BattleTech - The Board Game of Armored Combat

BattleTech Game Systems => General BattleTech Discussion => Topic started by: Bigkahuna on 09 February 2019, 06:54:00

Title: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bigkahuna on 09 February 2019, 06:54:00
They already tried this with Mechwarrior about 15 years ago and it was a disaster. The only games for me that take 6+ hours are those that get up to company vs company. Lance vs Lance we usually average 2 to 3 hours. We have two new Battletech players in our group both in mid 20's age range and they love the rules. They are both 40k players who think the battletech rules are a breath of fresh air in comparison. I guess it just depends on the player...

15 years ago is 15 years.   Besides I’m not talking about some fundamental change to the core of the game, I’m talking about bringing the game to the 21st century.  It’s a great game and I’m sure it will continue to serv this very niche community but with the current business model and antiquated rule set there is zero hope of it expanding to a wider audience.  I mean a base aspect of th game is using whiteboard markers and clear plastic sheets to track game effects.  That alone is enough to turn off modern gamers.   When I say second edition I’m mostly talking about quality of life stuff here.    To call this game mechanic “a breath fresh“ compared to 40k, that I get.  40k is not a good example of modern design, pretty much every miniature game mechanic in the last two decades is faaaaaaar superior to 40k, it’s total crap,  basically Yatzee with Miiniatures.  So if that is heir comparative game, I can see why they would see Battletech in that light.
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Daryk on 09 February 2019, 07:00:26
40K rules may be "total crap", but GW is successful enough to have been written up in The Economist, so I don't think they're "turning off modern gamers".
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: nckestrel on 09 February 2019, 07:21:07
40K rules may be "total crap", but GW is successful enough to have been written up in The Economist, so I don't think they're "turning off modern gamers".

And Yahtzee’s tens of millions of copies sold aren’t a bad idea to copy either.  Yahtzee’s sales with the cost of mini sets? Sign me up.
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Psycho on 09 February 2019, 08:12:19
15 years ago is 15 years.   Besides I’m not talking about some fundamental change to the core of the game, I’m talking about bringing the game to the 21st century. 

Do you have specific examples of what you're thinking?

The challenge here is modernization without looking like a copycat. Copying someone else's elements is a good way of both showing poorly to new players ("hey, they just ripped off X") and alienating your current players. It's a fine line to make work.
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Bigkahuna on 09 February 2019, 08:25:03
40K rules may be "total crap", but GW is successful enough to have been written up in The Economist, so I don't think they're "turning off modern gamers".

It was the very subtle point I was trying to make.  Gamesworshop had half a dozen layoffs and was on the brink of bankruptcy.  Kicking out their antiquated games and specifically revising and modernizing 40k saved the company and returned it to the number one highest grossing miniatures game in the world in short order.
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Daryk on 09 February 2019, 08:47:21
GW has "modernized" their rules what, 12 times now?  A lot of those revisions are what pushed them to the brink of bankruptcy in the first place.
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Bigkahuna on 09 February 2019, 10:12:47
GW has "modernized" their rules what, 12 times now?  A lot of those revisions are what pushed them to the brink of bankruptcy in the first place.

I suppose it's a question of what you consider "modernization" and how you approach the existing community.  The trick, one not everyone can pull off, is to create a version of the game that brings in gamers accustomed to modern streamlined rulesets, while not alienating your existing fan base.  I will grant you that is not an easy trick to pull off, filled with hazards that could destroy a franchise and even if done successfully may not work simply for market/economic reasons. 

That said, business is about taking risks, as the case is with Battletech, in 35 years not much has changed in the game and while that probably appeals to fans (even I find it rather quaint and comfortable in a way), it does not, nor will ever lead to any growth for the game.  Growth, in business in general, but very specifically in the table top gaming business comes exclusively from reinvention, from new directions and expansion.  You can't expect to put out yet another box set with the same rules you have had for 35 years and expect a sudden influx of new players.  As was already pointed out, the vast majority of box set was sucked up by existing fans hungry for miniatures for a game they already love.

In any case someone asked the question which I found rather interesting about how one might go about adjusting the existing rule set.  My friend and I briefly talked about this after our 6 hour session with the game and there was one immediate red flag for both of us as far as the game mechanics were concerned.  Attrition.

I think the attrition in the game was really the thing that caught our attention as a core factor that extends the game beyond reason and the inability to affect it in any way tactically.  These mechs are really sturdy and even if they are just one hex away from each other standing still, it takes many rounds before someone goes down, even if all shots hit.  I mean at the end of round 10 in our game we had two mechs basically at melee range shooting at each other and it took another 5 rounds of shooting before someone went down and there was ZERO one could do to affect that except to get lucky with a location hit in the head or the legs.

The game also suffers from bookkeeping problems.  With four mechs on each side your managing 8 mechs and it was really hard to keep straight for example the shooting declaration phase.  I mean you had to track which weapons were fired by which mechs at which opposing mech for an entire phase.  Almost every round of shooting we couldn't remember which mech targeted which opponent with which weapons.  Its a really terrible way to handle that phase.

In general though we found it really difficult to remember all of the modifiers that affected any given action in the game, especially once the mechs suffered critical damage. 

I would definitely address the general attrition of the game and the bookkeeping of the games modifiers, and in particular the declaration phase (I would rework that entirely).  In fact in our game about halfway through we realized that, if you just declare and shoot at the same time, the game was 90% faster and easier to manage and their was virtually nothing lost tactically.

Those are just some of our early observation, I think a lot more could be said about how the phases and bookkeeping is managed, but those were like the main things that really dragged what really should be a 1-2 hour game at absolute maximum into a 4-6 hour game.







Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Bigkahuna on 09 February 2019, 10:22:23


The challenge here is modernization without looking like a copycat. Copying someone else's elements is a good way of both showing poorly to new players ("hey, they just ripped off X") and alienating your current players. It's a fine line to make work.

I couldn't disagree more with that statement.  Copying mechanics from successful designs is the staple and heart of modern game design (and modern game design education), it's literally what has driven success in game publishing today. 


In fact, take a game design course anywhere in the world and one of the first things they will teach you is that there is no such thing as stealing in the game design & publishing business.



Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Daryk on 09 February 2019, 10:26:06
Bookkeeping-wise, I recommend looking at Solaris Skunk Werks.  The sheets it generates include a block for keeping track of various data, and I find them quite useful.

As for attrition, I think it's actually one of the attractive things about the game.  Those single lucky shots that remove a unit are much rarer, especially when compared to games where most units are "one shot, one kill".
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Sartris on 09 February 2019, 11:03:41
Weapons get much deadlier once you move out of the succession wars. Lights and low end mediums especially that wander out into the open without a ton of speed fight very bravely and die very quickly. I had a nightstar that took something like fourteen gauss hits before going down once but that’s super rare.

My biggest complaint about the rules as they are except cluster hits. If you could cut the parts where the entire game stops to figure out where those 23 missiles hit, it would improve flow significantly (and spare me on the box of death. I have two. You shouldn’t have to construct contraptions like that)
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Empyrus on 09 February 2019, 11:05:49
If BattleTech has too much bookkeeping, look at Alpha Strike rules. Simplifies and speed ups things considerably.
If you don't mind losing most of things that make many 'Mechs unique, and remove nearly all detail...

Figure copying concepts from other games is fine, as long as the resulting game doesn't feel like a pile of ripped-off rules. Not everything works together well.

I don't think there's anything modern with detail level similar to BattleTech though, is there?
Individual differences between 'Mechs and detailed damage infliction (you know, hit locations, equipment locations, etc. and lucky shots not necessarily being game ending) is a thing that appeals to me in BattleTech, anything that removes it is of no interest to me.
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: General308 on 09 February 2019, 11:19:48
They already tried this with Mechwarrior about 15 years ago and it was a disaster. The only games for me that take 6+ hours are those that get up to company vs company. Lance vs Lance we usually average 2 to 3 hours. We have two new Battletech players in our group both in mid 20's age range and they love the rules. They are both 40k players who think the battletech rules are a breath of fresh air in comparison. I guess it just depends on the player...

I didn't like the MechWarrior mini game.  That said it is hard to call a game that made the amount of money it made a disaster.  Collectable mini games as a whole just died.   Still they made a ton of money
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Bigkahuna on 09 February 2019, 11:21:40
If BattleTech has too much bookkeeping, look at Alpha Strike rules. Simplifies and speed ups things considerably.
If you don't mind losing most of things that make many 'Mechs unique, and remove nearly all detail...

Figure copying concepts from other games is fine, as long as the resulting game doesn't feel like a pile of ripped-off rules. Not everything works together well.

I don't think there's anything modern with detail level similar to BattleTech though, is there?
Individual differences between 'Mechs and detailed damage infliction (you know, hit locations, equipment locations, etc. and lucky shots not necessarily being game ending) is a thing that appeals to me in BattleTech, anything that removes it is of no interest to me.

I totally agree with you, I mean the RPG (this is my character) element of Mechs is the charm of this game and definitly shouldn’t be touched.  I definitly think any revisement needs to be handled carefuly to preserve the core games purpose.  Someone mentioned Alpha Strike and I have to agree, so much is lost in those rules that make Battletech what it is.

To me though their are a few things that aren’t really core to the game that could be altered.  The Declaration part of the shooting phase for example is largely an unescessary complication that asks for far more than you get out of it.  I mean I get that you want to commit players to their targets so that they can’t adapt after seeing the results of their shots, but the amount of complexity it adds to the game is quite severe for what you get out of it.

Also some components to track things could go a long way.  For example, critical damage.  If you had a set of cards, with basic rules for different types of damage that you could place next to your mech, would cut down on the back tracking when ou forget stuff and make clearer the rules as they apply to your current game.

The hard one to tackle is the attrition.  I get that in a way this is core to the game (Mechs are tough, hard to take down, but you can get a lucky shot) but Battletech on is really not a deeply tactical game.  There is a tremendous amount of luck in the game, far more than any miniature game I have ever played.  You can shoot at a mech 10 times and not take him down because hit location is distributed, or you can kill him outright on a single roll.  This means that the attrition is only broken up by pure luck, which noteably you have ZERO ways to affect.  I mean you can affect your chances of ”hitting”, but where you hit is just purely random which really drives the attrition but also the spontanous/occasional .. oh its round 3 and this game is now for the most part over.

Its sort of like .. the game can take 30 minutes to resolve if you score some headshots or it can stretch for 6 hours if the shots get spread and players are cautious.  I know people often say ”oh my group finishes games in 2-3 hours” but that is not of your doing, that is just the dice doing it.

I personally have played the same scenario twice, using the exact same mechs, in the exact same siuation and the same exact two players and the result was a whopping 2 hour difference.  One game took 2.5 hours, the other took 4.5 hours.  It was all up to chance and I find as we play more, and we get better at it the games take more time, not less.
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Darzoni on 09 February 2019, 11:36:24

To me though their are a few things that aren’t really core to the game that could be altered.  The Declaration part of the shooting phase for example is largely an unescessary complication that asks for far more than you get out of it.  I mean I get that you want to commit players to their targets so that they can’t adapt after seeing the results of their shots, but the amount of complexity it adds to the game is quite severe for what you get out of it.

I do not think substantially altering BattleTech's rules is something that is feasible for the license-holders because so much of their market for the game is the established fan-base.  I seem to recall an extreme amount of backlash when a line developer merely suggested that this should happen in the future.
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Empyrus on 09 February 2019, 11:43:56
The hard one to tackle is the attrition.  I get that in a way this is core to the game (Mechs are tough, hard to take down, but you can get a lucky shot) but Battletech on is really not a deeply tactical game.  There is a tremendous amount of luck in the game, far more than any miniature game I have ever played.  You can shoot at a mech 10 times and not take him down because hit location is distributed, or you can kill him outright on a single roll.  This means that the attrition is only broken up by pure luck, which noteably you have ZERO ways to affect.  I mean you can affect your chances of ”hitting”, but where you hit is just purely random which really drives the attrition but also the spontanous/occasional .. oh its round 3 and this game is now for the most part over.

I see what you mean. And i can't say i disagree, i remember when my friend blasted my 'Mech a couple of times with Ultra/20 and hit two pristine heavily armored locations, effectively a complete non-issue for me but not taking down my 'Mech was a problem for him.

Figure this one might be tweaked by making players able to influence odds of hitting or increase damage potential with proper tactics, such as directional damage.

Nominally this is possible, of course, move behind an enemy and you'll be chewing through enemy rear armor (odds for a single hit is that it hits torso location), but few 'Mechs have sufficiently mobility for that (or firepower once they're in location), and merely making this easier as it is would reduce the game to "who backstabs first".

Modifying hitting rules might do the trick, such as making side arcs more distinct and more easily damaged, making relative positions very significant effect. Though this could be a large overhaul and might require adding actual side armor for 'Mechs, requiring modification of construction rules (and if you touch those, you might as well overhaul all tech to be more balanced while at it, and then you'd need to redo all 'Mechs). A cascade effect... though if the overall result would be an improvement, then that'd be good.

Highly complex issue all in all, and may be one reason it has never been done or attempted.

EDIT HBS BattleTech game did something similar actually, making 'Mechs have four equal hit arcs (technically tabletop BattleTech does have four arcs but they're not equivalent in size, and much harder to exploit). This did make chewing through certain hit locations easier. But since construction rules were mostly identical, it didn't really make the game more tactical in my opinion (changes to initiative and other things affect things as well), and computer doing all the heavy lifting has largest impact on session length.
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Apocal on 09 February 2019, 11:45:40
I would definitely address the general attrition of the game and the bookkeeping of the games modifiers, and in particular the declaration phase (I would rework that entirely).  In fact in our game about halfway through we realized that, if you just declare and shoot at the same time, the game was 90% faster and easier to manage and their was virtually nothing lost tactically.

But that would flip the idea of winning initiative. One side would get the advantage of positioning, while the other side would get the advantage of shooting first. I think that could be interesting, but the old grogs I play live with hate the idea of shifting around the initiative system. It isn't really a representative sample of course, but a lot of people have a very specific vision of what Battletech is, with the initiative system being core to that.

And wasn't initiative also an issue with protomechs?
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Sartris on 09 February 2019, 11:56:47
Fire is still simultaneous, you just dispense with the entire declaration phase. Every unit on the board still gets to fire with what it had at the beginning of the phase

It does change the targeting calculus but not so much that the time saved isn’t worth more to me.

Attrition in the succession wars era is why I don’t play it any more unless I’m teaching the game or I have to. Also playing with some objectives instead of fight to the death improves things substantially. I’ve run tons of objective-laden games with 15k bv per side in about three hours
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: CVB on 09 February 2019, 12:20:44
But fire isn't really simultaneous anymore once you dispense with fire declaration.
Now you (generic you  :) ) see the effect of your first shot before deciding on the target for the second and shift targets according to the result.

In my experience, a lot of the time saved by skipping the declaration phase is used up later for

Where time will really be saved is by thinning the herd more quickly by avoiding overkills as well as not having a target survive to the next round that one additional hit could have put down this round.
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Hellraiser on 09 February 2019, 12:22:32
EDIT HBS BattleTech game did something similar actually, making 'Mechs have four equal hit arcs (technically tabletop BattleTech does have four arcs but they're not equivalent in size, and much harder to exploit). This did make chewing through certain hit locations easier. But since construction rules were mostly identical, it didn't really make the game more tactical in my opinion (changes to initiative and other things affect things as well), and computer doing all the heavy lifting has largest impact on session length.

One of the rules that we messed up in the 80's was that of the incoming fire arcs.
We just used the outgoing fire arcs as the incoming fire arcs.
It was simpler, you never had a "on the edge line" issue, and it made the Side & Rear arcs a bit larger which made sense since it has always boggled me that some shot from almost completely to the right can be on the "Front" table or a shot from what is clearly behind you, is on the "Side" table and hits the opposite side Front torso.

