handling support and maintenance as a point pool related to the complexity of the units involved versus the number and proficiency of your tech. It gives your players a pool of points affected by their customization and lets them prioritize repairs when faced with limited repair times.

Of course, I do all this assuming you're managing a game played by other players who are managing mercenary units, but for all I know you're running a mega mek campaign against the bot. What sort of use did you have in mind for this campaign?

14

Ground Combat / Re: Planetary Invasion Targets

« on: 28 April 2012, 04:55:34 »

It would seem that for the initial phases, I'd want to keep my guys from getting overwhelmed and make sure any reinforcements that show up are mine. I assume that since I'm attacking, I'm have the initiative on my side and a reasonable amount of starting supplies.

The orbital facilities--assuming they control observation and communication satellites--have the greatest opportunity to maximize what my forces are doing. Beating the defenders soundly in front of a good audience is key, but so is not walking into an obvious ambush. The satellites do both pretty well.

If it's possible to isolate the HPG to keep my opponents from calling for reinforcements or to prevent them from doing the same if I needed them, then yeah. If I'm making a greedy jab for a single front-line world, I want all the time I can get to dig in before every spare enemy starts trying to take it back. If I'm part of a major offensive, then the uncertainty is even more valuable.

The third choice question is one of location. It seems like the transport hub would leave you vulnerable to having your enemy shipped into your back yard under your nose. The point of a transport hub is that there's a lot of stuff going in an out and an invasion force can't secure all of those pathways.

The largest enemy base is also pretty tempting. I mean, you're there to fight, right? Taking the biggest, toughest piece of ground and (theoretically) beating their biggest unit goes a long way. It's a base designed to defend the planet, and after you've planted your flag, that's exactly the kind of base you need. Of course, because it's a based designed to defend the planet, that idea is on par with trying to bruise someone's fist with your face.

The cities for the sakes of their populations don't work for me either. A large city has more partisans and collateral damage. A loyal city has that, but it also has some friendly faces and a variety of supplies and local information. After all, if things turn south, that might be helpful. Of course, they might turn on you to save themselves. A capitol is something you'll have to take, as it's easier to co-opt an existing power structure rather than to create one wholesale, but in the opening steps of a battle, it has information and symbolic importance, but little else.

I have to go with the spaceport. If you control a spaceport, you don't control the planet, but you control a percentage of that planet's output, which is the whole reason to take a planet, right? Unless they're exceptional patriots, everyone who was shipping mass quantities of their product off-planet is going to put their stock onto ships, pay their taxes, and send it on its way(or your government's way).  The ingoing trade will shift around, but only insofar as the people doing the shipping care. It does have the same problem of the transport hub, but it promises resupply, attack, and retreat options while still pressuring the defender to come to you.

15

General Discussion / Re: If Only They Would Do This Book . . .

« on: 26 April 2012, 18:08:30 »

Alternate Settings: A one-shot collection of alternate settings with the same giant robots, but drastically different contexts. They could explore changes to everything from travel speeds, unit sizes, or equipment types to political dynamics, dramatic scope, or even the presence of sapient non-humans.

16

General Discussion / Re: House rules: do you use them?

« on: 25 April 2012, 10:08:45 »

Ah.. so a 40 tonner needs to take 8 points or more where as a 75 tonner needs to take 30.

Actually think it's 16 for the 40-tonner, but yeah, you get the picture.

17

General Discussion / Re: House rules: do you use them?

« on: 23 April 2012, 13:55:27 »

As for the game itself, we use a 2/5 rule for damage causing piloting skill rolls

Care to explain this one more please?

'Mechs make piloting skill rolls for damage if they've taken 2/5 of their tonnage in damage, not 20. A large laser might make a Stinger check, but nothing short of a King Crab is going to pack enough firepower to rattle an Atlas.

18

Off Topic / Re: RIP - Barnabas Collins

« on: 21 April 2012, 19:52:48 »

Strange. I also got my first exposure to it via 90's sci-fi channel. I didn't know the old episodes were on Netflix. Might look that up.

