BattleTech - The Board Game of Armored Combat
BattleTech Game Systems => General BattleTech Discussion => Topic started by: BrokenMnemonic on 28 April 2011, 14:41:38
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I've been reading on the Sarna.net wiki that Objective Raids is apparently notorious for being rife with errors - Tikonov not being listed as industrial centre is given as an example - but the internet hasn't yielded up anything that looks like an errata or fan-made update for this publication. Does such a thing exist anywhere? I've had a chance to read the fan-made Objective Raids: 3067, which has a fascinating amount of detail, but I'm actually looking at working back from the published Objective Raids towards targets worth raiding during the 4th Succession War era.
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The book was sold paired with Hot Spots and wasn't meant to be comprehensive, only to provide a "currently hiring" list of opportunities for Mercenary players.
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Is MadCapellan's version up somewhere? He redid it and its been basically canonized. I'd check that out
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What do you mean, "basically"?
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Is MadCapellan's version up somewhere? He redid it and its been basically canonized. I'd check that out
Edit: Nevermind, found it.
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Edit: Nevermind, found it.
Tough. I spent all of 30 seconds raiding the forum archives for this link and now you and every other viewer of this thread will have to read the P.D.F. (http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/7/21/1284545/ObjectiveRaids3067%20-%20Rev%201-1.pdf)
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The book was sold paired with Hot Spots and wasn't meant to be comprehensive, only to provide a "currently hiring" list of opportunities for Mercenary players.
Objective Raids wasn't paird with Hot Spots. Hot Spots was a 2-book set, one book of contracts and one book of behind the scenes stuff with GM's notes.
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The book was sold paired with Hot Spots and wasn't meant to be comprehensive, only to provide a "currently hiring" list of opportunities for Mercenary players.
Where was this detailed, please? My copy of Hot Spots indicates that it's a companion volume to the Mercenary's Handbook: 3055, and that to use it the BattleTech Compendium, Mechwarrior 2nd Edition, BattleTroops, BattleForce and/or BattleSpace are needed, depending on the type of campaign being played. It also indicates that the Intelligence Operations Handbook provides useful background. It's dated 1993, a year later than Objective Raids, a keyword search on the .pdf version finds no matches for "Objective Raids" and the Objective Raids book makes no mention of Hot Spots at all that I can find.
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Is MadCapellan's version up somewhere? He redid it and its been basically canonized. I'd check that out
Red Pins kindly provided me with a copy after I asked about Objective Raids: 3067, having seen the thread on fan works elsewhere here on the forum. I think Objective Raids: 3067 is a great piece of work, but I'm hoping that if the original FASA Objective Raids is as notoriously error and omission prone as the BT Wiki seems to think it is, there's an errata document or something out there highlighting at least the more serious problems, so that I don't have to do a side by side comparison between the two and adjust backwards from 3067...
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Objective Raids... yeah. When it comes to that book, trust but verify- a ton of stuff in there ended up pretty wonky. Which is, my guess, probably why they never did an updated version (MadCap's aside)- what a pain in the derriere!
I don't have my copy handy, but there's several places that had errors that damn near jump off the page.
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You're right, it was Contracts paired with Hot spots.
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No, FASA wasn't big on errata, and given how old the book is, Catalyst (at least during my tenure as Errata Coordinator) decided not to allocate resources to it. Updated information can be found in various Catalyst and FanPro sources.
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No, FASA wasn't big on errata
Sig-worthy [rockon]
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Is MadCapellan's version up somewhere? He redid it and its been basically canonized. I'd check that out
Just because I'm now Catalyst's factory guy doesn't mean Objective Raids 3067 is "basically canonized" The overwhelming majority of it is good information. Some of it was educated guesswork. None of it is in any way binding on Catalyst. If a Catalyst product contradicts my fan book, it's Catalyst that's right. If something appears in my fan book, and it doesn't appear in a Catalyst product, it's a clever fabrication which doesn't directly contradict canon but has no bearing on it whatsoever.
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Thank you for the clever fabrications. 8)
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Hello. I'm Jeffrey Layton, and I wrote the original Objective Raids.
Given the current feeling toward my book and the errors in it, I really had to work up my courage before stepping up to post. I would, however, like to mention the reality of the conditions under which it was written.