I wish there was a make to make "called shots/targeted shots" easier than the ridiculous penalties they have now.
I'd probably do something where you trade a +1 to hit, for a +/- 1 change on the location chart allowing you to shift 1 location on the table. 
Just enough to hit ST instead of CT or Leg.      Or Leg instead of ST / Arm.   Etc Etc.
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Hellraiser on 09 February 2019, 12:26:31
But fire isn't really simultaneous anymore once you dispense with fire declaration.
Now you (generic you  :) ) see the effect of your first shot before deciding on the target for the second and shift targets according to the result.

In my experience, a lot of the time saved by skipping the declaration phase is used up later for
  • continuously (mentally) updating your target assignments during the fire phase
  • not skipping shots declared against a target killed unexpectedly by an early shot

Where time will really be saved is by thinning the herd more quickly by avoiding overkills as well as not having a target survive to the next round that one additional hit could have put down this round.


My GM actually plays with this version.
Everyone writes down their fire on their sheet & that is there fire.

Which means sometimes you completely loose your fire if the first person in initiative order suddenly gets luck w/ an AC20 to the head.

It also means you don't get to change your own fire if you suddenly were nuked by Inferno/Plasma & will now overheat because you don't have the option of turning off that ERPPC you were going to fire.

Frankly, I like it that way, its faster.  You don't have people changing fire at the last minute.
On the other hand, we take far too long in the declarations phase by comparing with our teammates on what we are shooting at.

So maybe doing it by the book would be better.   IDK.

Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Sartris on 09 February 2019, 12:39:00
But fire isn't really simultaneous anymore once you dispense with fire declaration.
Now you (generic you  :) )

Correct and I don’t care (I already acknowledged it changes the fundamental nature of targeting). I like it better. I’ll take a hard pass on anything involving more recordkeeping
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Ruger on 09 February 2019, 12:46:03
The hard one to tackle is the attrition.  I get that in a way this is core to the game (Mechs are tough, hard to take down, but you can get a lucky shot) but Battletech on is really not a deeply tactical game.  There is a tremendous amount of luck in the game, far more than any miniature game I have ever played.  You can shoot at a mech 10 times and not take him down because hit location is distributed, or you can kill him outright on a single roll.  This means that the attrition is only broken up by pure luck, which noteably you have ZERO ways to affect.  I mean you can affect your chances of ”hitting”, but where you hit is just purely random which really drives the attrition but also the spontanous/occasional .. oh its round 3 and this game is now for the most part over.

Its sort of like .. the game can take 30 minutes to resolve if you score some headshots or it can stretch for 6 hours if the shots get spread and players are cautious.  I know people often say ”oh my group finishes games in 2-3 hours” but that is not of your doing, that is just the dice doing it.

I personally have played the same scenario twice, using the exact same mechs, in the exact same siuation and the same exact two players and the result was a whopping 2 hour difference.  One game took 2.5 hours, the other took 4.5 hours.  It was all up to chance and I find as we play more, and we get better at it the games take more time, not less.

I honestly really love this aspect of BTech combat simply for one reason: It relatively fairly accurately replicates how real world combat can happen. In the real world, some people can be shot and stabbed dozens of times and not die, or even be taken out of combat (for a short period anyways), while for others, it's one shot, one death...it all depends on luck, tactics/strategy, or some rule 4 aspect we should avoid getting into...

I haven't found this to be all that well replicated in many other games...

Ruger
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Bigkahuna on 09 February 2019, 12:50:34
I think for me personally I may take a crack at reimaging of the game, a sort of  house ruled revision of the rules that may allow this game to hit the table again for my gaming group.  The standard rules I can see are simply not going to make the cut, there is little hope for this game to make the table again anytime soon.  Pretty much everyone said the same thing.  Interesting, fun, but just too much bookeeping and way too long for what you get out of it.

My hope was to grow the game into a campaign, but as it stands, I’m already struggling to generate interest in the game.  The fact that the core set went out of print so quickly didnt help... I think I might have had a chance if I got a couple of the guys to buy into it, but with me being the only one who was able to secure the core set, its made it that much tougher. 

It was a fun albeit short run, but at least I got them to try it so I suppose was at least something positive.
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Daryk on 09 February 2019, 12:56:05
I'd be interested to see what you come up with down in the Fan Rules section...
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Sartris on 09 February 2019, 13:02:08
One out there thing I’ve toyed with is halving all armor values (except the head) and dropping the crit threshold by two to 6+. It increases lethality without having to dig too deep into the rules. Yeah obviously it has large implications for clantech and post helm IS designs but sometimes it’s fun to see what the possibilities are

Ultimately any major rule changes are somewhere between academic exercises and wishful thinking. CGL has doubled down on the current rule set by committing to reprints of the extant rules and not making any modifications in the new box. Any changes would be years off, if ever. If the rules are the biggest hitch for you at this point, you either need to houserule or play alpha strike
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: MoffMalthus on 09 February 2019, 13:20:32
I think for me personally I may take a crack at reimaging of the game, a sort of  house ruled revision of the rules that may allow this game to hit the table again for my gaming group.  The standard rules I can see are simply not going to make the cut, there is little hope for this game to make the table again anytime soon.  Pretty much everyone said the same thing.  Interesting, fun, but just too much bookeeping and way too long for what you get out of it.

My hope was to grow the game into a campaign, but as it stands, I’m already struggling to generate interest in the game.  The fact that the core set went out of print so quickly didnt help... I think I might have had a chance if I got a couple of the guys to buy into it, but with me being the only one who was able to secure the core set, its made it that much tougher. 

It was a fun albeit short run, but at least I got them to try it so I suppose was at least something positive.

My LGS has told me more sets are coming in a few weeks. I hope that's true because the guys in my group got the beginner boxed set and now they want the larger set. As to your point about the declaration phase I agree you have a point with that, especially in larger battles we tend to lose track of who was attacking who etc... we use an honor system most of the time and when a new mech comes up we ask who did you intend to attack. I know its not perfect but it works just for casual games anyway. 
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: guardiandashi on 09 February 2019, 15:56:16
there may be a few ways the game could be streamlined a bit without loosing its fundamental values, but I get really tired of people who say that ablation makes units too tough, or that there is nothing that you can do to reduce the effects of luck.

the reality is that there are a lot of things you can do.  Also if you have 2 units standing close to each other you shouldn't be missing any (or many) shots.

things we have done that sped things up.
1 preplan your general moves WHILE your opponent is taking his move.

2 your move doesn't have to be the best move possible, it just has to be good enough.

3 modified fire declaration IE you say that I am firing these weapons at x target(s) if you have trouble remembering then notes, and or fire declaration might help.

3b with the modified declaration resolve shooting and results as declaration occurs, however effects on the target don't kick in until end of phase.

4 its a game first rule is don't be a dick

5 you don't HAVE to use things like plastic binder pages, laminated sheets, dry erase markers, or grease pens, but under some cases they can keep sheets from wearing out as fast.

6 there is actually a rule allowing you to target fire without a targeting computer but the penalty to hit is 1 4 point penalty if I remember right, it allows you to aim: high, low, left, or right thus forcing things onto the relevant table. aimed high = punch table, low = kick table, (or shots from above/below if you prefer) left or right rotates 1 location table so if you would be using the front /back chart you use the side charts instead if you would be on the side, you can rotate it to front/rear.

as you become more familiar with the rules as long as you don't overthink and go for the perfect move, things usually play a lot faster.

order of fire resolution can make a HUGE difference, it is usually better to resolve the heavy (large hits) damage first before moving on to the weaker weapons, the only time I would do it in reverse is if an objective is to minimize damage to the targets.
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Sartris on 09 February 2019, 16:13:29
#6 you’re thinking of called shots. It’s +3. The low table isn’t  exactly the same as the kick table (the torsos are in there iirc)

As was mentioned earlier, it would be cool if it had a lesser penalty
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Bigkahuna on 09 February 2019, 16:22:07
there may be a few ways the game could be streamlined a bit without loosing its fundamental values, but I get really tired of people who say that ablation makes units too tough, or that there is nothing that you can do to reduce the effects of luck.

the reality is that there are a lot of things you can do. 

Not to be a jerk, but you began your post with their is lots that you can do to reduce the effects of luck, but you listed none.

Now I understand you can avoid getting hit... but Im genuinly curious, how do you avoid the luck factor of where you hit and lower the attrition in Battletech?

I’m a pretty clever guy but I have not found a way thus far... at least not with the core set.

I have played this game solo, in a Lance vs. Lance game where Im the only player and I make 1 second decesions and I could not get the game under 3 hours.  So when people say ”2 hours”, I truly don’t see how its possible.  The issue is definitly not people taking too long or not using expedition methods... its just straight attrition that keeps the game in the 3+ hour category and 6+ hours if you play with someone actively trying to win.
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Sartris on 09 February 2019, 16:40:52
Over the course of the game, someone who routinely gets lower to hit numbers is going to win far more often than not. The fewer units you play with, the more susceptible you are to flukey crits or losing initiative 12 turns in a row, but in the balance you win more than you lose if you have the best numbers. There are a lot of ways to gain those advantages - exploiting range bands is the easiest one to use - is there a spot in the range bands where my weapons are at short but my opponent is at medium? (PPC vs Large laser at six hexes or LRMs vs PPC at 7).

BattleTech is a game of slow knowledge. It takes time to extract the lessons. There isn’t a best way or foolproof way to win because every player presents a new puzzle of doctrine, philosophy, force building, and execution.
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Ruger on 09 February 2019, 16:47:43
Not to be a jerk, but you began your post with their is lots that you can do to reduce the effects of luck, but you listed none.

Now I understand you can avoid getting hit... but Im genuinly curious, how do you avoid the luck factor of where you hit and lower the attrition in Battletech?

I’m a pretty clever guy but I have not found a way thus far... at least not with the core set.

I have played this game solo, in a Lance vs. Lance game where Im the only player and I make 1 second decesions and I could not get the game under 3 hours.  So when people say ”2 hours”, I truly don’t see how its possible.  The issue is definitly not people taking too long or not using expedition methods... its just straight attrition that keeps the game in the 3+ hour category and 6+ hours if you play with someone actively trying to win.

Back in college, when we played, we did a (MW2nd edition) RPG campaign, so it wasn't just all tabletop, all the time...but when we did go into 'Mech combat, we had our RPG stats, including edge.

The standard rules for edge allowed you to reroll a die when you used t...we did ours a bit different (edge added or subtracted from a roll per player call, but can't get more into it outside fan rules board), but this kind of thing allowed you to "change fate", and thus adjust luck a bit when really needed...

Ruger
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: ANS Kamas P81 on 09 February 2019, 19:38:54
If you want to continue the rules adjustment discussion, please start another topic.
Thread split perhaps?  There's a lot to that being discussed, could stand to be carried over and continued I think.
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Bedwyr on 10 February 2019, 10:31:49
Thread split perhaps?  There's a lot to that being discussed, could stand to be carried over and continued I think.

I can try that again. I attempted it earlier but found much of the conversation line interspersed and difficult to split cleanly.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bedwyr on 10 February 2019, 10:36:51
Alright, y'all. I split the topics as best I could. It ain't perfect and still has at least one message quote left in the other thread, but here's where to talk more about rules modifications (or not) for the sake of the game. Stay respectful.

For minis and plastics discussion go here: https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=64313.msg1480741#msg1480741
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Daryk on 10 February 2019, 10:41:51
Should this thread be moved to Fan Rules?
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Apocal on 10 February 2019, 10:43:23
My biggest complaint about the rules as they are except cluster hits. If you could cut the parts where the entire game stops to figure out where those 23 missiles hit, it would improve flow significantly (and spare me on the box of death. I have two. You shouldn’t have to construct contraptions like that)

Something like this?
https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=62539.0

Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bedwyr on 10 February 2019, 11:41:56
Should this thread be moved to Fan Rules?

I might if it gets into the weeds on specific changes. So far this is just about the meta-discussion. E.g.- what kinds of rules changes would be good/bad for the game. That's good enough to stick with General for now.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: AlphaMirage on 10 February 2019, 12:03:25
Everything becomes Clantech and Omnimechs.  Boomed fixed the attrition problem right there.  When my group plays clan we nearly half the time.  Everything becomes extremely lethal which means daring and luck win the day and the Melee.  Also if someone cPL-TACCOMs we drop Naga or Huey A4s on him, nothing is safe you expect to die but die awesome
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: brother elf on 10 February 2019, 12:21:51
Weapons get much deadlier once you move out of the succession wars. Lights and low end mediums especially that wander out into the open without a ton of speed fight very bravely and die very quickly. I had a nightstar that took something like fourteen gauss hits before going down once but that’s super rare.

My biggest complaint about the rules as they are except cluster hits. If you could cut the parts where the entire game stops to figure out where those 23 missiles hit, it would improve flow significantly (and spare me on the box of death. I have two. You shouldn’t have to construct contraptions like that)

I have, in the past, when I wanted to bring SRM carriers and LBX20s, prepared sheets of random numbers, already mapped  to the Front/Rear location chart. Saves rolling and looking up locations, but of course, it's a matter of trust you don't memorize that 5 rolls from now will be a head shot. (I guess this is one of those things where you need to balance paperwork vs the visceral enjoyment of rolling dice. Sure, you can have a digital record sheet app where you just say "I receive a LBX20 cluster, left side, +0 on the cluster chart" and the numbers go down so fast you don't even see what happens. I think that would reduce the immersion somewhat, though, even moreso if I'm the opposite player who sees much less of where the damage goes. I wonder how I'd feel if the game aid app just read the locations out aloud, and you still physically mark off the bubbles. I think it's very illustrative to look at what HBS did, and how many of those classical elements still carry over into flashing locations and numbers floating away from the target.)

I guess you could also prepare a pack of 36 hit location cards which you shuffle before resolving each entire weapon from. Yes, that means your LBX20 can't get more than one lucky headshot per attack, so technically, it's a house rule. Might still be "good enough".
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: NeonKnight on 10 February 2019, 12:32:21
I have, in the past, when I wanted to bring SRM carriers and LBX20s, prepared sheets of random numbers, already mapped  to the Front/Rear location chart. Saves rolling and looking up locations, but of course, it's a matter of trust you don't memorize that 5 rolls from now will be a head shot. (I guess this is one of those things where you need to balance paperwork vs the visceral enjoyment of rolling dice. Sure, you can have a digital record sheet app where you just say "I receive a LBX20 cluster, left side, +0 on the cluster chart" and the numbers go down so fast you don't even see what happens. I think that would reduce the immersion somewhat, though, even moreso if I'm the opposite player who sees much less of where the damage goes. I wonder how I'd feel if the game aid app just read the locations out aloud, and you still physically mark off the bubbles. I think it's very illustrative to look at what HBS did, and how many of those classical elements still carry over into flashing locations and numbers floating away from the target.)

I guess you could also prepare a pack of 36 hit location cards which you shuffle before resolving each entire weapon from. Yes, that means your LBX20 can't get more than one lucky headshot per attack, so technically, it's a house rule. Might still be "good enough".

Easy enough to resolve.

Bring in a set of say 12 predetirmed rolls for them LB20x, and SRM6 monsters, and just roll and eliminate, much like a Critical Hit Slots for a mech with 1-6 & 1-6. As each roll is made, eliminate that from the chart, and it is 'used up'. Eliminates the worry that you've memorized the chart as there is still an element of randomness there.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bigkahuna on 10 February 2019, 12:37:32
Well I think this is a great topic, though I think its important to note that any new players entering the game are certain to begin in the Succession Era of play since this is the where the Core Set is focused on.  So I think while advice such as ”Use a X era”, or ”inject tactical operations rules” or other rulebooks certainly is good advice and I do agree from my own review of some of this material its clear that some of the attrition/game length problems are addressed here as the game gets more deadly. I do think that the topic should focus on new players who I think are most likely to find the speed/length of the game to be an issue given limited knowledge of the game (assuming they just entered into it with the core set) and the fact that most likely the only material available to them is the core set which is actually not that far from the truth as most of the books that might suggest a solution are currently out of print.