I'm going to wait for the reviews, but provided the new movie doesn't lean too heavily on the 70's jokes, I think I might see that too.

19

General Discussion / Re: House rules: do you use them?

« on: 17 April 2012, 00:08:55 »

Salvage is  as simple as tallying what is left over. Not going to go thru  strat ops jargon to unscrew a few weapons.

Indeed. Enemy fire is good enough at turning my equipment into slag. Don't need shoddy tech rolls to help them out. My favorite house rule is Free Maintenance and Salvage for Everyone.

20

General Discussion / Re: House rules: do you use them?

« on: 16 April 2012, 10:32:11 »

Yeah. We don't have a campaign going on right now, so it's all just drop games using a system that randomly determines how the games are going to be balanced (tons, BV, numbers, C-Bills, etc) and at what level (200 tons, 400 tons, 2 'mechs each, 60m C-Bills, etc). We have a card system that allows players to use hidden units, minefields, terrain templates, weather, Max Tech pilot special abilities, etc..

As for the game itself, we use a 2/5 rule for damage causing piloting skill rolls, some slightly more elaborate ammo explosion rules, and some streamlined cluster hits resolution. Not to mention constantly testing experimental home brew weapons & equipment.

2) To make moving and turning easier, we say for every two spaces in one direction you move you have the option to turn 1 space either direction for free.

Aw, that's a good one.

21

Off Topic / Oh, and thank the heavens! The captcha is finally, finally gone!

« on: 16 April 2012, 04:23:00 »

Not sure if these were posted yet.  As a Vampire The Masquerade fan, the art design already looks really cool.

http://io9.com/5875844/dark-ascension-amps-up-the-evil-for-magic-the-gathering/gallery/1

Huh. I missed that article. The art these days is really is top-notch and Dark Ascension itself has been good for drafting.

Anyone else excited about Return to Ravnica? I considered Dominaria a bit played out even whenever I began (Alara), so I've always seen the present city of former guilds as being a quintessential Magic element I missed out on.

22

General Discussion / Re: Maybe its time for a complete battletech reboot?

« on: 16 April 2012, 03:56:10 »

While I'm not one who feels that a re-boot of the rules and universe is needed, just because you disagree with some people does not invalidate their opinion.  They are fans just as much as you are.

Seconded.

But honestly, there are maybe two people calling for a reboot, that's counting the OP. A few others have mentioned that maybe--just maybe--not every word written for the franchise has been the inviolate utterances from the lips of angels.

Others still think there are some glaring errors that would make them happier if they were addressed. I'd personally be happier if the number of the planets wasn't so unwieldy. If someone else felt the same way, maybe we could start talking, form a personal connection, share ideas on how to run personal campaigns that better fit our personal visions, and if that gets some traction, maybe start a thread and get other people to weigh in. That's what discussion boards are for; it's not a poll booth(unless there's a literal poll attached).

Insisting the game is perfect and should never change isn't sparking conversation and it isn't a case that holds up in Battletech's history; the latest line of core books is something that Battletech has never done before and much of the original scavenger tech setting has been retroactively rewritten. Criticizing Battletech isn't sedition, just as praising it as it is isn't supportive.

23

General Discussion / Re: Maybe its time for a complete battletech reboot?

« on: 13 April 2012, 19:22:38 »

Currently, the setting is glamorously massive but most of it is dry tumble weeds blowing across an empty set.

I was just talking about someone with the Interstellar Operations system. He insisted that either every world be represented or the entire enterprise would just be another Succession Wars abstraction. Your tumbleweed analogy hits the nail on the head. I'll be using it a lot in the future. Thanks.

24

General Discussion / Re: Battletech isn't supposed to be fair?

« on: 10 April 2012, 12:12:33 »

In Battletech, one lucky critical hit can knock any unit out of the game, so the 10K point "ultra-munchy monster-Mech" can be taken down by a basic Stinger or a lone Savannah Master if the dice happen to fall that way.  Balance and Advantage are nebulous and fleeting things, which helps to keeps the game exciting even when it appears to be heavily weighted in favor of one side or the other.