In those days, information wasn't as easily available as it is now in the computer era. The various writers working for FASA at the time weren't always in very good contact with one another and sometimes they didn't seem to keep track of the other printed material out there, so there was quite a bit of conflicting detail in the source material I was working with. I had to make a lot of decisions as to which version to use when the books were at odds with each other.
Of course I'm human and with that mass of material, you can bet that I made mistakes too. I wasn't a professional writer. I was a gamer - just a kid fresh out of high school with a bunch of notebooks filled with hand written notes scattered all over my house. It wasn't an organized team effort - it was just me and my notes.
As an aside, I submitted the first few chapters of the book as typewritten pages until Sam Lewis told me that the office ladies at FASA were pitching a fit about having to retype it and he needed me to find a way to get the material to him on floppy disk. I'd never used a computer before and I certainly couldn't afford one. Two of my friends did have computers and they typed up my notes for me. FASA got half the material in Apple format and half in PC.
Finally, I'd just like to say that Tikonov WAS listed in the final draft I submitted to FASA. That error at least was on the part of the editors. It's my understanding that some publishers allow the author to see the final stage of material before sending a book to press, but that wasn't the case with either of my books.
Despite the errors, I think that Objective Raids did what it was intended to by serving as a reference material for both gamers and writers for the BattleTech game. At least it gave us some sort of foundation to work from.
Anyway, it's great to see that BattleTech is still going strong. I haven't written anything since Tukayyid (though I did just start a gaming blog: www.gamingtabletop.com it's the only "writing" that I've done in twenty years now!), and I quit gaming for a while. Now I'm playing BattleTech again, using rebased MechWarrior: Dark Age figs for games with my kids.
Finally, I'd like to say that I have a great deal of respect for MadCapellan for his Objective Raids: 3067 project. I was tearing my hair out when working on the original, and there's so much more source material for him to have to keep track of that it's amazing to me that anyone could manage it. Congratulations!
--Jeff
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Thank you for coming on the boards Jeff. Sounds like it must been really rough writing up the original. Hearing how things were at FASA when you were putting together the Objective Raids gives least me prespective on things. I'm always referring to it despite the errors as peek that time frame!
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Hello. I'm Jeffrey Layton, and I wrote the original Objective Raids.
:o
Wow. I lack words for how cool it is how have the authors of old coming back and talking about stuff here! [rockon]
Given the current feeling toward my book and the errors in it, I really had to work up my courage before stepping up to post. I would, however, like to mention the reality of the conditions under which it was written.
I think you've got the wrong idea. People love Objective Raids, it's gotta be one of the most-quoted, most referred book in any BT campaign game. And I for one don't blame the errors and omissions solely on one single author; factchecking problems were endemic in FASA times (and not only for FASA).
Would you mind if this posting of yours was copied over verbatim to the Sarna.net BattleTechWiki?
Of course you're invited to join that site's ranks of editors as well, perhaps you have some bits and pieces to add!
:)
Edit: Typos
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I have to echo Frabby's post: people know about the errors in Objective Raids and are sometimes frustrated by them, but overall it remains a popular book and a popular concept here on the boards, enough so that Herb (the current Line Developer) still gets pestered to produce a new one.
It's easy for people to forget what it was like in the pre-internet days, with no community to work off of, no email for easy communication, and no central collection of databases, spreadsheets and other collections of key data. Also, fan products have one key advantage: no deadlines. You can take as long as you want on it, show it to as many people as desired, and tweak to your heart's content - all not possible in a printed product with an NDA and a deadline. Several of the bigger fan projects on these boards were just as error-prone or more in their initial stages (mine was total crap), before being subjected to cross-checking by the forums over a year or more.
Anyways, thanks for posting and giving us a look behind the scenes. Welcome to the forums.
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Thank you for the replies.
I'm glad to hear that some of the BattleTech players out there like Objective Raids! When I started gaming again and actually looked at some the reviews of it out there, I admit it stung a bit.
Sure, you're more than welcome to copy anything I post to the BattleTechWiki. Thanks for asking! (-:
As a freelance writer, my only contact with FASA was by mail and phone. So I doubt that I have much to add other than in regards to Objective Raids and Tukayyid. I'm more than happy to try to answer any questions about them to the best of my ability though.