One thing I  have been considering is the actions during the Combat phase.  In the core set (before adding anything from Tactical Operations) the core action is ”shoot weapons” using the standard rules.

One think that I think might work is giving oppertunity to offer more options during this phase with simple rules to help make the game a bit more deadlier.

Just thinking outloud here but I was thinking there could be 3 core options.

Standard Shooting:  Works as the standard rules.

Focused Fire:  In this case you tie all of the weapons you fire (which must share the same shooting modifier) to a single attack roll and a single hit location roll.  Dangerous in that you could potentially miss the entire shot, but lethal if you hit as everything will be focused in a single zone.

Aimed Shot:  You forgo shooting with all but one weapon and may select any hit location other than the head for that shot.  This would not work with indirect fire.

Just floating some ideas.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Daryk on 10 February 2019, 15:27:42
Do "modern" players really expect there to be no learning curve?  Proficiency reduces the time it takes for every activity I can think of...
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Empyrus on 10 February 2019, 15:51:25
Do "modern" players really expect there to be no learning curve?  Proficiency reduces the time it takes for every activity I can think of...
I don't think the issue with BattleTech is learning curve. It doesn't have much of that really, on the account of relatively shallow tactical depth, which IMO amounts largely to "pick good units and figure out maintaining high TMM while minimizing that of the enemy's, at least on basic level. Though this isn't necessarily a bad thing for a casual game, makes it easy to pick up and play.
And if one uses the quick play learning PDF before going into actual game, it is quite simple, my friend at least figured it quickly.

But BT is time consuming. Filling in boxes and rolling dice a lot is not part of learning curve of the game itself. I mean, yeah, you get faster at those things the more you do them but that applies to all games and things, not part of BattleTech specifically, and generally speaking isn't the fun part (plus actually having opportunities to play BT seem to be rare, which doesn't really allow one to develop fast dice throwing/reading and paper filling skill...).
More modern design tends to avoid time spent filling in boxes or crossing over parts on 4 or more A4 paper sheets, or rolling a lot of dice, even other large scale wargames i've read about (not that many admittedly!) seem to be much lighter on record keeping than BT. Consider Alpha Strike, much reduced dice rolling and record keeping, these alone speed up the game massively.

That said, i'm not sure how to deal with the amount of record keeping a simulationist game like BattleTech does beyond outsourcing it to a computer. Suppose one could design some kind of "systems" instead of record sheets, and/or use tokens but the amounts needed for a game like BattleTech are too large to make this truly practical.

Unit selection ("use Clan designs") or modified rules (eg Bigkahuna's suggested focus fire) can speed up the game by making it more deadly, but it doesn't reduce overall record keeping. Or make the game more deep, especially on higher end ("easy to play, hard to master"), since ideally that would be a secondary benefit.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 10 February 2019, 16:22:55
The biggest issue in my perspective with BattleTech is the amount of time and the number of tables required to figure out what happened with the course of action you selected.

Let's assume that you are relatively proficient at the game, and that you begin the Shooting Phase with a target clearly in mind.  You have made your decision on what you're going to do for combat during that turn.

Now that that decision has been made you must:

1) wait your turn while (an)other player(s) declare their attacks, potentially taking the time to calculate hit numbers in case they have less of a concrete plan than you do
2) Wait your turn while (an)other player(s) resolve their attacks.
3) Roll to hit, each time comparing the result to a potentially different target number especially if you have multiple targets.
4) Determine the amount of hit locations you have to roll, the order you're going to roll them in, and the amount of damage.
5) Roll each location individually, marking damage as appropriate, making critical hit rolls as necessary and resolving those immediately, which may generate additional damage, etc.

And after all that, you finally know the results of the decision you made potentially 10 or 15 minutes ago.  Every single thing in the middle has been something delaying you from actually playing the game.  If you're playing a game with multiple other people, especially as part of a larger event (say, convention events), the number of game decisions you make in four to six hours can be counted on both hands.

That's ridiculous.  That's not playing a game, it's watching a simulation be calculated, long-form edition.  No amount of player tricks, experience, short-cuts, or rules of thumb change the fundamental issue: BattleTech takes too long to resolve, and it only gets worse the more advanced tech is involved.  Games may get physically shorter, but they don't result in any more player interaction, and in fact frequently result in far less.

Any changes to BattleTech to 'modernize' it should be aimed at one or all of: shortening or streamlining the number of steps required to resolve basic actions to give players more opportunity to play the game; improving the frequency of player decision making, whether by removing the 'simultaneous' nature of the game or some other method to reduce the long periods of time where nobody is actually deciding anything; or simplifying the interactions so that more pieces can interact with the game simultaneously.

The former is accomplished with computer programs like MegaMek; BattleTech makes for a fantastic computer board game.  The middle is accomplished in fine fashion by the BattleTech PC game; each time a 'Mech moves the player is involved in the game and constantly re-evaluating their moves and choices.  The latter is accomplished by Alpha Strike, where have more pieces and a more fluid combat phase makes the player's decisions more frequent and numerous while also allowing the more frequent decisions to be accomplished in a smaller time frame.

In every case, traditional BattleTech is an enormously bloated and slow game.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 10 February 2019, 16:39:59
Scotty manages to articulate more aptly what I mean when I ask “can we roll fewer dice?”

I like what Alpha Strike tried to do, I just find the product unsatisfying. I’ve tinkered for years with cutting down on steps and subroutines (especially cluster hits) and the conclusion I’ve arrived at is that hit locations are the biggest culprit for a lot of the rolling. I think there’s a midpoint (or even) a 2/3 point between BT and AS and it involves doing away with 11 armored zones of the machine. Another is to cut down on tables by figuring out ways to apply effects based on what the dice say rather than having to look at / memorize a table
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 10 February 2019, 16:52:40
One of the fastest ways to speed up hit locations is to switch from a 2d6 table to a directional 1d6 table.  You can fiddle with the odds to reasonably approach the same or similar chance of hitting a particular body part overall, while making attack direction more important and also allow you to roll multiple easily-interpreted locations at once.

That said, even with similar odds of a given location being hit, that's the kind of change that is extremely visible (almost the point, when you think about it. :P ) and likely to draw lots of flak from players who are convinced things are fine as-is and that a shortcut like the box of death is a meaningful solution and not the symptom of a deeper systemic problem.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bigkahuna on 10 February 2019, 17:06:40
I agree that the complexity of resolving an action (experienced or not) takes time due simply to the many activities that need to be resolved (roll to hit, roll to see where you hit, roll to see if you critical, roll to see where you critical, rinse and repeat for several weapons, multiply that by 8 mechs each with 4-6 weapons).  Don't get me wrong I think experience can knock some time off, but that is not the reason why Battletech games take so long to finish, it takes a long time because these activities take time to complete.

There is also something I agree with here in regards to the depth of the game.  I always say that, the length of the game, and the depth of the game need to be in sync.  For example, we play a board game called Twilight Imperium.  A highly complex, super deep science-fiction civilization building game.  Now this game takes about 5-6 hours to finish a 6 player game and ask anyone in our group and they will tell you that the games feel short, as if the game ends before it should.  Its not the time that is the issue, I will happily play a 6 hour game as will my group, but I don't think Battletech (as mentioned by someone above) is a tactically rich and deep enough game to justify it taking 4-6 hours to complete.  I love it don't get me wrong, but 2 hours into it, it feels like it should be wrapping up, that's about the scale of tactical depth to game length its at.

I also think that much of the expanded rules of the game found in the campaign operations and tactical operations book don't actually deepen the games tactical depth, they simply add more rules to resolve the same level of tactical game with even more die rolls.  Which is why I don't think in particular the Tactical Operations book is really all that great.  It just creates more complexity and bookkeeping, but doesn't really add anything to the games tactical play.  My opinion, some might disagree, but that's how I see it.

I agree that Battletech is a relatively simple game from a decision stand point.  You move, you decide where to shoot.  How far you move is important, where you end up is important, who you shoot at is important.  But the resolution of the game is almost purely random and there is virtually nothing you can do to control that.  I mean Hit Location and tracking individual damage and all the random stuff like cluster tables and critical damage results don't add anything at all to the tactical game, they are just random events generated by the randomness of dice results. I do get that its a simulation of statistically curved results, which is actually, as random as it may seem, a more accurate representation of actual battles, but as a game, it just bookkeeping, dice rolls and a lot of randomness.

That combined with the attrition of the game, really puts Battletech in the "Light Tactical Game" genre, which by its very nature really should be a pretty short game.  I put Battletech in about the same category as X-Wing when it comes to "tactical weight", the difference is that an X-Wing match takes about 30-45 minutes to complete, while Battletech, on a good day with everyone acting quickly takes 3-4 hours, but more realistically 4-6 hours.

Its a really hard game to get to the table for those reasons.

Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Empyrus on 10 February 2019, 17:38:17
I also think that much of the expanded rules of the game found in the campaign operations and tactical operations book don't actually deepen the games tactical depth, they simply add more rules to resolve the same level of tactical game with even more die rolls.  Which is why I don't think in particular the Tactical Operations book is really all that great.  It just creates more complexity and bookkeeping, but doesn't really add anything to the games tactical play.  My opinion, some might disagree, but that's how I see it.
I like calling BattleTech a simulationist game, and TacOps highly enhances that (not to mention adding some options to correct some flaws to an extent, like BAP being largely useless in standard rules). Excellent and fun additions from that simulationist POV.
Admittedly not so great from gameplay-perspective, as you say many options aren't particularly deep but do take time.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: ArchonDan on 10 February 2019, 18:26:06
Call me a fundamentalist but I think the game mechanics are very solid and represent a level of detail that lacks in modern games IMO. I started playing late 80's as a kid in junior high and nerver found the charts or tables overwhelming, heck the only problem I remember having was the use of ammunition. How many shorts per ton and such  :D but have since figured that out. Since then I've played many games over the years and always come back the Battletech mechanics.

The modifiers for movement and range, the heat tracking all provide different levels of decisions making that lack from modern games that abstract things to the n-th degree. The movement modifier make light, fast Mech viable, make a great balancing of armor verse speed. Modifiers allow for variations in different areas of play Mech design. Heat monitoring keeps weapon platforms in check, provides an element of risk verse reward.

I played a lot of 40k 2nd and really enjoyed that system, because it also had modifiers that allowed a diversity of weapon and units. The switch over to 3rd and the AP system killed the game for me. Armor because a binary thing and anything by 3+ was of very limited use among other aspects of the game that got washed away with abstraction. " "Modern" game mechanics strip away and dumb down  too much of the real decision making process IMO. I understand where that comes from with the advent of video games and mobile games, but I feel it really diminishes table top games when it goes too far.

Another poster described Battletech as a cockpit view game and that is what makes Battletech great to me, walking tanks with a very personal and tactical level of interaction.



Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bedwyr on 10 February 2019, 18:42:27
All good points. I think much of the issue is less clearly associated with the goal and feel of the game and more with modern game design tries to achieve.

If I were going to try to write a clean-sheet Mech cockpit simulator, I would probably come up with something different as I'd be trying to maximize a combination of player time, player choice and agency, and player fun. It might still be associated with a small unit tactics game, but it might not. Depends on which objectives I would try to prioritize.


And above all, a caution to keep in mind the dictum you'll hear from nearly every game designer: There are not a scarcity of ideas, just a scarcity of time, money, and audience resources required to bring any given idea to fruition. Most designers keep notebooks of ideas, of which maybe one or two become products or expansions. We are drowning in tabletop games. It's just fortunate that Battletech has a collective memory and existing audience to exploit.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 10 February 2019, 19:11:34
"Modern" game mechanics strip away and dumb down  too much of the real decision making process IMO. I understand where that comes from with the advent of video games and mobile games, but I feel it really diminishes table top games when it goes too far.

This is a pretty common misinterpretation of what actually happens, I think.  The average video game includes as much (or more) tactical depth as any game that ever came out in the 80s (BattleTech included), but has the benefit of hiding their mechanics under a layer of graphics that the player doesn't have to look under to play the game.

You can see this concept perfectly encapsulated in the modern XCOM remake.  The original XCOM used a clunky but very discretely tracked "Time Units" to allow units to perform actions and move around the map.  The amount of detail was incredible, and made for an amount of inputs that at the time was impressive and has only gotten more so.

The problem is, the decisions that governed how those TUs were used ended up being almost identical across players once a given player learned how to optimize their expenditure.  The "smart" way to play ended up being to explore a little bit at a time, and reserve enough TUs for the individual soldier's weapon to be used during the enemy turn when one walked into view as an overwatch attack.  If you didn't do it that way, you were playing the game at a sub-optimal level.  Sometimes, using all your TUs to move was preferable, and sometimes having enough TUs to move and then do something that could take direct action against a visible enemy was preferable - the unifying theme of course being that TUs were by a huge margin expended as "Move + <thing>", followed distantly by "Move the whole way".

Fast forward to the new XCOM remake from a few years ago.  Instead of TUs, each soldier gets the choice between one "blue" move, after which they can still perform an action (like going on overwatch, firing a weapon, throwing a grenade, etc.), and a "yellow" move after which their turn ends.  While at a glance this is incredibly simplified and abstracted compared to managing sometimes hundreds of TUs per soldier, it plays out in exactly the same fashion.  The real difference is that the remake's method of handling actions is immediately intuitive and easy to learn.  You can figure out the finer nuances by playing the game more, but the basic concept is easy to grasp, and happens quickly.  The player gets one or two opportunities (or more, as soldiers develop) to make a decision, but each of those decisions are meaningful.  Much more importantly, they are obviously meaningful to the player, and they cultivate a sense of engagement with the mechanics that the original failed very hard to convey to new players.

The lesson to be learned here is: granularity of detail is a benefit if and only if all of the available detail helps the player more effectively engage with the system in a way that is intuitive and beneficial to their enjoyment.

A large portion of BattleTech's detail fails on that criteria.  Now, what that doesn't mean is that all extraneous detail should be removed.  Having discrete movement points is fine up to a point, having detailed modifiers for attacks is fine to a point.  What it does mean is that "complex" isn't "better", and that at the same time "simpler" isn't "worse".  It means that all mechanics should be built to serve the player, not the other way around.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bigkahuna on 10 February 2019, 19:16:36
Call me a fundamentalist but I think the game mechanics are very solid and represent a level of detail that lacks in modern games IMO. I started playing late 80's as a kid in junior high and nerver found the charts or tables overwhelming, heck the only problem I remember having was the use of ammunition. How many shorts per ton and such  :D but have since figured that out. Since then I've played many games over the years and always come back the Battletech mechanics.


I don't find the charts overwhelming at all, nor the rules, I mean for my gaming group we classified the game as "simple", which is kind of at odds with what everyone understood about the game going into it.  It is often referred to as a "complex" tactical game, but at a table where we play ASL for example, Battletech really doesn't rank particularly high on the complexity scale at all. 

What I don't really get is where "modifiers" and "charts" result in a higher level of tactics.  I mean, for all intense and purposes during the movement phase and the shooting phase, everything that goes into the accounting for Battletech is pretty common and standard stuff for miniatures games.  There is nothing particularly awe inspiring in how these two phases play out or how tactics at the table are deeper in some way than any on other miniature game.

The core cause of the attrition and hence the length of the game are after the hit where we end up in the world of total randomness. Random hit location, random cluster charts, you roll to see if you crit, you roll to see what you crit, you roll to see if you fall down, you roll to see if you stay conscious, you roll to get up... most of these rules there is ZERO decision on the part of the player, its quite literally purely random. 

Really my only beef with it is that it extends the play time very dramatically because you can shoot at a guy for 10 rounds and not destroy a damn thing, even though if you hit the right locations you would have killed him 5 times over.  Which way it goes is pure randomness and the charts themselves don't have much logic in them so there isn't match tactical use for them.  They are simply random.

