Lets say that you are setting up a one off to the death game with 10k+ BV2 per player, how do you personally decide upon your own force? The game is NOT rpg mode, its not campaign play. Each player is there to play to win. CBills don't mean a thing, and if you need fluff reasons then its because the House/Clan is picking up the tab. You are free to pick what you want, which means mixed tech, custom designs, as long as it is legal and within your BV point allotment.
Second, how long do you typically take to design a force for such a game?
For me I used to play what I now call "All Stars", which is picking the units that you want without regard to anything other then if I have the points to pick it. Over time I have moved to selecting a faction, a general point in time, and a specific unit within that faction's Field Manual.
If a faction does not have a specific unit within it's MUL then its off the table.
I try to pick units that are within 1 era of each other, for example Invasion and Jihad, while trying to avoid SW4 and DA unless the unit still shows up in the DA list.
Finally, I try to use the information about a unit within the field manuals to narrow down the units that are likely to be used by them. If a unit's entry mentions slow assault mechs then I'm going to keep the light mechs to a minimum, if they are short range specialists then I'm going to focus on short range, although I'll have a bit of medium and long range in something like a 60/20/20 distribution.
Lately I have gone a step further and started using the random assignment tables. Sometimes I simply roll for a lance type and composition then select my units using the MUL. Even more recently I have started using the RAT in addition to the lance type table. I find that the RATs are very limited so I have allowed myself to find units that are in the MUL that are roughly the same BV.
I used to pick a mech from each weight class then decide if I wanted something faster or heavier, then selected additional units based upon that decision. This was done within the limitations of selected faction's MUL.
Regarding the second question, I can spend hours trying to make a force using any method that is not completely dictated by dice rolls. What happens rather regularly is I will spend hours making a force for fun, then the night before I will shelve it and throw something completely different together in 30 minutes.
I have known people that reported that they spend several days working on a force for a game. Some have had such a need for time that they would prefer to simply not play if they did not have a full week to put something together. This is strange as one such individual would throw something together 30 minutes before a game. I know because we would bust out the TROs and throw something together to either play against each other or against another pair of friends as a team. Someone else mentioned that they typically take a few days to work on a force, which made me wonder what is the likely norm when it comes to putting a force together, how they go about making it, and how long do they tend to take to make one that they are willing to play with. I know that my own process and time has changed over time so I am curious as to how things have changed for other players.