I can tell you that things with the BattleTech line were a mess for a while when I was working for FASA though. I forget the name of the gentleman in charge of BattleTech when I started work on Tukayyid, but when Mike Mulvihill took over the line (just as I was finishing up the manuscript), he told me that he inherited a bunch of projects that were just empty folders with no work finished on them at all. It must have been a nightmare for the company at the time, though they got it all straightened out.
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objective raids is one of my favorate resources right up there with the star league sourcebook for history/fluff and mercenary's handbook 3055
to be honest one of my dream books/series would be an objective raids style book for more eras
IE 2750ish
3025ish
3040ish
3050 (basically the one we have)
3060ish
3075-80ish
or even a 3085ish dated one with time frames for various facilities
like the blah factory went online (year) and by (year) was in full production producing (product) and was damaged in (year) reducing production to ... it was repaired in (year) and destroyed by (unit) on (date)
that would give us a lot of info as a gm /player about what to expect
btw I LOVED the writeup of the marauder II factory
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Yeah, objective raids was an essential sourcebook for a number of campaigns I played in back in the day too. It's an amazing resource and given the era some errors are to be expected.
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Objective Raids was far and away my favorite sourcebook growing up.
I spent several years pre-internet looking for a copy and treasured it
thereafter.
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Mr. Layton,
Thank you so much for your commendation, it truly means alot to me! As I explained my fanbook's introduction, ObjectiveRaids has been my favorite sourcebook forever. As a young player, I loved that book to near death, flipping through it so much it had to be rebound with duct tape. I marked the unit deployments on the maps inside with colored dots to denote unit experience. It was an awe-inspiring work of universe data. I don't fault you your errors in it, as I know full-well the difficulty involved in compiling so much data, and that I relied on this entire CBT internet community to gut-check each chapter of my fanbook before compiling it into the completed document, a luxury you'd have never had. There is no such thing as an error free sourcebook, as much as we'd like it. We can only do our best with what we have. Thank you! Your inspiration has brought me to where I am now working with Catalyst!
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I've gotten a lot of pleasure out of your work. Many thanks.
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I have to add to those saying this was my favorite sourcebook, certainly the most used. My copy was just a pile of loose pages in a folder for decades, the binding long gone.
Thank you.
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Mr. Layton, I have just one thing to say regarding Objective Raids: O0
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I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Objective Raids is one of my fav sourcebooks of all time. And one of my most used.
I love it and still use it to this day. :)
Thanks for making the book. hehehe.
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I have to add to those saying this was my favorite sourcebook, certainly the most used. My copy was just a pile of loose pages in a folder for decades, the binding long gone.
Thank you.
You should see mine; kept together with packing tape and covered in marginalia.
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Mr. Layton,
Even before you posted here, the earlier portion of this thread, despite some of the criticism, piqued my interest enough that I tracked down a copy of Objective Raids used on Amazon and had it delivered a few days ago. After reading it over on the beach at Bald Head Island over the weekend, I am really impressed with this prize. I'm no expert on the fluff so a lot of it is over my head, but an example to its continued relevance is right in the first few pages. We're playing through the Starterbook: Sword and Dragon Campaign and my players want to continue using McKinnon's Raiders in an ongoing campaign through the clan invasion. I was skeptical of how such a small unit raiding party would ever work, as I figured they would be destroyed before ever making planetfall. Your writeup of small unit raiding tactics, disguising jumps, using pirate points, was great and will really flesh out our campaign. So thanks for this great work that's still keeping games going today!
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Well hell, I never thought of that! I need to dig out my copy and re-read it.
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You should see mine; kept together with packing tape and covered in marginalia.
+1 Librarian Cool Point to Fireangel for correct use of "marginalia".
Regarding the original product: Objective Raids, even with errors, settled a lot of disputes and gave my gaming group a lot of raiding missions. (My opponent was particularly cheesed off when I asked the ref if the weapons factory had a proving range that could maybe turn the medium lasers around and fire on the raiding mechs and he said "I don't see why not." This put five Medium Lasers in the building and gave me more tactical options.)
I also liked the Blackjack variant in one of the footnotes. Very clever means of introducing a new 'Mech.
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Personally, I always enjoyed this book, and am one of the ones who'd purchase an updated version.
Warts and all, it's still one of my favorite sourcebooks.
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Okay, I've tried about twenty times now to find the right words to express how I feel.