At first you might get the impression that shooting from the right side or the left side of a mech for example might have some impact, or shooting from the rear for that matter, but the way these charts are setup it still pretty damn random.  You shoot at a guy from his right side you might still hit his left Torso anyway or his left arm.  Shoot him in the back 5 times and there is still a good chance you will shoot his arms and legs rather than that weak armor on the back Torso... and oddly you can still shoot his head even though the cockpit is clearly in the front of the mech.

I guess all I'm saying is that.. if its going to be this random.. may as well make it a much faster and deadlier game.  Its silly to spend 4 hours rolling against random charts.... lets just get to the blowing up stuff faster.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Valkerie on 10 February 2019, 19:49:19
To the randomness of the hit locations, critical hits, and so forth, I find it very similar to my experiences playing the Mechwarrior video games.  The video games do a good job (I think) of showing how difficult it actually is to hit something with a Mech, especially at distance.  I can't count the number of times I've had a shot lined up, only to have it veer offline because I got hit while pulling the trigger.  Or my target jumps out of the way.  Or one of my own teammates bumps me and screws up my shot.  Even had a target fall down after getting shot in back by teammates, and watched my gauss shot fly right over the top of them.

I've always believed that tabletop Battletech is trying to take all these random variables into account, and simulate as best as possible using dice.  I don't know how you change that without fundamentally changing the game from what it is.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Empyrus on 10 February 2019, 20:12:51
Really my only beef with it is that it extends the play time very dramatically because you can shoot at a guy for 10 rounds and not destroy a damn thing, even though if you hit the right locations you would have killed him 5 times over.  Which way it goes is pure randomness and the charts themselves don't have much logic in them so there isn't match tactical use for them.  They are simply random.
I remember getting this in Dungeons and Dragons (when spells aren't involved) and some homebrewed RPGs. Really frustrating for all players involved though at least in these games GM can fudge it.
Of course, i've also had this happen in X-wing, getting multiple turns where neither side does any damage (we don't use time limit in home games, we usually don't need it), and neither side had anything to really change the odds. That said that game's forced movement essentially means the status quo cannot continue forever.

Ultimately this is a fundamental issue in any game with dice, occasionally exacerbated by average to-hit odds being too low. Smart design would minimize this though, or give a way out, and time-limited objectives may be a good option for that ("I'm getting shot at but i gotta try to reach that place anyway rather than stand and trade fire").

Strictly speaking BattleTech is reasonably good at managing this: close in to reduce range penalties, deny enemy cover or mobility (map control), go punch or kick them if weapons don't do good results, stuff like that. Some stuff is really hard with regular pilots (4 gunner/5 piloting), things are much more fun with veteran pilots IMO (3 gunnery, 4 piloting). Of course, random hit locations and occasionally limited damage or massive armor counteract some of these things heavily, or you get those situations where trying to backstab but you hit massively armored leg instead of weak rear armor.

And other aspects could be certainly helped. Making aimed shots much easier (not to mention available by default always) would reduce general randomness, and it wouldn't really mean all 'Mechs get shot in the torso only, in many cases shooting an arm reduces enemy firepower significantly, and legging an enemy is usually crippling.

As for other things, like that "roll to get up" thing, perhaps rolling should be replaced with a cost? Such as heat, since it is existing mechanic that is deeply tied to the identity of the game. Piloting skill could be still kept, by making it passively reduce cost. For example, if getting up would cost heat equal to piloting skill, it would mean that better piloting skill is good, and you'd lose that much from heat capacity, clear trade-off, since the other option would be to stay there and shoot from prone position.
This would increase player agency and reduce some dice rolling that isn't particularly interesting. And i feel costs in general make for interesting decisions. Scotty mentions modern XCOM and it is a good example. Do i use this move to get into better position or do i attack now? Simple cost, massive impact.

I do have to admit some hilarity of the game involves dice rolling. I remember a case when my friend's 'Mech got knocked down, the pilot losing consciousness, and me then failing at shooting the now immobile 'Mech to the point i blow up from heat, and at this point my friend's pilot wakes up... I also recall a hilarious story of someone skidding in a city, falling into a fountain and cracking open their head armor leading the cockpit getting flooded.
But perhaps a game doesn't need that so much.

To the randomness of the hit locations, critical hits, and so forth, I find it very similar to my experiences playing the Mechwarrior video games.  The video games do a good job (I think) of showing how difficult it actually is to hit something with a Mech, especially at distance.
Dunno, pile on enough Gauss rifles, PPCs and/or lasers and pull the trigger. Once you hit, your target dies or is severely damaged. Boating a weapon type is common in Mechwarriors because it is highly effective. In tabletop BT all weapons are always individually aimed, and aimed shots suffer massive enough penalty hitting with them is really hard in the first place. Boating a single type of weapons doesn't give as much benefits as it does in the video games.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: ArchonDan on 10 February 2019, 20:23:18
I don't find the charts overwhelming at all, nor the rules, I mean for my gaming group we classified the game as "simple", which is kind of at odds with what everyone understood about the game going into it.  It is often referred to as a "complex" tactical game, but at a table where we play ASL for example, Battletech really doesn't rank particularly high on the complexity scale at all. 


I agree with your statements around video games and I agree that they are more complex and that the majority of that complexity is hidden under the hood in the a form of automation. That is where modern table top rules try to abstract and where my feeling of striping away or dumb down the decision making process. Table top games have
to compete for time against the instant gratification, graphics and automation of video games.

How do they keep the players attention when they can jump into a great looking video game.

I don't find BattleTech complex, but compare to 40k, Bolt Action, AOS, X-Wing I find it clearer and more engaging. I'm not trying to bad mouth any other games, it's more about the types of choices available during the game, the types of balancing of risk verse reward.

The XCOM example is a very good one, it retained a superior level of decision for the player. That is what I think current rules have and needs to be retained as a table top game.
 
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Greatclub on 10 February 2019, 21:32:21
In the (unlikely) event the devs are reading this thread, I release the below for their use without attribution or compensation.

What I want is more granularity in the cluster hits chart. Getting the same number of hits on both 5 and 8 is pretty silly, serving only to make the game more consistent.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 10 February 2019, 21:37:18
I’d rather replace the table and just roll xd6 with some protocol for overflow (since we can only use D6 apparently).
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: AlphaMirage on 10 February 2019, 21:45:26
Just 1d6 for cluster should be easy enough.  Might test it in a future game.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Crimson Dawn on 10 February 2019, 22:20:40
To the randomness of the hit locations, critical hits, and so forth, I find it very similar to my experiences playing the Mechwarrior video games.  The video games do a good job (I think) of showing how difficult it actually is to hit something with a Mech, especially at distance.  I can't count the number of times I've had a shot lined up, only to have it veer offline because I got hit while pulling the trigger.  Or my target jumps out of the way.  Or one of my own teammates bumps me and screws up my shot.  Even had a target fall down after getting shot in back by teammates, and watched my gauss shot fly right over the top of them.

I've always believed that tabletop Battletech is trying to take all these random variables into account, and simulate as best as possible using dice.  I don't know how you change that without fundamentally changing the game from what it is.

The funny thing is I have the opposite experience.  Now granted at long distances it makes more sense but if you play many of the mechwarrior games (especially more recent ones) at what are likely medium and close range for many weapons the tabletop rules really stop making sense in this regard.

If I have my wolfhound at decently close range not just do I have really good chances of hitting my enemy I also have a really good chance of hitting the exact spot I want on many mechs (not counting the head).  If I want to remove the side torso on many mechs it is easy to do but in the table top at the same range my 3 medium lasers (which often hit the same spot on a mech at this range in the mechwarrior games) will hill all sorts of parts of a mech  such as both arms and the left leg while in the game I can often times put all three lasers on the torso of my choice, the same leg, or an arm.

IN particular at close ranges I do think the game using standard rules do not have a good answer as to why a mech cannot concentrate its fire more than the absolute randomness that the current game shows.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bigkahuna on 11 February 2019, 02:21:09
I have been considering how Aimed Shot should work.  I personally don't like the flat modifier on it, while simpler, it really doesn't reflect the battlefield.

What I'm thinking for Aimed shot is as followed.

You declare an aimed shot, you may only shoot with weapons that have the exact same To Hit for this shot and may not use any other weapons and you double your range modifier when shooting, you may not aim for the head.  As such, from long range aimed shot is pretty much useless, at close range you have no penalty at all and the removal of the head-shot ensures that it isn't a game about taking out peoples head.  Weapons that are similiar are easier to shoot together in unison (Like 3x Medium lasers for example).  I would also say aimed shot does not work for melee combat and cannot be used when under a weapons minimum range and weapons all shots at range 3 or less are considered short range for the purpose of aimed shot (aka with Small Lasers shooting at range 3 would mean you don't double the range penalty).

One of several ideas I'm working into my House Ruled Edition of Battletech.
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: mbear on 11 February 2019, 07:49:51
My biggest complaint about the rules as they are except cluster hits. If you could cut the parts where the entire game stops to figure out where those 23 missiles hit, it would improve flow significantly (and spare me on the box of death. I have two. You shouldn’t have to construct contraptions like that)

What about using the to hit roll as the cluster table roll? That would eliminate at least one of the rolls you have to do.
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: ActionButler on 11 February 2019, 09:09:53
I agree with this...

My biggest complaint about the rules as they are except cluster hits. If you could cut the parts where the entire game stops to figure out where those 23 missiles hit, it would improve flow significantly (and spare me on the box of death. I have two. You shouldn’t have to construct contraptions like that)

...this...

I don't think the issue with BattleTech is learning curve. It doesn't have much of that really, on the account of relatively shallow tactical depth, which IMO amounts largely to "pick good units and figure out maintaining high TMM while minimizing that of the enemy's, at least on basic level. Though this isn't necessarily a bad thing for a casual game, makes it easy to pick up and play.
And if one uses the quick play learning PDF before going into actual game, it is quite simple, my friend at least figured it quickly.

But BT is time consuming. Filling in boxes and rolling dice a lot is not part of learning curve of the game itself. I mean, yeah, you get faster at those things the more you do them but that applies to all games and things, not part of BattleTech specifically, and generally speaking isn't the fun part (plus actually having opportunities to play BT seem to be rare, which doesn't really allow one to develop fast dice throwing/reading and paper filling skill...).
More modern design tends to avoid time spent filling in boxes or crossing over parts on 4 or more A4 paper sheets, or rolling a lot of dice, even other large scale wargames i've read about (not that many admittedly!) seem to be much lighter on record keeping than BT. Consider Alpha Strike, much reduced dice rolling and record keeping, these alone speed up the game massively.

...and this...

The biggest issue in my perspective with BattleTech is the amount of time and the number of tables required to figure out what happened with the course of action you selected.

(snip)

In every case, traditional BattleTech is an enormously bloated and slow game.


And I disagree with this...

If BattleTech has too much bookkeeping, look at Alpha Strike rules. Simplifies and speed ups things considerably.
If you don't mind losing most of things that make many 'Mechs unique, and remove nearly all detail...

Figure copying concepts from other games is fine, as long as the resulting game doesn't feel like a pile of ripped-off rules. Not everything works together well.

...especially the bolded part.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: carlisimo on 11 February 2019, 13:42:46
“Simulationist” is a good word for it.  Games of that era, like early 40k, all seemed to do that, presumably because they were more closely related to RPGs.  Cinematic rather than tactical.  I’m okay with that, particularly because you can switch to Alpha Strike for a different type of game. 

But I don’t think Classic is tactically too light a game.  The modifiers put the focus on movement and positioning, as it should be.  You try to get an edge in modifiers and the game is long enough for a small difference to gradually win the battle.

I think the big issue is the number of turns.  40k isn’t actually all that quick, it just has a high enough casualty rate that a 6-turn limit is usually more than enough.  Fewer turns hurt a game, imo, because they de-emphasize movement (e.g. less payoff for spending time getting into a good position), but they speed it up.  Point is, a quick fix could be to use more highly-skilled Mechwarriors by default.  Less quick: a general increase of mechs’ firepower/armor ratios.

As a new player, I’d also say that reducing some table look-up rolls to a single die would help.  Does it really make sense to blow up just one-third or a torso?  Could hit location rolls be a d6, or maybe a larger die that had words on it?  You’d have to rebalanced headshots, sure. 

And I’d consider making LRMs and cluster ammo hit every location evenly.  Defender fills in one dot in each location (he chooses the order) before spilling over into a second dot in each location.  Too big a change to make without a thorough rebalancing - just something to think about.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bedwyr on 11 February 2019, 13:48:41
In the abstract, how about an Alpha Strike game that has some kind of mechanic where limbs fall off or there is some other kind of mechanical sense of armor/systems degredation?


In the context of normal BT, what about missiles having a standard dispersion pattern centered around the hit location?
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 11 February 2019, 14:02:12
i worked on a system like that a while back where your total armor and is was just a big block and various triggers either forcing criticals that might result in a limb blown off. missile weapons kept their crit-seeking value by being able to trigger more critical chances.

since i'm a garbage game designer the outcome wasn't much less clunky than the original. i'm a smoke detector more than a sprinkler - i'll find your problems but don't expect me to solve them  :P
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bedwyr on 11 February 2019, 14:07:19
It's not an easy discipline, that's for sure. A lot of ambiguity and structure all at the same time toward an elusive quarry called "fun".
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Atarlost on 11 February 2019, 16:47:17
Has any consideration gone towards putting game aids in the beginner's box?  For example, having punch out cardboard counters instead of bubbles for armor (1 and 5 denominations work pretty well) or having a cardboard heat tracks with counters to track heat? 

Maybe using cards instead of dice and tables for some things.  Drawing a card from the location deck and if applicable from the crit deck until you get one that is applicable and doesn't say "draw again" would get rid of the table lookup for everything but crit locations where looking at the mech's crit layout is unavoidable.  A mix of "crit this slot" and "crit this slot and draw again" and "no crit" cards can replace the number of crits roll, reducing crit resolution complexity.  One or two "reshuffle and draw again" cards in each deck prevent players from knowing that eg. all the 11 crits have been drawn and their Rifleman is immune to ammo explosions until the deck exhausts.  The statistics might be impractical to get exactly the same and would generally be less streakish which would reduce lethality, but it's a lot easier to draw seven cards for your LBX than to roll and check the table seven times. 

Crit decks could probably be sold as stand alone items; other RPGs sell them as such.  The counters would increase the beginners box price, but might make it more marketable.  A couple decks of cards, eight plastic models, and a couple sheets of cardboard punch out tokens is about the same level of "stuff in the box" that some modern board games have, though even the beginner Battletech manual is a heftier piece of printing than their rulebooks.  The game board is a bunch of cardstock rather than a fancy folding cardboard thing, though.  Not sure how that balances.  Maybe it's viable maybe it's not.  That's presumably a question to ask the corporate overlords who publish other games and thus have more data on the market than my unsupported speculation. 
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bigkahuna on 11 February 2019, 17:32:29
Has any consideration gone towards putting game aids in the beginner's box?  For example, having punch out cardboard counters instead of bubbles for armor (1 and 5 denominations work pretty well) or having a cardboard heat tracks with counters to track heat? 

Maybe using cards instead of dice and tables for some things.  Drawing a card from the location deck and if applicable from the crit deck until you get one that is applicable and doesn't say "draw again" would get rid of the table lookup for everything but crit locations where looking at the mech's crit layout is unavoidable.  A mix of "crit this slot" and "crit this slot and draw again" and "no crit" cards can replace the number of crits roll, reducing crit resolution complexity.  One or two "reshuffle and draw again" cards in each deck prevent players from knowing that eg. all the 11 crits have been drawn and their Rifleman is immune to ammo explosions until the deck exhausts.  The statistics might be impractical to get exactly the same and would generally be less streakish which would reduce lethality, but it's a lot easier to draw seven cards for your LBX than to roll and check the table seven times. 

