Question about map based campaigns

[Bedwyr]

I was browsing casually through my copy of CO and was struck that it doesn’t actually say a lot about the planetary maps, preferring to make it a generically scaled maps alongside two other example campaigns. Are the orbital movement and system movement (pirate points and zenith/nadir features off to the side) not actually covered in the books?

[The Purist]

The actual rules for the Planetary Maps from the Turning Points publications can be found in the Battleforce 2 rule book. The rules section is called Planetary Assault beginning on page 69-70. We still use this system for quick combats in our grand campaign.

If not using a published planetary map you could use the Planetary Combat Map (PCM) from ISaW/ACS and the SSRM (Star System Radar Map) from IO. There are rules there for Pirate, Zenith/Nadir points and landings. Quick and easy combats

[Bedwyr]

Well, I guess what I was asking is that the full set of rules for planetary maps never made the transition over to the core books, correct? I do have BF2 boxset as well as PDF copies of the rulebook.

[NeonKnight]

Nope. Never made a transition which is mucho annoying as all the TOURING THE STARS make use if the planetary maps but rules are not available for new players.

[Bedwyr]

If I do have the BF2 box set and rulebook (including the published PDF of it), will the rules for maneuvering, orbit, and force management hook into IO rules and the staging/conversion systems they provide? I recall that one of the problems I was eager to see resolved was dealing with the information lost as you abstract your force back up to a larger abstraction, figuring out when to play a particularly granular system. I had imagined something like each player having a set number of BT chits where if you're in a conflict you can call, like football timeouts, a game of BT to resolve a part of the larger active engagement. Or perhaps invoking BT every time a major leader or objective is involved.

[Colt Ward]

How would you represent the losses in such a representative battle?  For instance most of the forces on any side should be plain old infantry.  But its not something that fits into every battle- especially one of fast movement like a breakthrough or retreat under fire- so you take losses of X% mechs, Y% armor and Z% BA in a battle.  Since it is to represent the whole force involved in the engagement and you did not have infantry involved, how would you represent?

Also, how would you select the forces for the representative battle?  RAT?

[Bedwyr]

Something simply proportional I suppose. And yes, most likely RATs. Perhaps what would happen is that you would "lock in" composition once rolled. So if I normally represent a company with one chit, zoom in and battle with one lance at a key moment (RAT generated), that information goes into a folder. So let's say the lance makes it out of the BT game just fine, but then the company in a zoomed out game suffers 1/4 losses. Do some kind of proportional random roll to see if any Mechs from that lance are gone.

Or one could simply accept losing the RAT information as you zoom out. So one Mech gone in the lance plus a half beaten up Mech turns into a lance with one-quarter gone and a company with eleven Mechs remaining, represented proportionally by whatever damage tracking the company chit uses.

I'm only spitballing what I'm imagining here though. I've got half-formed knowledge of IO's contents.

[Colt Ward]

Well I was wondering about something like . . .

You attack with a mech regiment (3 battalions & command company) which has 120 mechs (if at full strength) and your orders place everyone on the line.  Its a RCT-type formation so you have at least two regiments of armor, a BA battalion and a regiment of infantry involved in the attack.  So 216-240 vehicles, 36 BA suits, and 750-ish infantry involved in the attack with the mechs.  To sort of scale it . . . 12 mechs, 22-24 vehicles, 4 BA suits and a company of infantry, if you wanted to do a 10% representative battle.

Results of the battle for that side could be interesting . . . you could have for instance, 2 mechs mission kill (XL crit or side torso, head lost, gyro shot out, etc), a truly dead mech (CT cored), 6 destroyed tanks, 1 mission kill tank (lost turret), half the BA suits wiped out, and the infantry company loses a squad or two.  Well, in the immediate aftermath your mechs have taken 25% losses, the vehicles took about 30%, BA took 50%, and infantry took 22% losses after losing 2 squads, but I would like to have a variance in its application to the whole force in the battle.  Linked to their robustness IMO . . . 1% or 2% for mechs (so 23-27% depending on roll), 4%-6% on vehicles (24%-36%), etc and apply the a random result per lower level unit.  So the mechs of the regiment took approx 25% losses, now each battalion and command company that was on the line will roll.  Its not going to change the results for the company, they are still going to lose 3 mechs.  But each battalion will lose between 8 (23% is 8.28) and 10 (27% is 9.86) mechs.  Not sure how this would play in, but once the command had the time, they would get back the 'salvage' grade losses; 5-6 mechs per battalion and 1 vehicle per two vehicle companies.  Infantry mission kill vs truly dead, I do not remember the rolls so that would have to be checked.

Which does not even get into personnel losses (MW, vehicle crews, BA troopers & infantry wounded vs dead) or the ability to salvage stuff from the other side . . . so the above regiment inflicts similar damage but holds the battlefield.  Which means you could salvage a replacement to keep your strength up IF you pilots did not get dead.  Your armor is likely hosed though, lol, since I am not sure crews survive damage wiping out internal structure in a section.