All I can say is that I'm very, very moved by everything you said. Having you guys tell me that you loved my book was the last thing I expected - I was bracing myself for stuff more like "save the excuses - so you didn't have a computer. Bottom line is Objective Raids is a slipshod mess and you stink as a writer."
Some context might help here I guess. I don't remember anyone ever telling me they loved either Objective Raids or Tukayyid until I read your comments here. I liked them, but I can't exactly claim to have an unbiased point of view on the subject. (-;
The only significant positive feedback that came from writing my books happened while being a guest of honor at a BattleTech convention in Lincoln back in the early '90s (I'm a Nebraska boy - not much contact with the gaming community out here in the sticks beyond the Omaha-Lincoln metro area, and especially not in the pre-internet days!) along with Warren Dettmann (the guy who did the BattleTech Record Sheet books).
Even then, I signed a couple of books, but while I thought I was there to autograph books and talk about Objective Raids, the con organizers thought I was there to play in their tournament. Which is probably just as well as otherwise I would have had a lot of time on my hands after my two signatures were finished! Plus, I placed third in the tournament. (Knocking Warren out in the first round - which shocked everyone including myself as he was a highly ranked Mechforce N.A. member. Okay, I got lucky - it was still awesome.)
Don't get me wrong - people did fuss over me because of the books. But it was always "oh you're published!" Never "I loved your book!" And certainly never "I loved (blank) about your book!" Honestly, I felt like I could have written a manuscript that said "published" 60,000 times and achieved the same reaction.
Then when I looked online a while back and found a couple of reviews of Objective Raids and Tukayyid, they were rather negative. So all-in-all, I was a pretty discouraged.
So again, thank you all. And a special vote of thanks to William!
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Would you mind if this posting of yours was copied over verbatim to the Sarna.net BattleTechWiki?
Edit: Typos
Hey Frabby,
After first posting here, I called up one of the two old friends who helped me retype the Objective Raids manuscript in order to get it saved to floppy disks. While we were talking, he said "okay you're sure that you had Tikonov in your original manuscript. But are you 100% sure that it got entered in the stuff we retyped?"
And...no, I'm not. I had forgotten about that extra step in the process. Yes, it was there when I wrote the manuscript. Yes, it isn't in the final printed product. But, no, that doesn't mean it was FASA's fault for sure - it could have been me after all.
Drat!
Well, I feel like a fool but I'd rather that than be dishonest about it.
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objective raids is one of my favorate resources right up there with the star league sourcebook for history/fluff and mercenary's handbook 3055
to be honest one of my dream books/series would be an objective raids style book for more eras
IE 2750ish
3025ish
3040ish
3050 (basically the one we have)
3060ish
3075-80ish
or even a 3085ish dated one with time frames for various facilities
like the blah factory went online (year) and by (year) was in full production producing (product) and was damaged in (year) reducing production to ... it was repaired in (year) and destroyed by (unit) on (date)
that would give us a lot of info as a gm /player about what to expect
btw I LOVED the writeup of the marauder II factory
I actually envisioned Objective Raids as a 3025 era product. Sure, it was published in '92 but I wrote it before that. (My contract with FASA was signed September 1991.)
When Sam (Lewis) told me they wanted to publish the book, he said "but I'm afraid you're going to have to revise your draft. We're making a big change to the BattleTech setting right now." Of course, the change was the Clan invasion.
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Mr. Layton,
Thank you so much for your commendation, it truly means alot to me! As I explained my fanbook's introduction, ObjectiveRaids has been my favorite sourcebook forever. As a young player, I loved that book to near death, flipping through it so much it had to be rebound with duct tape. I marked the unit deployments on the maps inside with colored dots to denote unit experience. It was an awe-inspiring work of universe data. I don't fault you your errors in it, as I know full-well the difficulty involved in compiling so much data, and that I relied on this entire CBT internet community to gut-check each chapter of my fanbook before compiling it into the completed document, a luxury you'd have never had. There is no such thing as an error free sourcebook, as much as we'd like it. We can only do our best with what we have. Thank you! Your inspiration has brought me to where I am now working with Catalyst!
Of everything here, this is what really moved me the most. Now that I'm starting to write again, I'm struggling a bit at times. Reading what you've said (well, what everyone here has said, but especially this) has helped me to remain motivated to work at it. Thank you so much!