Crit decks could probably be sold as stand alone items; other RPGs sell them as such.  The counters would increase the beginners box price, but might make it more marketable.  A couple decks of cards, eight plastic models, and a couple sheets of cardboard punch out tokens is about the same level of "stuff in the box" that some modern board games have, though even the beginner Battletech manual is a heftier piece of printing than their rulebooks.  The game board is a bunch of cardstock rather than a fancy folding cardboard thing, though.  Not sure how that balances.  Maybe it's viable maybe it's not.  That's presumably a question to ask the corporate overlords who publish other games and thus have more data on the market than my unsupported speculation.

My personal experience is that game aids are a function of a game that expedites the road to experience but doesn't actually do anything to speed up the core of the game. 

Its kind of like writing down a grocery list so you can reference it later, but the act of writing it down ensured you would remember everything on it and no longer need the list, but driving to the store and getting everything still takes the same amount of time list or no list.

I don't think the issue with "speed of play" has anything to do with lack of experience, trouble remembering stuff or anything like that.  Battletech at its core is a pretty simple game, 1-2 games and you would be hard pressed to distinguish a 35 year veteran from a 2 game veteran.  Yes sure, if you add all of the Total Chaos rules, bring the game up to the current era and layer it with Tactical Operations rules the stuff can get pretty crazy complicated, but if I'm not misunderstanding the conversation here we are talking speed of play of the basic core set, in a normal rules game.  How to reduce that, how to modify the rules to expedite this standard game.

Short of rules modification, I think there is really only so much you can do.

Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Daryk on 11 February 2019, 18:33:22
I don't know anyone who memorized the hit location tables after only two games.  I'm sure there are plenty of 35 year veterans who have, though...
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: ArchonDan on 11 February 2019, 20:41:53
How is learning the hit location chart, which is the same for every Mech, different from learning what other units do in Warmachine?

Learning the combinations and interactions between abilities and such. Same concept for X-wing, learning what each ship can do, the abilities that can be purchased. Its different things to remember.

I don't think Battletech has any more complexity then other popular games that take time to learn. It may appear dryer, or less interesting, in a sense then some of those games but those tables don't really change.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bedwyr on 11 February 2019, 20:46:13
At least for me the way I would put it is that we're having a small comeback and a number of people are legitimately enjoying the mechanics, so I don't see the game going anywhere. But it is fun to talk in the abstract about what changes might do in an abstract sort of way.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 11 February 2019, 22:41:43
How is learning the hit location chart, which is the same for every Mech, different from learning what other units do in Warmachine?

Learning the combinations and interactions between abilities and such. Same concept for X-wing, learning what each ship can do, the abilities that can be purchased. Its different things to remember.

I don't think Battletech has any more complexity then other popular games that take time to learn. It may appear dryer, or less interesting, in a sense then some of those games but those tables don't really change.

The major difference is interactivity and the effect those abilities have on the game.  A hit location chart doesn't change, can't meaningfully interact with any part of the game besides sometimes the direction of incoming attacks, and has no way to further the evolution of the gameplay experience. It is a constant.

You are comparing a parking stall to the concept of street signs.  One is a square painted on concrete, the other is a set of directions and interactions that move traffic to a destination.

A parking stall is still a necessary part of modern transportation infrastructure, but it doesn't do anything on its own.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bigkahuna on 12 February 2019, 02:55:58
At least for me the way I would put it is that we're having a small comeback and a number of people are legitimately enjoying the mechanics, so I don't see the game going anywhere. But it is fun to talk in the abstract about what changes might do in an abstract sort of way.

I suppose it all depends on the goals of Catalyst Game Labs for the game.  Is the goal to expand the line to capture new audiences and grow the game, or is it simply the plan to continue the 35 year tradition of keeping with the status-Q?

I can tell you as one of the fresh faces who has tried the game that, I love it for the many things that is, but won't be investing or likely even playing the game being the core set for much longer for all the things that it should but never will be.  Battletech is a great nostalgic trip down memory lane that I was happy to take for an evening or two with my friends, but if I may be transparent and blunt, the mechanic is archaic and too outdated to really compete with the other miniature games that we play.  Compared to Warmachines, X-Wing, Armada, Legion, Bolt Action, Bushido and many others that make our table, Battletech really lacks the modernization necessary to keep my groups interest.

I might take a crack at revising the rules myself, just because I think its a shame given the wonderful setting and opportunity that Battletech offers, but as it is, its really not going to be a thing.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Crimson Dawn on 12 February 2019, 03:42:53
I wonder how do you all feel about the rules changes found in the beginner set?  They slightly simplified the rules but it is mostly the same.  DO you feel it helps?  Did it go too far?  Not far enough?  A good start?
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: guardiandashi on 12 February 2019, 04:54:02
i'll be honest I like games with more crunch than a lot of what I consider the "instant gratification" types.

I like battletech because it really is one of those easy to learn hard to master games.
its the same reason I like palladium RPG games, and D&D 3/3.5 but more than likely will NEVER play D&D 4/5 because I don't like what they did with the game, Heck, I vastly prefer the old D6 star wars game to any of the D20, or other versions.

To be honest at a certain level and in a lot of ways battletech especially the classic/ version especially in 3025 is a pretty simple game, and the only  table I never managed to memorize was the cluster table. and I am less familiar with the side arc hit location tables. the front/rear table I think I had memorized by my 5th game or so and still remember it 30+ years later.

although the last game I played was over discord about 5 months or so ago and as we were rolling in a "dice roller" room, for hit locations I was noting the location about 1-2 seconds after the roll posted.
I also used to have the vast majority of the 3025 weapons table memorized, at least the weight and crits part with the range and damage memorized for the energy weapons.

the problem really comes down IMO to people who in some ways come across (at least to me) as wanting things simplified down to the point at which too many of the "newer" games just feel like different versions of the same basic mechanic.

kind of like all the mobile device base builder games they may have different "resources" but its all resource 1,2,3 sometimes with a "money" resource, and always with a real cash resource. but if you have played one of those games you can skip 90% of the "training" on how to play.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: MoffMalthus on 12 February 2019, 07:43:32
I suppose it all depends on the goals of Catalyst Game Labs for the game.  Is the goal to expand the line to capture new audiences and grow the game, or is it simply the plan to continue the 35 year tradition of keeping with the status-Q?

I can tell you as one of the fresh faces who has tried the game that, I love it for the many things that is, but won't be investing or likely even playing the game being the core set for much longer for all the things that it should but never will be.  Battletech is a great nostalgic trip down memory lane that I was happy to take for an evening or two with my friends, but if I may be transparent and blunt, the mechanic is archaic and too outdated to really compete with the other miniature games that we play.  Compared to Warmachines, X-Wing, Armada, Legion, Bolt Action, Bushido and many others that make our table, Battletech really lacks the modernization necessary to keep my groups interest.

I might take a crack at revising the rules myself, just because I think its a shame given the wonderful setting and opportunity that Battletech offers, but as it is, its really not going to be a thing.

I play Bolt Action, Armada and X-Wing and I love all those games for different reasons. Above all though I love Battletech and I would hate it if they tried to make it more like those games. Battletech is unique compared to other games and I look at games like X-Wing as gateway games to more complex and interesting games like Battletech. I do believe minor tweaks can and should be made to the core game but to radically overhaul the entire game would be a huge mistake.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bigkahuna on 12 February 2019, 08:36:50
Yeah I'm not sure I would call Battletech a more complex game than any of the fore mentioned games from a tactical or strategic perspective as a game.  Perhaps X-Wings simplicity might be something in the range of Battletech but I would call Battletech more complex as a rule system than anything else.  As a tactical game Battletech is extremely simple (he says in the sweetest most non-aggressive voice possible). 

Consider what you actually control in Battletech from a player agency and tactics perspective.  You can move your mech into a position using the terrain to get optimal modifiers towards dice rolls in the shooting phase.  Your entire player agency boils down to this one action.  Its a game that is pretty much in its entirety about what hex you leave your unit in and how he got their which effects his offensive and defensive modifiers.  Everything from that point is left purely up to lady luck.  I understand the game has statistical curves thanks to the 2d6 mechanic and some basic resource management (heat) but I wouldn't call any of that complex.   The rules of resolving everything, that is where the complexity of the game is.

Am I wrong here.. what more is there to the strategy of the game beyond you position on the map?

Consider for example X-Wing which was mentioned as a gateway game.  I challenge that because while the mechanic is much simpler to understand and absorb the strategic depth is 100 times that of the movement phase in Battletech.  The simple act of using hidden movement means that you have to guess at your opponents plan, the position he is trying to get all of his units in and use your own movement strategy to find a way to come out on top.  That alone makes the movement of X-Wing soooo much deeper.  I mean in Battlemech you randomly determine initiative so you can't even do anything to effect the order in which units will move, while in X-Wing you have pilot skill which determines the order of movement and shooting.  Again just another layer of depth, done very simply.

Just saying I think this community really oversells the tactical depth of Battletech, I mean from a tactics and strategy perspective I can't really think of a simpler miniatures game then Battletech.  If I were to categorize the game, it would be in the "dice chucker" category were it not for how complex the rules for dice chucking are in the game. 

Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Talen5000 on 12 February 2019, 08:55:09
Do you have specific examples of what you're thinking?

The challenge here is modernization without looking like a copycat. Copying someone else's elements is a good way of both showing poorly to new players ("hey, they just ripped off X") and alienating your current players. It's a fine line to make work.


How about something like...

Don't roll for hit location. Weapons deal one-third damage to the Centre Torso, with a critical chance on an MOS of 4+?

TBH, I'm certain there are lots of tweaks that the game could use...it's deciding which ones will be "popular" is difficult.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 12 February 2019, 08:58:21
Doubleblind rules make the game much more tactically sophisticated (you can only see in your los) but it’s not at all suited for tabletop because you constantly have to check los and keep track of where your units are since they’re not on the board unless your opponent can see them.

I quite like the simultaneous movement rules in tacops for small scale games as a compromise for not being able to do doubleblind. Not unlike something like xwing you have to anticipate your opponent in a number of ways, which becomes very complex if you are running more than five or six units on a side. It actually forces you to execute a tactical plan instead of constantly reacting. Forced lance movement does a bit of that too at the company v company level since you don’t get to optimize every single move

Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: nckestrel on 12 February 2019, 09:07:13
You left out determining which unit to move when.  And having to move units in anticipation of what later units will move.  Considering how much you play up X Wings blind movement, leaving that part out of BattleTech is leaving out something very important.
Yeah, if you're playing BattleTech 1v1, it's just initiative roll.  Anything larger, and which unit to lead with, where has the enemy already moved, which units does the enemy have left available, what can they do and what can you do in anticipation of those moves, is huge.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Elmoth on 12 February 2019, 09:43:36
I think BT would do well with a more streamlined version. Way more simplified than Alpha Strike. otherwise it will be kept as a niche nostalgia game forever. One that you crank out of the box once or twice per year, but not on a regular basis.

We play Alpha Strike right now, but we are in constant talk about simplifying the system A LOT. Only the work involved in recalculating all the troop stats (massive!) keep us from doing that. Because the universe is great (even if it has a lot of BS as well, buit so all the universes, really), but the games are not that great. They tend to be towards the low end of "greatnes", really. At least not for the tastes of my group.

Xavi
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bigkahuna on 12 February 2019, 10:24:38
You left out determining which unit to move when.  And having to move units in anticipation of what later units will move.  Considering how much you play up X Wings blind movement, leaving that part out of BattleTech is leaving out something very important.
Yeah, if you're playing BattleTech 1v1, it's just initiative roll.  Anything larger, and which unit to lead with, where has the enemy already moved, which units does the enemy have left available, what can they do and what can you do in anticipation of those moves, is huge.

Which unit moves first or last, is such a minor aspect of the tactical options it’s barely worth mentioning, hardly the final piece that raises BattleTech from the simple dice chucker it is to the “complex tactical game” it advertises to be. 

Is there anything else you can point to that you would quantify as tactical depth in Battletech?  I guess I’m just trying to understand where the term “complex” is used to describe Battletech beyond the complexity of the rules?
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: abou on 12 February 2019, 10:44:58
Which unit moves first or last, is such a minor aspect of the tactical options it’s barely worth mentioning, hardly the final piece that raises BattleTech from the simple dice chucker it is to the “complex tactical game” it advertises to be. 
I... really? I don't even know how to process that. Movement has always been a massive part of the game. How can that said to be a minor aspect?
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: nckestrel on 12 February 2019, 10:47:00
Which unit moves first or last, is such a minor aspect of the tactical options it’s barely worth mentioning, hardly the final piece that raises BattleTech from the simple dice chucker it is to the “complex tactical game” it advertises to be. 
It's the thing.  Seriously, if you're not putting a great deal of thought into which unit moves when, perhaps that's why you don't think it's complex.  It dominates everything up to and including what units I want to pick. You can just mash the fire button if you'd like, but you'll be doing it from where I want you to be.  (Or I messed up my tactics).
Quote
Is there anything else you can point to that you would quantify as tactical depth in Battletech?  I guess I’m just trying to understand where the term “complex” is used to describe Battletech beyond the complexity of the rules?
choosing which unit to present as a target. making the other player choose between continuing focus fire on the one they've damaged that's now a harder target, or the easier targets. using bubbles of doom to force other units out of position. using line of sight to break concentrated fire. finding the advantage in range and making sure you can exploit it as much as possible each turn. choosing between conflicting priorities (defending damaged targets versus concentrating fire on enemy target for example).


Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: ArchonDan on 12 February 2019, 10:47:18
The major difference is interactivity and the effect those abilities have on the game.  A hit location chart doesn't change, can't meaningfully interact with any part of the game besides sometimes the direction of incoming attacks, and has no way to further the evolution of the gameplay experience. It is a constant.

You are comparing a parking stall to the concept of street signs.  One is a square painted on concrete, the other is a set of directions and interactions that move traffic to a destination.

A parking stall is still a necessary part of modern transportation infrastructure, but it doesn't do anything on its own.

I disagree with your analogy moving traffic along. Warmachine, X-Wing and others all have unit cards, skill definitions that need to be read and absorbed. They serve the same purpose IMO.   Modern games are bring back the data sheets and unit cards which Battletech has had since it started. Those are all fundamental to those games, just as charts are for Battletech that create a game based on different tactical use of units than having the right super combo to spring on your opponent. I'm not saying those games aren't based on use of units, I just feel they are more combo driven tactics than the "hard sci-fi" nature of battletech this I find enjoyable.

The basic game mechanics and charts don't change and apply to all Mech and this a strength to me, unlike other games design that define the fundamental rules and then have units and abilities break those rules to create uniqueness and interaction. I'm sure there are cases of this type of interaction with advanced tech and this is where the games starts to have issue, I feel, it happens to all games :)

I understand your statement about the evolution of the game play experience and I think some games evolve more to generate revenue than to actually improve the game. 


choosing which unit to present as a target. making the other player choose between continuing focus fire on the one they've damaged that's now a harder target, or the easier targets. using bubbles of doom to force other units out of position. using line of sight to break concentrated fire. finding the advantage in range and making sure you can exploit it as much as possible each turn. choosing between conflicting priorities (defending damaged targets versus concentrating fire on enemy target for example).

I can't agree more, this is the tactical decisions I find the most enjoyment form. Can you drive your opponents heat up with choice targets and take advantage of their reduced effectiveness. All good stuff

Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 12 February 2019, 10:56:08
the biggest problem here is that you're basing your entire analysis of the game based on the introductory rules - which hasn't been the entire game since 1986. The base game isn't complicated, no. The layers of optional rules exist to make the game more sophisticated. If the base rules leave you found wanting and choose not to utilize them, that's on you. I noted two options just in the movement phase that add a decent level (lance movement), and large level (simultaneous movement) of tactical depth. Add in a half dozen unit types, synergizing weapon packages, defining combat roles, and using tactics that include artillery, infantry field guns, minefields, smoke, etc create a very rich battlefield. And it's not that complicated if you've played with the advanced rules more than five times since 1991.

all the total randomness you claim the game has melts away pretty quickly when you apply the extra layers. i've noted that the dice rolling is tops on my list of pet peeves, but the outcome is really left to a ton of chance between two players of equal skill. If you're playing small games, there will be flukey outcomes, but in the balance the results won't be random. All the dice rolling largely just delays the outcome. 
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bedwyr on 12 February 2019, 11:00:01
I suppose it all depends on the goals of Catalyst Game Labs for the game.  Is the goal to expand the line to capture new audiences and grow the game, or is it simply the plan to continue the 35 year tradition of keeping with the status-Q?