It only seems that smaller 'mechs getting the lotto-like one-shot kill on a better machine is more likely because it's notable when it happens. But few people brag about that time their Direwolf headcapped a Stinger on turn one because it's not remarkable. Statistically, it's more common for optimized designs boasting higher range, lower TNs, and more weapons to score these kinds of improbable hits.

Just because a unit can win doesn't mean that it has an even chance of winning.

25

Catalyst Asks You! / Re: Interstellar Ops feedback

« on: 08 April 2012, 12:32:43 »

Unfortunately there are only 2 ways this can be playable.

#1.  Counters, lots and lots and lots and lots of counters.  I don't think CGL likes counters, but could be wrong.
#2.  Spreadsheet, even perhaps with a computer map. 

Tracking the individual outputs of worlds, factories on a scale of the entire Inner Sphere is...impractical. Even defining a combined population/industrial rating of each planet is wildly optimistic for a game with thousands of planets.  The same goes for defining exactly what each factory is producing. What would be important is defining how those production levels affect deployment. Giving the Thug 11E unique stats for an interstellar game is ridiculously more complicated than just naming one of (or all) of your assault 'mech RAT slots "Thug 11E."

I don't know what the final product is going to look like, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be abstract enough that few--if any--regiment-sized units will be represented. At that scale, production, units, and even territory are perhaps better understood demographically, with military doctrine, economic policies, intelligence agencies, and international attitudes carrying more weight than whether a battalion is comprised of one-legged Urbanmechs or Timberwolves piloted by Natasha Kerensky clones.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was a more detailed "half-dozen planets fight" version as well, something with the nitty-gritty many Battletech players crave. It would allow for players to reenact famous border skirmishes and company-on-company engagements with the level of detail you're expecting. If there is, someone with a lot of elbow grease to spare will then scale it up to a level where it includes the entire Inner Sphere, necessitating all those pieces and parts.

However, that's all just conjecture. The only things I really expect from IO:
1) Whatever system it contains that involves the entire Inner Sphere will scale down to all other systems from Total Warfare to Interstellar Operations.
2) Fans will complain.

26

General Discussion / Re: Maybe its time for a complete battletech reboot?

« on: 02 April 2012, 17:23:18 »

I mean, reboots are bad if they are a sign that older stories and elements will no longer be supported. The Star Trek: The Next Generation CCG reboot alienated the already beleaguered fan base and nowadays Decipher isn't doing much but printing intellectual properties for a CCG no one talks about.

On the other hand, franchises like Star Trek and the DC Universe still have fully functional old stories, and criticisms of their reboots largely focus on redefinitions of familiar characters. But for something like Battletech, where you aren't dealing with a broken system, you aren't dealing with flagging fiction with only a handful of marketable characters, and you aren't  harboring a desire to retread old stories until they wear through and you can tread them some more, you don't recast 'mechs as nimble, sleek, and stylized war machines or Hanse Davion as someone with hair straight black and skinny jeans. It's difficult to justify a hard reboot for Battletech.

Consider Magic: the Gathering: they've done a lot of soft reboots (nerfing planeswalkers, at least two major rules revisions, four new game modes, cards with two backs, etc..). Each of those things managed to take the core of the game and improve or expand upon it while everyone watching claimed it was the apocalypse of Magic (not that Apocalypse), but Magic's celebrating its twentieth anniversary next year.

A soft reboot wouldn't be a bad thing. The old economics/population issues are something of a running gag. Some of the weapons and equipment options are..."highly niche." Sometimes, Battletech gets in a tug of war with reality and loses. It's not bad, but it's not perfect, and a reboot could polish the rough edges.

But the beauty of it is that Battletech already reboots itself. Era by era, year by year, the Battletech universe and system reboots itself. From The Succession Wars to The Clan Invasion to The Civil War, Jihad, and Dark Age, Battletech periodically becomes a different setting, just as new rules and rule sets make it into a (slightly) different game. The iterations are joined together by an ever-expanding rule set and fictional genealogy/geography and as they do develop, they incrementally amend parts of the game.

TL;DR - Reboots aren't all bad, Battletech could use some minor tweaks, and I'd be interested in hearing a case for a complete reboot.