Also, I wanted to let you know that I've written a review of Objective Raids 3067 on my blog. And it's a big recommendation. (-:
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Don't have the Objective Raids but Tukayyid is the best scenario pack I've read :)
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All I can say is that I'm very, very moved by everything you said. Having you guys tell me that you loved my book was the last thing I expected - I was bracing myself for stuff more like "save the excuses - so you didn't have a computer. Bottom line is Objective Raids is a slipshod mess and you stink as a writer."
You might have seen more of that if the community hadn't seen the trials and tribulations the Master Unit List team went through to make their product. It was just a matter of education: People didn't realize how much work was involved until they heard the rumblings from the MUL team. MadCapellan's work just underscored the fact that something like Objective Raids is a huge effort.
Then you add in the fact that you didn't have the Internet, email, or a distributed factchecking team, and the scope of Objective Raids really hits home.
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Mr. Layton,
I will echo what others have said here, by saying that the Objective Raids Sourcebook was and still is one of my favorites. MadCapellan's updated work is a constant reference for me and without the work of the amazing writers that we have devoting their time and efforts to our hobby, it certainly wouldn't be the remarkable and robust system that we have to play in.
My thanks to all the writers, contributors, fact checkers, editors and artists who have made this game a lifetime hobby for us all to enjoy.
Bruce
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I just wanted to chime in and say what a great book objective raids was. We had about 10 people in our group and everyone had a copy for our campaign. A few years later ('97-'98 maybe) we found a copy online that someone had updated with all the current changes throughout the clan invasion. It filled a 3" 3-ring binder.
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I am going to add on more kind words and praises about Objective Raids. Growing up as a gamer in a small farming town 90% of my battletech experience as a teenager was playing against myself using cardboard squares with the names of mechs on them and creating elaborate scenarios, units and campaigns all in the cramped space that was my bedroom. Your book was by far my greatest resource in creating these stories. I used it to plot massive invasions, what-if scenarios, and create stories that I can still look back on with fondness. I still own my original copy, even with its missing front cover, several pages falling out, and star maps with convoluted lines arrows and notations that tracked the movements of all of the great houses in the inner sphere. In summation, Thank You.
On another note, Mad Cappellan, I was able to see your work for the first time through the link on this thread and it is awesome. I think it is a worthy successor to the original Objective Raids both in scope and spirit.
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Before we all go overboard with love for the book, I do want to point out the three things that always bugged me:
1) The organization; units up front, clan front borders in the middle and remaining worlds in the back... It gets annoying having to go through three separate sections for information on the same State.
2) No index (at least I corrected this in my copy); seriously; this kind of book is in serious need of an index - if only for all the worlds!
3) The big lettered margins; the font just does not help (blame for this falls squarely on FASA's shoulders; I'm pretty sure the manuscript didn't have that ::) )
Besides these minor quibbles, I really don't have any complaints about the book. It still sees almost as much use as the TROs
OTOH, I absolutely love the maps; for years it was the single-source resource for maps of the Inner Sphere 'round these parts.
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As with many others, I too found OR inspirational and it led me and some willing collaborators to create the Kapteyn Universe BattleTech AU. If not for OR, I think my BTech experince would have been lessened somewhat.
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I actually envisioned Objective Raids as a 3025 era product. Sure, it was published in '92 but I wrote it before that. (My contract with FASA was signed September 1991.)
When Sam (Lewis) told me they wanted to publish the book, he said "but I'm afraid you're going to have to revise your draft. We're making a big change to the BattleTech setting right now." Of course, the change was the Clan invasion.
For my BattleTech group in uni, Objective Raids was a huge go-to book; we were limited to what we could buy in the local games stores for supplies, and mercenary campaigns ran for years using Objective Raids as one of the core books. It was hugely useful - the only gripe I had was that it was clan-era, rather than 3025, which is the era most of our other sourcebooks were from. That's not a criticism of the book itself, but it did rather mean that the campaigns tended to revolve around areas that hadn't changed much since the Fourth Succession War. As others have mentioned, no matter what criticisms the internet community may have had for the book, the maps alone made the book a must-buy for me, with everything beyond that being pure gravy.
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Pssst.Check out the "coming soon" section.
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Can you repeat that for the rest of the class?
:)
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Aw, no fair.
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Can you repeat that for the rest of the class?
No. I made roosterboy mad.