I can tell you as one of the fresh faces who has tried the game that, I love it for the many things that is, but won't be investing or likely even playing the game being the core set for much longer for all the things that it should but never will be.  Battletech is a great nostalgic trip down memory lane that I was happy to take for an evening or two with my friends, but if I may be transparent and blunt, the mechanic is archaic and too outdated to really compete with the other miniature games that we play.  Compared to Warmachines, X-Wing, Armada, Legion, Bolt Action, Bushido and many others that make our table, Battletech really lacks the modernization necessary to keep my groups interest.

I might take a crack at revising the rules myself, just because I think its a shame given the wonderful setting and opportunity that Battletech offers, but as it is, its really not going to be a thing.

They've already committed to reprinting the Alpha Strike rules in a compendium, reprinting the core rulebooks, and issuing the new box sets. That's pretty clearly the strategy for the line. That's why I say it's a discussion in the abstract as I don't expect major changes to this.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Weirdo on 12 February 2019, 11:05:20
Trust us, the order in which you move your own units is a HUGE part of the game. Many players prefer to move slower units first and fast units last(in order to flank/backstab units that have already moved), but there's so much more then that.

Do you sacrifice a fast unit by moving him early onto a critical bridge, preventing enemy units from crossing for a vital turn or two?

Do you move your infantry first as 'initiative sinks', or do you hold off in the hopes that they'll be overlooked and you'll get the chance to move them in for a back shot or leg attack?

Do you grab that really good stand of trees early on, or do you let the other guy move a unit or two first, then grab it once he's committed to that advance and your presence throws everything into disarray?

Do you take advantage of the fact that players rarely bother to look at their opponents' sheets and move your units slowly early in the game, then shock him later on with a sudden and rapid advance that he didn't think you were capable of?

The possibilities are endless.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 12 February 2019, 12:12:29
I disagree with your analogy moving traffic along. Warmachine, X-Wing and others all have unit cards, skill definitions that need to be read and absorbed. They serve the same purpose IMO.   Modern games are bring back the data sheets and unit cards which Battletech has had since it started. Those are all fundamental to those games, just as charts are for Battletech that create a game based on different tactical use of units than having the right super combo to spring on your opponent. I'm not saying those games aren't based on use of units, I just feel they are more combo driven tactics than the "hard sci-fi" nature of battletech this I find enjoyable.

I think you might have missed my point.  The hit location chart doesn't do anything.  There is a minor, not particularly reliable difference in shooting from far enough to one side, but it doesn't change how the hit location chart works.  It's an unmoving constant that does very little to meaningfully enhance or improve the game that it's in.

Conversely, most (regrettably not every) unit ability or upgrade in the games you mentioned substantially affect the flow of play.  It's not always beneficial, but it's undeniable that Luke Skywalker has a different effect on the game than a Blue Squadron Rookie.

The two are not the same, and calling them the same is both misunderstanding the point of my analogy and not recognizing what actually contributes to player engagement.

EDIT: I realized after hitting post that I could explain it more easily.  Unit abilities and special rules are something that players can use and interact with.  The hit location chart, on the other hand, is just something that happens to people.  There's no interaction between the players and table; it's a mandatory stopping point to the game's momentum that is entirely dedicated to finding out what had already happened.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: guardiandashi on 12 February 2019, 12:21:14
part of my analogy and comment really comes down to another analogy, would you rather play checkers, or chess?

my feeling personally is that battletech is more akin to chess, in that the rules are fairly simple but the interactions and choices made during a game are or can be very complex.

most of the "modern" games are as mentioned in a lot of ways more simplistic when you get to the actual play stage.  I mean in xwing the complexity has nothing to do with the choices made when you show up to actually play, its all in the Loadouts you bring to the table and how the abilities interact to break the base rule set with special rules and skill interactions.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: NeonKnight on 12 February 2019, 12:25:33
Do you take advantage of the fact that players rarely bother to look at their opponents' sheets and move your units slowly early in the game, then shock him later on with a sudden and rapid advance that he didn't think you were capable of?

OMG...that is NASTY!

And I like it...A LOT!
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Easy on 12 February 2019, 12:32:05
cleanup
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: carlisimo on 12 February 2019, 13:00:35
There tend to be two approaches to wargames: one based on movement and positioning, and one based on the interaction between special rules.  6mm and naval/spaceship games end to focus on the former, and most 28mm games seem to be about the latter. 

Fans of movement and positioning like to draw the parallel to chess because we think it makes us look smart.  Either way, it’s what I find more rewarding in a game.  It’s less dependent on army composition and results in more varied experiences from battle to battle, in my experience.  But if you want to get more out of the list-writing stage of the hobby, you probably prefer the other type of game.

Hit locations aren’t really part of that.  That’s not tactics, it’s atmosphere.  And if you take too much of it out, you get a board game like chess.  Or Alpha Strike (I think they had it backwards - Alpha Strike should be more of a hex game than Classic).  Still tactical, just lacking in the RPG aspect.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 12 February 2019, 13:13:54
Arin from game grumps did an analysis of Castlevania 1 vs Castlevania 2 several years ago and there was a line that sums up my feelings about the record keeping

Quote
Let me ask you something. What is the difference between:
A. Killing a bunch of zombies to get hearts out of them, collecting the hearts and then going back to town to get an item to go to another part of the game and
B. Playing a game where you kill zombies that are obstructing your forward path to another part of the game

ANSWER: FOUR HOURS

I feel like there has to be a way to capture the essential element of the game - unit durability - without rolling 400 extra dice over the course of an evening and making anything more than a skirmish untenable for adults without an entire day to burn.

I've learned over the years to plan objective-based scenarios that work in about three hours, but they could be so much more rich if turns didn't take the better part of 20 minutes to a half hour that also doesn't make units super squishy like in Alpha Strike
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: abou on 12 February 2019, 13:21:56
I really do hope for more Sequelitis someday.

But to Sartris' point, I recently got my hands on the 4th Succession War scenario book. This was the first one and not the later book that came out around the same time as the 4th Ed. box set.

A lot of the scenarios are goal-based or time-based. For example, there are only so many turns in the scenario to play before the winner is decided. Most of us probably play to the last 'mech standing, which is something to give consideration to when we worry about how long it takes to play a game.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: ActionButler on 12 February 2019, 13:24:28
my feeling personally is that battletech is more akin to chess, in that the rules are fairly simple but the interactions and choices made during a game are or can be very complex.

The problem with this analogy is that while Battletech is more complicated than other wargames in the same way that Chess is more complicated than Checkers, a lot of Battletech's complexity comes solely from pages upon pages of numbers and charts and not anything inherent to the game itself.  Assuming legal moves, your Knight will always capture my Pawn, 100% of time.  No dice rolling, no modifiers, no box of death, no extra dice on the table to remind you how many spaces you moved or whether I used jump jets.  It just happens.  That is nowhere near the case with Battletech. 

As other have said, Battletech, at the basic level, is actually a really simple game.  At the core, it is just adding up a bunch of numbers, rolling some dice, and consulting some charts.  But every single thing in the game has its own chart and its own roll and its own drawn out resolution process. And some actions require rolling against multiple different charts multiple times. 

Then you add the 3050 tech, and the list of weapons - and their associated stats - goes from a dozen to two full pages, most of which are duplicates of each other and only slightly different because of a very halfhearted attempt at faction flavor. 

Then you add some advanced rules, and suddenly you need to check the terrain table for movement costs because you stepped onto a Level 3 mud hex and you need to roll a couple of dice to determine whether or not your Locust skids across the map because you took a corner too quickly which requires ANOTHER lookup table.

The fact that Battletech tries to be a more granular wargame in a sea of very abstract systems is an admirable goal. It adds something to the market that simply doesn't exist elsewhere.  The fact that that granularity comes at a painfully slow pace absolutely kills my enthusiasm for digging out my minis, though. I simply don't have the time to invest simple 4v4 game when I know that most of that time is going to be spent counting hexes and checking To-Hit tables.

THAT BEING SAID... one thing that I feel compelled to point out in these threads is that exactly nobody posting to this discussion has any idea of what does, or does not move product for CGL.  Yes, most (all?) of the best selling games on the market right now use much faster systems than Battletech, but if CGL thinks it can derive a profit from pushing the exact same rules with the exact same slow-burn resolution and attract new players to the game, that's what they should do.  CGL doesn't make Battletech for me.  They make it because they believe that it can turn a profit.     
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bedwyr on 12 February 2019, 13:34:49
Right. It has its niche.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 12 February 2019, 13:37:50
i don't think anyone (or at least the majority) is participating in this conversation with the expected outcome of meaningful change. The box, with slightly different pieces, is the same box we've gotten since 1986. This would have been the chance to launch nuBattleTech. The TW and BMM reprints show further commitment in that regard. Nothing suggested over the years has made a dent on the core values of the game's design, so what's one more thread? If you understand the conceit that topics like this are more academic exercises than real calls for change (or if they are, understanding that these calls will largely go out unacknowledged), you won't fly into some deep melancholy like in a Tom Hardy or Jane Austen novel about the state of affairs. 
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Weirdo on 12 February 2019, 14:04:23
OMG...that is NASTY!

And I like it...A LOT!

It's not as useful with most mechs(at least against longtime players who tend to know the speed of such things), but when I pulled it off, it was with infantry. Spend most of the game walking several platoons across the map, and only when they got close and my opponent pulled behind a hill to buy time was it revealed that...they were jump troops. >:D
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bedwyr on 12 February 2019, 14:06:59
i don't think anyone (or at least the majority) is participating in this conversation with the expected outcome of meaningful change. The box, with slightly different pieces, is the same box we've gotten since 1986. This would have been the chance to launch nuBattleTech. The TW and BMM reprints show further commitment in that regard. Nothing suggested over the years has made a dent on the core values of the game's design, so what's one more thread? If you understand the conceit that topics like this are more academic exercises than real calls for change (or if they are, understanding that these calls will largely go out unacknowledged), you won't fly into some deep melancholy like in a Tom Hardy or Jane Austen novel about the state of affairs.

I'm with you. It can be unclear sometimes what others' expectations on the internet are though.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 12 February 2019, 14:23:50
To be completely clear: my expectation in a miniatures game like BattleTech is for each player to be involved in interacting with the game in a meaningful way as frequently as possible.  Recording table results is not a meaningful interaction.

It shouldn't be expected that I can carry on doing something else entirely while waiting for my turn to come up and have missed exactly nothing of consequence in the 15 minutes that takes sometimes.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: guardiandashi on 12 February 2019, 14:51:58
To be completely clear: my expectation in a miniatures game like BattleTech is for each player to be involved in interacting with the game in a meaningful way as frequently as possible.  Recording table results is not a meaningful interaction.

It shouldn't be expected that I can carry on doing something else entirely while waiting for my turn to come up and have missed exactly nothing of consequence in the 15 minutes that takes sometimes.
Unless you are playing with 3 or more players, and other players are resolving their turns, that have nothing to do with you/your units then if this occurs you are doing something wrong.

Now I will admit we often kind of consolidated the declaration and firing phases but shrug.

for the actual firing it was like:
fire ppc 1 check result hit
location 9 left leg unit owner marks damage off
fire ppc 2 miss
fire ac5 hit result table 3 right arm
next unit ......

if you have 3 (or more) players, the one firing should be rolling strikes, and damage location, the owner of the unit should be noting the damage and any possible special effects
if your group hasn't memorized the hit location tables then one of the "other" players should be cross referencing the hit numbers and the location table so as to expedite the damage recording, and keep them involved.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bedwyr on 12 February 2019, 15:00:58
To be completely clear: my expectation in a miniatures game like BattleTech is for each player to be involved in interacting with the game in a meaningful way as frequently as possible.  Recording table results is not a meaningful interaction.

It shouldn't be expected that I can carry on doing something else entirely while waiting for my turn to come up and have missed exactly nothing of consequence in the 15 minutes that takes sometimes.

Apropos of nothing, I've been playing the new Advance Wars successor Wargroove. Every time the enemy's turn comes up I set the console down (my Switch) to prevent wincing and embarrassment at the mistakes I made on my turn. Knowledge of the game states are not too dissimilar in that way.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 12 February 2019, 15:25:59

This is actually mind of my point.  "It's fine unless you have <common situation> happen", followed up by "our group just ignores the rules and it works fine" and topped off by suggesting reading results off of tables is enough to keep people engaged (unless you have that common situation of more than two players involved, again).

I think "just ignore the rules" is my favourite rebuttal to the rules being non-interactive.

EDIT: I should really start putting my point in my posts.

Everything in the quoted post is having become accustomed to dealing with a non-interactive game  I'm absolutely glad your group is having fun with it, but that's not how you get a steady flow of new players.  People far more often than not like BattleTech in spite of itself, and that's not sustainable.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bigkahuna on 12 February 2019, 15:30:20
So many great responses and points of view its hard to know where to start, I suppose perhaps with the nod to the community for being so engaging and great in the discussion.

For me I think there are a couple of specific points I suppose I want to strengthen.

One is regarding Scotty's comments which I completely agree with, in that a good miniatures game as is the case with many modernly designed miniatures games, is that they keep players engaged and I agree that administration and bookkeeping cannot be counted as engaging players.

Now I will concede that I have only ever played the core rules from the core set and I understand that the game has many add on rules that can be found in books like Tactical Operations, Tech Manual, Total Chaos and the general experience expanded with books like Campaign Operations.

The observation I would make here is that these rules make the game more sophisticated in the sense that they make the resolution of the game more complex with a heavier ruleset, but they really do not create a higher level of tactical play.  Adding weather effects or atmospheric conditions, a volume of weapon types or a great variety of units certainly makes the game more robust, but in the end the core mechanic is the culprit in kind of lowering the tactical diversity of the game.  Whether you are rolling a X or Y weapon from X or Y unit, the routine and time consuming process of rolling on and cross referencing various charts that ultimately produce little more than unpredictable (random) results does not result in a deep tactical game.  I find in particular the Tactical Operations book to be the biggest contributor to this kind of frivolous rules weight in that it just adds more charts to reference and rules to remember but doesn't really strengthen the tactical core of the game.

Now that is an opinion and I have been known to be wrong from time to time, but I will say that the core game (the box set) is the basis on which this game will be judged by new players.  If this experience leaves them wanting, you can't presume people will dig deeper.  Your core set is your sales pitch and the core rules are THE rules that matter, everything that expands the game is largely irrelevant in the eyes of a new audience considering the game.



Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: nckestrel on 12 February 2019, 15:41:13
Let me put it another way. BattleTech, as is, is mowhere near what Scotty and Bigkahuna are suggesting. No amount of tweaking will make it so.  You are taking about a new game.  Whether or not that new game is any good would have nothing to do with BattleTech as it is now.  It’s not a rules modification.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 12 February 2019, 15:48:17
Let me put it another way. BattleTech, as is, is mowhere near what Scotty and Bigkahuna are suggesting. No amount of tweaking will make it so.  You are taking about a new game.  Whether or not that new game is any good would have nothing to do with BattleTech as it is now.  It’s not a rules modification.

For the most part, you are correct.  I do, however,  think that BattleTech as-is could be substantially improved with some changes to hit locations, critical hits, and cluster weapons.

Those are little more than bandaids.  The core model is not sustainable the way it was in the 80s and 90s.  The competition is greatly improved; BattleTech has not.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Psycho on 12 February 2019, 15:49:44
(unless you have that common situation of more than two players involved, again).