27

General Discussion / Re: Maybe its time for a complete battletech reboot?

« on: 02 April 2012, 15:47:32 »

It just feels like its going nuts with all the different mechs weapons and equipment available.

I hear that. I've read through the new run of core books and I'm still staggered by obscure/WTF equipment when I power up a 'mech editor. I'm not saying it's bad, but it's disconcerting when I'm being offered a backhoe or ground HPG when I'm making a skirmisher or when I have to look up the details on a chemical laser again. If I'm playing against someone else, I can refresh myself on the stats and rules for their Bombast Lasers and vibroblades, but it's quite hard to really understand what a unit with those weapons can do.

This is mostly because I have a limited investment in Battletech. It's not a game for dabblers and you have to be a special kind of casual to like it. My theory is that the crunchy, slot-by-slot granularity of the game appeals to some hardwired fragment of the psyche of its fans. That's probably why the extensive equipment lists and construction rules work so well for it. They extend that granularity to the other best part of the game: customization.

When you try to factor all those grains of data into a whole database to fashion a 'mech out of, especially if you're making a lot of 'mechs and playing one-off games, then it's becomes an unscalable wall of ironically undifferentiated stats, abbreviations, references, and footnotes; a mess instead of a collage. Partly, this is because Battletech is a very rich and [REDACTED]-[REDACTED], but incredibly flavorful [REDACTED] system. What kind of unit might you run into if you're in the spinward Periphery in 3077? Most dedicated players could probably give you a short list of items that you might find or would definitely not find in that unit. Smart dedicated players would ask if that unit was Clan or Inner Sphere. House, Periphery, or Merc. All battlemech? Air support? What about it's technology rating? Supplies? Experience of support personnel? Transport assets? Political assets of its leader? All legit questions that make the universe feel like a real place and have the effect of cutting the mountain of equipment and rules into something more manageable, whether you're facing that unit or you are that unit.

A few other guys have suggested limiting your own construction options. For everything I've just talked about, that's a pretty good solution. Of course, if your problem is that the universe itself doesn't feel right when it's cluttered with all of these things, then I'll admit a call for a reboot is in order. Of course, I'm baffled by the hatred that a lot of people feel over reboots.

28

Strategic Games / Quick Resolution of Skirmishes

« on: 23 March 2012, 02:17:15 »

I'm working on a simple campaign system for some new players. Whenever a force makes planetfall, both attacker and defender give orders to the three or so lances under their command. Depending on what units are Diverting, Patrolling, Advancing, or Guarding, units meet in several different ways.  In a given round, there can be anywhere from 0 to 3 opposing units mixing it up, but only the most important battle is played out.

The rest are handled as skirmishes, and I'd like them handled with as little trouble as possible. Ideally one roll, but it's hard to suss out damage, victory, and ground control with just one roll. I thought about letting each unit take a shot at the enemy with a random set of modifiers until one player withdrawals his forces, but that's a lot of die rolling. Then, I thought about each side rolling a D6, multiplying it by a fraction of the lance's tonnage, and turning the result into critical hits and measures of victory. That involved a lot of rolling for critical locations. Another idea would be measuring the battle's outcome in Warchest Points lost, with any unmet losses paid in destroyed units.

Has anyone ever had to drastically simplify a whole match for their strategic games before? Any success? Suggestions?

29

Off Topic / Re: roosterboy's 2011 comic book hootenanny

« on: 01 February 2011, 21:49:46 »

I'm still not entirely sold on the concept of Batman, Inc.. I mean, I find the idea intriguing, and it's certainly an interesting twist... given that the legend of Batman now has this extensive temporal mythos supporting it as a result of The Return of Bruce Wayne. But I think I would've preferred Wayne exploring that mythos, first, before setting out and establishing "Batmen" in other countries.

I would have liked to have seen that. I don't have anything against Batman Inc., but I find the Dick/Damien dynamic in Batman & Robin to be far more compelling right now.

30

General Discussion / Casual Battletech Primer

« on: 01 February 2011, 17:40:38 »

Edit: Removed everything.