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Wow, this level of workplace productivity among BT fans is unprecedented.
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I am now a tuning fork being held up in a stiff breeze. I am not sure I've wanted a Catalyst PDF this much, ever.
Okay, that's a lie.
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Color me excited!
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Color me excited!
Is that anything like cerise?
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Is that anything like cerise?
Presumably it's one of these (http://www.colorhunter.com/tag/excited/1).
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I always thought OR was a good product, and was always disapointed that we didn't see it spin off into a line of products like the TROs where they would change with the changing political situation/geographic situation. I mean Taurans for all their backwardness (imagine - refusing to join the Star League!) had their own production facilities that could use raiding from time to time.
OR for the not-quite declining / early IIISW might be a bit different in feel than they are in 3025 or in 3045 for that matter. I always felt that was a direction that FASA failed to follow up on.
It was good work, and without a computer database to consult or the internet to work with an A+ (for the day), an effort like that today with all the current resources available would have to be graded harsher, but that is now and it came out back in the day.
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Pssst.Check out the "coming soon" section.
Any chance of a pointer for forum novices like myself?
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Any chance of a pointer for forum novices like myself?
http://classicbattletech.com/index.php?action=products&mode=full&id=357
;)
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I always thought OR was a good product, and was always disapointed that we didn't see it spin off into a line of products like the TROs where they would change with the changing political situation/geographic situation.
You might check the past few posts in this thread....
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Any chance of a pointer for forum novices like myself?
DarkISI's given you the direct link to the product page of this particular book, but for future reference the homepage (http://www.classicbattletech.com) has a small section showing upcoming and recently released books. When there are multiple books per category they rotate each time you load the page, so liberal use of the reload button will cycle through them all if at first you don't see one people are talking about.
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Any chance of a pointer for forum novices like myself?
You can also go to the main page http://www.classicbattletech.com/ (http://www.classicbattletech.com/) and select Products from the right hand side. Then uncheck In Print and check Release pending to see all the stuff that CGL is working on.
Plus there are handy dandy search features that let you find a particular product.
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Objectives: Capellan Confederation will be followed by a photo of a moon crater titled "Objectives: Draconis Combine", then, a one-page leaflet with the heading "Objectives: Federated Suns". Objectives: FWL, a beautifully written work rendered in gorgeous, flowing verse, will be released as soon as they can find someone who cares enough to upload it to BattleCorps.
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You might check the past few posts in this thread....
Yep. That's what I was thinking 15+ years ago... Although the CapCon? Sigh. Pushovers. :)
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Objectives: Capellan Confederation will be followed by a photo of a moon crater titled "Objectives: Draconis Combine", then, a one-page leaflet with the heading "Objectives: Federated Suns". Objectives: FWL, a beautifully written work rendered in gorgeous, flowing verse, will be released as soon as they can find someone who cares enough to upload it to BattleCorps.
And Objectives: Lyran (whatever they're called at the time...)?
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And Objectives: Lyran (whatever they're called at the time...)?
It will take four authors and still need to be updated when it is finally complete.
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It will take four authors and still need to be updated when it is finally complete.
Yes, because Objectives Lyran actually describes the Objectives of the Lyrans: Social parties and up and comping fashion trends.
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Yes, because Objectives Lyran actually describes the Objectives of the Lyrans: Social parties and up and comping fashion trends.
You left off the entire section on creative bookkeeping.
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Cool they did Capellan Confederation first. WOuld love to see House Davion but, I guess it is more important to see the industry of the person that you plan to attack :)
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Cool they did Capellan Confederation first. WOuld love to see House Davion but, I guess it is more important to see the industry of the person that you plan to attack :)
Series will follow the same line up as the Field Reports.
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Cool they did Capellan Confederation first. WOuld love to see House Davion but, I guess it is more important to see the industry of the person that you plan to attack :)
The Capellans always got done first. That's why their nation is so small.
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So they don't follow the idea of lets, get the big one out of the way first? :D
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Yeah...all the Davion players need to know what targets they have.
;)
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Yes, because Objectives Lyran actually describes the Objectives of the Lyrans: Social parties and up and comping fashion trends.
Cool! Should be an excellent companion to Objectives Magistracy that describes the various drinks, drugs, and other entertainments available to visitors of a Canopian Pleasure Circus. :D
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Don't have the Objective Raids but Tukayyid is the best scenario pack I've read :)
Well, thank you!