I think this becomes more of an issue of expectations placed on a system that wasn't built for the way you're using it. I agree that larger games can easily bog down. BT was built to be 1v1 player. Of course it's going to have issues when you start running games with 12 people at a time. How many Warmachine (or insert any other game system) games have you played with 11 other people at the same time and *not* had it bog down or go haywire? If you've had good experiences like that, were those systems built with multi-player games in mind?
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 12 February 2019, 16:04:33
I think this becomes more of an issue of expectations placed on a system that wasn't built for the way you're using it. I agree that larger games can easily bog down. BT was built to be 1v1 player. Of course it's going to have issues when you start running games with 12 people at a time. How many Warmachine (or insert any other game system) games have you played with 11 other people at the same time and *not* had it bog down or go haywire? If you've had good experiences like that, were those systems built with multi-player games in mind?

The initial intent is irrelevant: Catalyst, and FASA before it, explicitly encouraged multiplayer games with the production of first the MechWarrior RPG and then ATOW.  Whether it was designed for more than two players flies in the face of over 30 years of product.

EDIT: for actual content on topic:  rework hit location to 1d6 (you can keep the odds very close to the current table from front/rear, and make left/ right more significant for targeting) so that multiple hits can be resolved easily and simultaneously, replace the crit confirm roll and slots with a selection of universal crits for each location, and swap cluster weapons to a static amount of damage + damage to adjacent locations.

With those changes you could reduce record sheets to half size, and streamline at least three points of additional complication that are utterly unnecessary to the final result (cluster roll, crit location roll(s), sped up locations) of a given combat.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bigkahuna on 12 February 2019, 16:49:43
For me personally, the core issue remains, play time.  In particular the sort of mathematics of commitment vs reward of the game (hours committed versus what you get for those hours entertainment wise).  It just doesn't add up.  The average play time for a Lance versus Lance game just using the core set and core rules (nothing extra added or removed) is about 4 hours.  Some games might finish in 3 3.5 (based on luck of the dice or a scenario based thing), but its more common for games to go 4-5, in one case we had a game go 7.5 hours.

To me, even at 3 hours this game takes too long and that is on the bottom of the average scale.  I hear people say 2 hours, but I don't see how that is possible with core set.  Perhaps in other eras things are more deadly.

Suffice to say the introduction of the game to my gaming group really didn't go so well unfortunately.  I might try again in the future with them but this week someone just picked up the Warmachine core set, I just saw the first painted mini from that player so I'm certain that is going to be our next foray. 

It was great chatting with everyone, I will be sure to check back in sometime in the future.  Thanks for all the great discussion, it was really great.



Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Syzyx on 12 February 2019, 17:37:16
In my opinion BattleTech is a timesink by design. It is not meant to play fast. It is a game for those who want the visceral moment-by-moment experience of battle in giant stompy robots. It is a simulation more than a game.

For me this is fantastic. I can savor the dread and relief of each potential mishap occuring or being avoided and then carry forward to eventual victory or learn from my defeat.

However this is not for everyone. Some people want a game without that. Something to play and move on from. That's great, too. The reality is that BattleTech is not that game. BattleTech is a slow playing, highly granular, simulationist experience that was once all the rage and will become more popular again as market tastes evolve. Video games were predicted to be the death of boardgames in the '70's and '80's but have come back since the oughts to near to and potentially exceeding their mid 20th century heyday. I think BattleTech is in that same curve.

Does BattleTech need some streamlining? Sure. But I don't believe it really needs to happen by dumping the core rules. A cluster hits formula instead of table might be nice. ie I rolled 3 higher than needed to hit with my LRMs so I hit with 60% of my missiles or something like that. MoS modifiers to the location table could be nice as well, move the result of the location one spot for each 3 you make the roll by or something. These things could possibly improve the game without losing what BattleTech is.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Daryk on 12 February 2019, 19:59:52
Holy ****!  I go to work, and the thread explodes!

I think I'm more with nckestrel here.  My own experience is that speed of play is almost entirely proficiency based.  Lance on lance?  Back in college when I and my friends were at the top of our games, I can't imagine that taking more than an hour (probably more on the order of 30 minutes).  The base mechanics are fairly simple, but as you add more units, you gain tactical depth.  Playing lance on lance, you'd do things you'd never even consider when playing one on one.  And at the company vs. company level, it happens again.  Any individual move in go or chess is pretty simple.  The depth of play comes from the number of pieces involved.  Scotty seems to be advocating reducing the complexity of the individual moves, but I think that's where a lot of the appeal of BattleTech lies.  I think a lot of people are turned off by oversimplification at the "piece" level (otherwise, chess would be even more popular than it is).

Having done some very basic tactical training before I deployed over a decade ago, I think BattleTech has it right.  Individual "moves" have a level of complexity that is completely separate from what BigKahuna calls "tactical depth".  Doing a course of fire on the range is completely different from stacking to clear a room, even though the basic skills are the same.  Both require an individual to be able to operate a modern firearm proficiently (not as easy as it sounds when the metric is how many holes you can make in the center of mass), but the latter requires another layer of thought, and it only goes up from there.  A fire team can clear a room.  Squads have more than one fire team (exact number depending on Service), platoons have more than one squad, companies have more than one platoon, etc.  And the orders become more abstract as you move up too.  "Clear that room" becomes "clear that building" becomes "clear that block".  BattleTech has the ability to scale.  I'm not sure how many other systems can do that as easily.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 12 February 2019, 20:15:47
Isn’t the speed of performing any task proficiency based? The question is can some of those tasks be streamlined or eliminated. I’m not strictly of an opinion that x, y, or z necessarily has to go. I’m just interested in exploring what can be compressed to eliminate the aforementioned complex tasks to resolve not complex outcomes
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Daryk on 12 February 2019, 20:39:00
It absolutely is... the question I think is if proficiency is enough to move the game along at the pace you seem to be looking for, why fiddle with the rules?
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 12 February 2019, 21:56:06
for me it doesn't move fast enough. i've just learned how to jury-rig scenarios that can be completed despite the delays. i'd rather have that time go toward more meaningful aspects of the mission if possible

edit: a quick and dirty fix i don't hate is just to implement alpha strike mapboard movement with the fixed TMMs in place of traditional movement (with a few adjustments like you can't make a 180 degree turn for free). I've also messed around with generic crits as scotty had mentioned above. It's not unlike what we've been using for vehicles for almost 15 years in TW (which was derived from the MaxTech rules from 1997)
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Psycho on 12 February 2019, 22:21:42
The initial intent is irrelevant: Catalyst, and FASA before it, explicitly encouraged multiplayer games with the production of first the MechWarrior RPG and then ATOW.  Whether it was designed for more than two players flies in the face of over 30 years of product.


You appear to be moving the goalposts and ignoring the question posed by citing optional product. Using the RPG is an option, it is not part of any box set or core rule book (ie. Compendium, RoW, TW). Having Battleforce and Battlespace available for 20+ years does not change what BT was set out to do with its primary game.

I am genuinely interested if you or others have had experiences with other miniatures-based wargames that play well with a large group of players in a single game. Does Warmachine (or again, insert any other game system) even work with 12 players at once? How does having that many players affect its speed of play? If it does it well, what can we learn from it?
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 12 February 2019, 22:54:32
You appear to be moving the goalposts and ignoring the question posed by citing optional product. Using the RPG is an option, it is not part of any box set or core rule book (ie. Compendium, RoW, TW). Having Battleforce and Battlespace available for 20+ years does not change what BT was set out to do with its primary game.

I am genuinely interested if you or others have had experiences with other miniatures-based wargames that play well with a large group of players in a single game. Does Warmachine (or again, insert any other game system) even work with 12 players at once? How does having that many players affect its speed of play? If it does it well, what can we learn from it?

It's not moving the goalposts, it's a rebuttal.  Whether it was designed for more than two players is ultimately irrelevant: more than two players can and does happen with enough frequency that it must be addressed.  This is especially true of the events Catalyst puts on at conventions: we are ostensibly demonstrating the greatest opportunities and potential the game has to offer.  There are exactly three events that feature primarily two-player games.  Two of them are the Boot Camp and the Alpha Strike Academy, the other is the BT Open.  Every other game in every format is multiple players at a time.  For better or for worse, that's the image we project.  The event that we direct people to in order to better their understanding of BattleTech is the Grinder, which runs very hard and very specifically into the issues I raised earlier.

Even that aside, X-wing works perfectly fine in groups of more than two.  Its nature splits the players' attention across all phases.  Warmachine gets weird,  but even so if we want to talk about "not designed for it" that one takes the cake.  40K multiplayer games drag longer the more players are involved, of course.  All of them (possible exception to Warmachine) handle it better than BattleTech..
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: AdmiralObvious on 12 February 2019, 22:58:06
The game is supposed to be a time sink. Most board games are, especially the more complex ones.

Then you start delving into the depth vs complexity argument where even adding extra rules for more realistic behavior ends up making the game take longer. That ends up not adding depth and makes the game less fun to play overall. This is the case with multiple different unit types on a board ad once.

The main issue with some games, especially BT is the bookkeeping. The issue isn't much about the proficiency to me, it's more tied to the fact that someone has to keep track of EVERYTHING. Adding more rules doesn't add much more bookkeeping, at least not for this game, which is great! However you've got a very complex and large amount of things that already need to be updated consistently in a pen and paper game of BT.

Players can "process" their turns pretty much immediately if they wanted to. I made up a rule where you get no more than 15 seconds to make a turn per each unit you're moving. It tended to lead to much more "messy" play, but it kept the game moving quickly... until we all needed to stop and roll dice and start writing everything down. The issue for us is the paperwork itself.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Crimson Dawn on 13 February 2019, 00:19:11
In my opinion BattleTech is a timesink by design. It is not meant to play fast. It is a game for those who want the visceral moment-by-moment experience of battle in giant stompy robots. It is a simulation more than a game.

For me this is fantastic. I can savor the dread and relief of each potential mishap occuring or being avoided and then carry forward to eventual victory or learn from my defeat.

However this is not for everyone. Some people want a game without that. Something to play and move on from. That's great, too. The reality is that BattleTech is not that game. BattleTech is a slow playing, highly granular, simulationist experience that was once all the rage and will become more popular again as market tastes evolve. Video games were predicted to be the death of boardgames in the '70's and '80's but have come back since the oughts to near to and potentially exceeding their mid 20th century heyday. I think BattleTech is in that same curve.

Does BattleTech need some streamlining? Sure. But I don't believe it really needs to happen by dumping the core rules. A cluster hits formula instead of table might be nice. ie I rolled 3 higher than needed to hit with my LRMs so I hit with 60% of my missiles or something like that. MoS modifiers to the location table could be nice as well, move the result of the location one spot for each 3 you make the roll by or something. These things could possibly improve the game without losing what BattleTech is.

This comment made me remember that some of us are coming to this from different ideas about this IP.  My take from this comment is from a person that came possibly game first (could be wrong on that take but that is how it feels).  In contrast I came to Battletech from essentially every angle outside of playing the game.  I have been reading tech read outs, novels, and playing battletech oriented video/computer games for something like 20 years and yet I only played table top battletech for the first time a couple years ago.  So Syzyk may look at this style of game as being something that needs to stay whereas I am not married to the game mechanics at all because game mechanics were not part of my battletech experience for so long.

Heck the game at times gets in the way of what I want to do with it sometimes.  The damage spread being so random at all times is annoying considering what I am used to seeing in the games that I played.  Not enough that I do not enjoy the game as is but if somebody asked I would say that annoys me (also the cluster table is something I dislike and it gets worse with things like SRMs which sucks because of course the whole point of those weapons is to exploit the cluster/hit tables).
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Hellraiser on 13 February 2019, 00:24:59
Trust us, the order in which you move your own units is a HUGE part of the game. Many players prefer to move slower units first and fast units last(in order to flank/backstab units that have already moved), but there's so much more then that.

Do you sacrifice a fast unit by moving him early onto a critical bridge, preventing enemy units from crossing for a vital turn or two?  Great example of when its best to move first instead of last.
 And yes, blocking a thin path is always a good option if it throws enemy movement into disarray.

Do you move your infantry first as 'initiative sinks', or do you hold off in the hopes that they'll be overlooked and you'll get the chance to move them in for a back shot or leg attack?  Not usually, but, it depends on the location of the infantry.

Do you grab that really good stand of trees early on, or do you let the other guy move a unit or two first, then grab it once he's committed to that advance and your presence throws everything into disarray?  Yes.  And Variations on this.  I especially like watching opening move & looking for options to leave enemies out of early combat range & dog pile part of their force.

Do you take advantage of the fact that players rarely bother to look at their opponents' sheets and move your units slowly early in the game, then shock him later on with a sudden and rapid advance that he didn't think you were capable of?   All the time.

The possibilities are endless.  agreed  >:D
Excellent stuff Weirdo.


OMG...that is NASTY!

And I like it...A LOT!

There are a lot of good ideas in there.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Greatclub on 13 February 2019, 03:37:06

EDIT: I realized after hitting post that I could explain it more easily.  Unit abilities and special rules are something that players can use and interact with.  The hit location chart, on the other hand, is just something that happens to people.  There's no interaction between the players and table; it's a mandatory stopping point to the game's momentum that is entirely dedicated to finding out what had already happened.

You can interact with it a little. Aimed shots from TarComps or SPAs, aiming high/low/L/R from TacOps rules, partial cover on the target's end. The table cumbersome, but it's also kinda necessary to having multiple hit locations. And eventually you start to remember at least the front locations.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: MoffMalthus on 13 February 2019, 07:35:29
In my opinion BattleTech is a timesink by design. It is not meant to play fast. It is a game for those who want the visceral moment-by-moment experience of battle in giant stompy robots. It is a simulation more than a game.

For me this is fantastic. I can savor the dread and relief of each potential mishap occuring or being avoided and then carry forward to eventual victory or learn from my defeat.

However this is not for everyone. Some people want a game without that. Something to play and move on from. That's great, too. The reality is that BattleTech is not that game. BattleTech is a slow playing, highly granular, simulationist experience that was once all the rage and will become more popular again as market tastes evolve. Video games were predicted to be the death of boardgames in the '70's and '80's but have come back since the oughts to near to and potentially exceeding their mid 20th century heyday. I think BattleTech is in that same curve.

Does BattleTech need some streamlining? Sure. But I don't believe it really needs to happen by dumping the core rules. A cluster hits formula instead of table might be nice. ie I rolled 3 higher than needed to hit with my LRMs so I hit with 60% of my missiles or something like that. MoS modifiers to the location table could be nice as well, move the result of the location one spot for each 3 you make the roll by or something. These things could possibly improve the game without losing what BattleTech is.

I 100% agree with your post! I see Battletech on the rise, at least modestly now and as long as the powers that be can continue to produce more products and minor rules adjustments it will be here another 35 years.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Church14 on 13 February 2019, 08:28:50
A long time ago I played with some interesting streamlined rules for critical hits. Basically, the rules were designed to make taking any internal damage a terrifying moment.

When you do internal damage:
1) If your to-hit roll was a 12, blow the limb/head off.
2) Use the damage to infantry rules to determine # of critical hits.
2a) I think autocannons had a buff here. I think they were a straight #crits dealt equal to damage dealt to internal. LB-X did not get that buff

Yeah, so missiles and basic autocannons get a huge buff for crit hunting and one less roll was needed.


Different rules streamline: I feel like a margin of success could be used for the cluster table to remove a roll.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: ActionButler on 13 February 2019, 10:10:26
 C:-)
Guys, I think by now that most of you know that I love a good debate about whether or not the game is too slow and needs a rules refresh, but this is a friendly reminder to keep this discussion as broad as possible if you want it to stay in General Discussion. If it gets too deep into the weeds of fan rules, there is a very good chance that it will get moved to a more appropriate subsection of the forums.
 C:-)
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Psycho on 13 February 2019, 10:23:46


A rebuttal is a direct, factual answer, claiming that having an RPG was Fasa pushing you to have megagames was not. It was the equivalent of me claiming that you don't have a problem with how long TW rules play, because Battleforce has been around for 25+ years, therefore you've had an answer for that long. Would you feel that that would be a legitimate response to your concerns?