When I was playtesting the scenarios in Tukayyid with my local group, we had an awful time trying to balance things out. No matter what I tried to give them an advantage, the Com Guards got pounded in all of our playtest sessions. (The superior Clan equipment and especially their higher skills in gunnery and piloting were decisive factors.) I was really worried about it and sent along a note with the final manuscript voicing my concerns.
But in one of the few reviews I saw of the book, the reviewer said the Clans lost every single time he and his group tried to play out the scenarios.
So I suppose it must come down to how your own group plays, and it all worked out in the end.
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I am going to add on more kind words and praises about Objective Raids. Growing up as a gamer in a small farming town 90% of my battletech experience as a teenager was playing against myself using cardboard squares with the names of mechs on them and creating elaborate scenarios, units and campaigns all in the cramped space that was my bedroom. Your book was by far my greatest resource in creating these stories. I used it to plot massive invasions, what-if scenarios, and create stories that I can still look back on with fondness. I still own my original copy, even with its missing front cover, several pages falling out, and star maps with convoluted lines arrows and notations that tracked the movements of all of the great houses in the inner sphere. In summation, Thank You.
As I'm still living in a small farming town and using cardstock markers in some of my games, I can sure relate to this! I'm glad that you got so much use from my book - thank you for sharing your story. (-:
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Before we all go overboard with love for the book, I do want to point out the three things that always bugged me:
1) The organization; units up front, clan front borders in the middle and remaining worlds in the back... It gets annoying having to go through three separate sections for information on the same State.
2) No index (at least I corrected this in my copy); seriously; this kind of book is in serious need of an index - if only for all the worlds!
3) The big lettered margins; the font just does not help (blame for this falls squarely on FASA's shoulders; I'm pretty sure the manuscript didn't have that ::) )
Besides these minor quibbles, I really don't have any complaints about the book. It still sees almost as much use as the TROs
OTOH, I absolutely love the maps; for years it was the single-source resource for maps of the Inner Sphere 'round these parts.
I think you're quite right with all your comments and especially in regards to the index. Every gaming book ought to have one and as I've been known to write up indexes of other books just for my own use in games it's very odd that I didn't do one in Objective Raids. I really can't explain it.
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I never stopped using OR in my games. It is/was a good book for that time period.
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Didn't the Jihad knock some of the important factorys and objectives out??
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One or two might have suffered some cosmetic damage....
:D
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One or two might have suffered some cosmetic damage....
Just a fleshwound.
Paul
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One or two might have suffered some cosmetic damage....
:D
Kit, Kit, Kit...
You're supposed to say something along the lines of "yeah...about 15 - 20% of them suffered some kind of cosmetic damage."...
:D
;)
Ruger
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One or two might have suffered some cosmetic damage....
:D
Kit, Kit, Kit...
You're supposed to say something along the lines of "yeah...about 15 - 20% of them suffered some kind of cosmetic damage."...
:D
;)
Ruger
I thought the affected factories just lost 15-20% of their production capacity... :D
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Well, thank you!
When I was playtesting the scenarios in Tukayyid with my local group, we had an awful time trying to balance things out. No matter what I tried to give them an advantage, the Com Guards got pounded in all of our playtest sessions. (The superior Clan equipment and especially their higher skills in gunnery and piloting were decisive factors.) I was really worried about it and sent along a note with the final manuscript voicing my concerns.
But in one of the few reviews I saw of the book, the reviewer said the Clans lost every single time he and his group tried to play out the scenarios.
So I suppose it must come down to how your own group plays, and it all worked out in the end.
Tukkayid is one of the handful of FASA books I don´t own, but a couple of the guys in our group have it and we´ve played through a bunch of the scenarios. It´s been fun every time.
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I thought in the jahad ~15-20% of the production facilities suffered some level of "cosmetic damage" including a few that suffered the "cosmetic damage" to the botom of the foundation of the production floor slab in the assembly bays (note the damage appears to be scorching and the thermal source seems to have been in the assembly bay. )
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Investor: "You lost half your production lines!"
CEO: "Yeah, but those lines were just for PR and aesthetic purposes only. The Locust line is our biggest money maker!"
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The sad thing is, since the Locusts were mass produced and the Bandersnatches were not, that ACTUALLY makes a bit of sense...
:D
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The sad thing is, since the Locusts were mass produced and the Bandersnatches were not, that ACTUALLY makes a bit of sense...
???
Bandersnatches were mass produced.
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???
Bandersnatches were mass produced.
Don't buy that old lie, Bandersnatches were bred.
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Don't buy that old lie, Bandersnatches were bred.
I thought they were imagined and just materialized out of thin air.
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I thought they were imagined and just materialized out of thin air.
Please don't tell me you think the Stork brings babies.
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Please don't tell me you think the Stork brings babies.
No, they're delivered by DHL, stork is so last century...
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Plus we all know Storks bring fuel.
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Hello. I'm Jeffrey Layton, and I wrote the original Objective Raids.
Given the current feeling toward my book and the errors in it, I really had to work up my courage before stepping up to post. I would, however, like to mention the reality of the conditions under which it was written.
[/snip]
--Jeff
Dude, you've got nothing to be worried about. There are three CBT books that I own that are scuffed and dog-eared to death from being read, re-read, re-re-read, bent in unusual ways from being propped open to specific pages that I needed to cross-reference, etc. Those are the original TRO:3025 (now retired in favor of the TRO: 3039), House Kurita and Objective Raids. Each of those three ranks in the top five (along with the Tukayyid Scenario book and the Jade Falcon Sourcebook) of my favorite CBT books of all time, warts and all!
You sir, and your book, rock! [rockon]
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Plus we all know Storks bring fuel.
...and disease.
Well, in China at least.
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It's been a while... I'm only casting Necro thread X on this subject merely because of the newest capability of Microsoft Edge's Read it! Functionality of reading webpages and PDFs... Listening to Male Siri say 'Cay-Pa-Lean Confederation' is moar funny than Tom Tom saying 'To-lea-Dah' for Toledo :D
It does make me giggle at the idea of that maybe we have been pronouncing common (and beloved) words from Battletech wrong?
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Oh hey, I'd forgotten that this is where I coined the phrase "FASA wasn't big on errata." And since this thread, we did get MadCap's updated Objective Raids in official form!
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...yeah, six years to make a joke about a PDF reader is quite the necro, for sure.
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heh listening to google maps read out directions is sometimes hilarious
like head towards caw mos (spelled camas and locally pronounced cam ass)
or take the glisten road exit it pronounces it glisten like shiny, when I have always heard locals pronounce it as glee san road. etc.
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Oh hey, I'd forgotten that this is where I coined the phrase "FASA wasn't big on errata."
You can say that again ... ;)
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I'd like to know if TPTB have changed, or are looking at changing, the book production process so that work for future OR (If that ever happens) is easier? The idea here is that when a design is created all information needed for inclusion into an OR is also entered into a database.
The way my idea would work is that in addition to deciding where a 'Mech is assembled and the brands of it's components the locations manufacture is also decided, all this information is entered into the database. Now the DB is set up so that you can also use it to find out what is made where and so on.
I'd also like information in future TRO's that say if a new line was put together for a new design, or if it shares a line with an older one or an older one was ceased to make way for the new one.
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No, TPTB now deliberately avoid giving out hard facts about production. Fuzzy numbers are way easier to work with than an ever-increasing mountain of hard number, and it also gives the writers way more leeway to handwave any facts they may deem important for a given story.
The BT universe isn't an economy simulation, even when discounting the FASAnomics rabbit hole. It works on the principles of author fiat and rule of plot demand instead.
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When did I give any production numbers? I'm talking about location and when production stops, not numbers.
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* Pokes Brent and Ray *
Wonder if the CGL bigwigs could swing a meet and greet with Mr. Layton as author of the year at Con of his choice. For a rather mediocre book turned sensational attraction. I got two copies, one barely holding together and another still glued.
I think I'm not the only one to want to shake his hand.
TT
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I'd like to know if TPTB have changed, or are looking at changing, the book production process so that work for future OR (If that ever happens) is easier?
The OR PDF series was a failure. You'll never see it again.
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The OR PDF series was a failure. You'll never see it again.
Unless, like Paul, you see it in your sleep.
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Unless, like Paul, you see it in your sleep.
That's his own fault. If you're going to sleep in a coffin full of dirt from your homeland, you're gonna have weird dreams. Same reason you shouldn't eat pizza before bedtime.