Still unanswered: have you seen *any* other game system pushed as far as BT and still hold up? How many times have you seen 12 people at a single game of any other system? What is it that makes other systems run better at this scale, assuming you've seen it done? If you're unwilling to make an apples-to-apples comparison, I don't see the point in continuing this discussion.

I do find it challenging to see how a large game sells BT well in a convention/store setting; though if I'm being honest there are a lot of things that have been done over the years with the BT IP that I find very confusing.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: NeonKnight on 13 February 2019, 10:32:50
I'm not sure where people are getting the idea BT was always designed to be a 1v1 game until later.

As at the very least since June 1985, the 2nd Edition Box Set EXPLECITELY calls BT a game for 2 or more players.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: nckestrel on 13 February 2019, 10:52:44
I'm not sure where people are getting the idea BT was always designed to be a 1v1 game until later.

As at the very least since June 1985, the 2nd Edition Box Set EXPLECITELY calls BT a game for 2 or more players.

Yes, but the rules for more than 2 players have always been "share a side".  There are no separate initiative rules, the extra players just "negotiate" who "gets" to move a unit first.  They are a team, not separate players. There are no rules for an unequal number of units when there are more than two sides?  There are no victory conditions (in the base game/core rulebooks) for more than 2 sides. 
The more than 2 players is really just 2 players with assistants.
House rules and later expansions to rules especially post-TW and convention scenario rules (grinders, card-based initiative, etc) have added some more support, but the game is still based on 2 players.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: AlphaMirage on 13 February 2019, 11:12:01
I've done three or four way shoot outs before with independent players moving against one another it's as chaotic and frenzied as can be.  Man those games are fun.  You also have the Blood name grand Melee where everyone is in it for themselves there can only be one victor
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 13 February 2019, 11:15:43
the advantage of the trial of bloodright is that everyone participating has one unit and you have to engage.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: NeonKnight on 13 February 2019, 11:18:26
Yes, but the rules for more than 2 players have always been "share a side".  There are no separate initiative rules, the extra players just "negotiate" who "gets" to move a unit first.  They are a team, not separate players. There are no rules for an unequal number of units when there are more than two sides?  There are no victory conditions (in the base game/core rulebooks) for more than 2 sides. 
The more than 2 players is really just 2 players with assistants.
House rules and later expansions to rules especially post-TW and convention scenario rules (grinders, card-based initiative, etc) have added some more support, but the game is still based on 2 players.

Sounds like we should then be using a different term than 2 players. A player is a person. However, if we are trying to say BT is a game for 2 sides or opposing forces, then that I can agree on ;)
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 13 February 2019, 11:32:02
A rebuttal is a direct, factual answer, claiming that having an RPG was Fasa pushing you to have megagames was not.

I claimed no such thing.  I will absolutely claim,  however, that an RPG campaign of practically any stripe imaginable calls for a group of typically a GM and 3-6 other players.  That's not a "megagame" but I feel I can confidently state that even a "small" RPG group of 3 players and a GM playing OpFor runs headfirst into the issues I described.

BattleTech has absolutely nearly since its inception promoted games large enough to run into these issues.  The difference is that in the 80s and 90s that was just the price you paid to get a game in.
We can do better.

Still unanswered: have you seen *any* other game system pushed as far as BT and still hold up? How many times have you seen 12 people at a single game of any other system? What is it that makes other systems run better at this scale, assuming you've seen it done?

I'm going to be honest here: even though I did directly address this, I really don't care.  Please don't interpret that as disrespect, because that is absolutely not the intent.   "But can <other thing> do it better,  huh?" is not and never will be a compelling argument to not attempt to improve.

If you're unwilling to make an apples-to-apples comparison, I don't see the point in continuing this discussion.

On topic of "But does <other thing> do it better?", perhaps this is for the best.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Psycho on 13 February 2019, 15:09:42
At this point in my life I don't have time to play bunches of games. That's why I'm interested in your experience how other games hold up under the weight of large numbers of players. You claim they do, but only went so far as to say "more than 2" players, which could be much smaller than the games of 12 BT players that I've been to, and didn't mention how they kept things moving better. I'd assume they would be at least 6x longer than a game that was one-on-one, or introduce other limiting factors. Not having time to see for myself, I don't know. I'm okay with you choosing to hold an opinion tightly, but feel like I'm running into a wall where it isn't about discussion anymore.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 13 February 2019, 17:48:48
That's kind of what I mean.  The comparison on the basis of large numbers of players is a non-starter, because those games market themselves as games primarily between two people.  My assertions can be effectively narrowed down to:

I) BattleTech rapidly approaches a non-interactive and non-engaging experience as the size of the game increases.
   1) Even in smaller games the amount of time dedicated to recording results can outweigh the amount of time actually playing the game
       a)  This is bad.
       b)  It doesn't have to be this way.
II) BattleTech was able to survive and thrive in the 80s and 90s because the competition wasn't sufficiently better to draw players away.
   1)  It is no longer the 80s and 90s
   2)  The quality of BattleTech's competition has steadily and significantly improved during that time.
       a) BattleTech has not.

It doesn't matter, on any meaningful level, whether Warmachine or 40K are better or worse than BattleTech at supporting large player counts simultaneously.  It matters a whole lot that those games have either significantly improved during their lifetimes and successfully captured a new audience, or were able to capture a bigger audience than BattleTech from scratch in a mere handful of years by virtue of presenting appealing and attractive gameplay.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: MadCapellan on 13 February 2019, 17:58:56
It doesn't matter, on any meaningful level, whether Warmachine or 40K are better or worse than BattleTech at supporting large player counts simultaneously.  It matters a whole lot that those games have either significantly improved during their lifetimes and successfully captured a new audience, or were able to capture a bigger audience than BattleTech from scratch in a mere handful of years by virtue of presenting appealing and attractive gameplay.

I have a strong supposition that such success is more a result of visual improvements than mechanical ones. Up until recently 40K was pretty notorious for unbalanced, unappealing, stand & shoot game-play but continued to push-on by virtue of a hyper-aggressive marketing strategy & miniatures that looked drop dead gorgeous. I suspect that even if the rules had consisted of consulting a 30 column chart to determine thoroughly random combat results, they'd still have sold nearly as much as they always have. Sometimes the appeal is not in the gameplay.....
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 13 February 2019, 18:06:59
And yet, funnily enough, when they cleaned up the garbage rules they were selling and started aggressively rolling out balance tweaks (and new models, of course), their revenue nearly doubled in one fiscal year.

Far be it from me to heap all the success at one altar, but 40K is currently more successful than it has ever been and it's not hard to guess why.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: MadCapellan on 13 February 2019, 19:29:01
Far be it from me to heap all the success at one altar, but 40K is currently more successful than it has ever been and it's not hard to guess why.

The rules are now closer to 2nd Edition 40K than they've been in years. Just sayin'!  ;)
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 13 February 2019, 19:40:31
Are you suggesting we go back to one autocannon
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: MadCapellan on 13 February 2019, 19:57:13
Are you suggesting we go back to one autocannon

Naaaaah, that'd be Rogue Trader!  :D
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: carlisimo on 13 February 2019, 20:43:07
I mostly agree.

I’m not a fan of the 8th ed. 40k rules at all; imo, they de-emphasize movement and positioning by weakening terrain rules, and reduce difficult decisions by letting squads do more things at a time than they used to.  However, the concept of simple core rules with a bunch of special rules on top does seem to be popular.  8th ed. also wiped the slate clean on some terrible balance issues.  They’re back, inevitably, but the fresh start won back a lot of jaded players.  And yes, the models are great.

40k has benefitted quite a bit from video game tie-ins.  If only Battletech had something like that...
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 13 February 2019, 21:00:58
It’s a lot easier when the people to contact about cross promotions are in the adjacent cubicles rather than other licensees of a split IP who owe you exactly bupkis on the coordination end
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: MoffMalthus on 14 February 2019, 06:37:52
I believe the ultimate reason 40k is so successful in the end is due to the model quality and amount of new models produced every month. Half the people who buy 40k don't even play the game. This is one area where I think we could all agree that more good quality mech sculpts would help tremendously above any tweaks that could be made to the rules.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Elmoth on 14 February 2019, 09:33:56
Games Workshop has publicly said that is a company that creates games in order to sell miniatures.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Apocal on 14 February 2019, 09:47:41
I believe the ultimate reason 40k is so successful in the end is due to the model quality and amount of new models produced every month. Half the people who buy 40k don't even play the game. This is one area where I think we could all agree that more good quality mech sculpts would help tremendously above any tweaks that could be made to the rules.

Shimmyseen stuff is top-notch for that. My initial interest in BT (due to MW2) died off due my impression of the art/minis being negative. But HBSTech drew me back in and then I realized that MWO had flipped the art style away from being anime and into being more industrial/military which is right up my alley. From there to MegaMek and then the table.

Rules-wise, my biggest issue -- resolution of even simple scenarios between beginner players -- is pretty well addressed by using the pilot cards and mechs from the box. Slavomir Kladivo, Wade Fitzwarin, Piers Ballatine and (especially!) Sigtrygg the Griffin pilot are all pretty much walking warcrimes. Games involving them certainly don't want for damage dealt per round.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 14 February 2019, 10:26:15
Games Workshop has publicly said that is a company that creates games in order to sell miniatures.

The CEO who (infamously) described the company that way (the phrase "jewel-like objects of wonder" was used with complete sincerity, it was hilarious) has since been canned and replaced.  The new guy doesn't think like that.  That, not coincidentally, is when GW started knocking it out of the park.

The quality of miniatures hasn't changed since then.  A model designed six months before the change in company leadership and a model designed two years later are practically indistinguishable.  That part is a constant.  The parts that have changed are the level and quality of community involvement, and the rules (for both 40K and their fantasy line, which horribly mismanaged a new reboot under old leadership).  The community team gets people to take a look, the models and actually fun rules for them get people to keep playing.

Companies could learn a lot from both.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: nckestrel on 14 February 2019, 10:38:04
The CEO who (infamously) described the company that way (the phrase "jewel-like objects of wonder" was used with complete sincerity, it was hilarious) has since been canned and replaced.  The new guy doesn't think like that.  That, not coincidentally, is when GW started knocking it out of the park.

The quality of miniatures hasn't changed since then.  A model designed six months before the change in company leadership and a model designed two years later are practically indistinguishable.  That part is a constant.  The parts that have changed are the level and quality of community involvement, and the rules (for both 40K and their fantasy line, which horribly mismanaged a new reboot under old leadership).  The community team gets people to take a look, the models and actually fun rules for them get people to keep playing.

Companies could learn a lot from both.

Both are true.  In relation to CGL, CGL makes money selling books.  BattleTech needs more than just books (particularly just sourcebooks).  But in the end, success will still be determined by how many books it sells. But those books will only sell after the game is on a strong footing.
IWM makes money from selling miniatures.  It also needs BattleTech the game on a strong footing before it can successfully sell miniatures and make money. 
It's possible CGL could transition to be a company making it's money from selling board games.  It's had some success with that, and I think it's looking to make more of their company. Obviously that would also need BattleTech the game to be on a strong footing if that's going to be how BattleTech makes CGL money.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: wolfspider on 14 February 2019, 15:21:35
The CEO who (infamously) described the company that way (the phrase "jewel-like objects of wonder" was used with complete sincerity, it was hilarious) has since been canned and replaced.  The new guy doesn't think like that.  That, not coincidentally, is when GW started knocking it out of the park.

They started knocking out of the park when they hired a marketing firm and started listening to the customer, but removing the old CEO did help.
 :)
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bosefius on 14 February 2019, 18:02:38
This thread is way off topic, please bring it back around.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: nckestrel on 14 February 2019, 18:04:28
All weapons auto-hit the center torso. No rolling to/hit or location. That would speed up play ;).
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Daryk on 14 February 2019, 18:10:36
Isn't that just Alpha Strike?  ???
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: nckestrel on 14 February 2019, 18:18:23
Isn't that just Alpha Strike?  ???

Nope, AS wastes time making you roll to hit.  It’s not modern enough.

Or maybe go the other direction. For every point of gunnery skill lower than 4, you can adjust the location roll by 1. More time for each attack, but also more player choices... and less attacks overall as units would presumably be destroyed quicker by good location choices.  Maybe as an option instead of affecting the to/hit roll.  Ie. Skill 3 can roll to-hit at a base 3 with no location modolifuing, or as a base 4 with a +\-1 location modifier. Scary once they are up close..
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: AdmiralObvious on 14 February 2019, 19:39:32
I'm not a fan of the everything hits center mass idea, but then I'm one of the guys who likes to play with floating crits and called shots.

I'll say it again, the issue isn't rolling the dice and figuring out what happens. For me that's the best part of the game.

The issue is the bookkeeping. If you do the CT hits only idea, all your equipment needs to be counted as being there too. It would eliminate a lot of the extra HP values everywhere else, which would reduce bookkeeping.

(P.S. I've never played alpha strike, but I think this kinda describes it.)
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: nckestrel on 14 February 2019, 19:46:48
I was mostly joking, just throwing random ideas out. 
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Elmoth on 15 February 2019, 02:50:35
I have bought he new boxed because the minis are great.

I play alpha strike because the rules are far from good, but not 80s terrible.

I consider IWM miniatures (and their awful pre-80s website!!!) the thing keeping me out of the loop of miniature collecting.

A new, modern game (not necessarily driven by exceptions like GW games) would be amazing. A game that plays in 45 minutes to 1.5 hours and that is tournament friendly.

Great universe with bad rules and bad models (except the new MWO style designs) makes for a great RPG experience but a poor tabletop game.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Kovax on 15 February 2019, 09:35:21
I was always of the opinion that 2D6 does not give enough range for the various modifiers and target numbers.  Getting a +4 modifier makes a long-range shot at a moving target a 12+ even if the shooter stands still and there are no other factors that come into play.  You go from roughly "even odds" to "snowball's chance in hell" too easily.  3D6 gives more granularity and range of outcomes, plus provides a slightly more "bell shaped" probability curve than 2D6.  Shots go from good odds to poor odds, but not as easily to "impossible".  The classic example is a skirmish between a pair of Locusts, where the to-hit numbers occasionally dip down to as low as a mere 11+, but are usually at 13+ to hit.  It's challenging in the same way that Chess is, where any mistake may be punished, but not "exciting" enough for 21st Century gaming.  By expanding the range of possible die roll outcomes using 3D6 or such, the standard 4+ base number to hit a stationary target at short range goes from "fairly likely" to "almost guaranteed", while the to-hit numbers for difficult targets don't top out.  Now you can hit those Locusts on a 13+ shot, but the odds aren't great.  This would also allow "Extreme Range" optional rules to come into play more often, where the +8 for range is a very significant factor, but no longer an impossible shot unless both you and the target don't move.

The worse offending example of the limited range of the dice would be WH40K and its single D6 rolls, where a 1 terrain penalty takes you from 3:6 "even odds" to a 2:6 chance, and a 2 penalty moves it to a very difficult 1:6.  Add in some other factor, and it's no shot.  Conversely, the difference between a "regular" and an "elite" unit is that the one almost can't miss.  A single (+-)1 bonus or penalty has a massive effect on combat.  The more sides on the dice or the more dice you use, the more granularity you can have in the modifiers, while the more dice you use, the more the outcome takes on the shape of a probability curve, where the outliers are highly unlikely and most of the results fall at least somewhere near the center.  1D gives a totally flat probability "curve", with equal odds of rolling any number in the range.

1D6 - odds of rolling a 6 = 1:6 - this is only useful for "stand and fire at short range" odds.
2D6 - odds of rolling a 12 = 1:36 - this allows for "poor shots", but not for highly unlikely events or "nearly impossible" shots.
3D6 - odds of rolling an 18 = 1:216 - this gives you real "Hail Mary" chances like real-world un-aimed shots at suspected targets.
4D6 - odds of rolling a 1296 = 1:1296 - this works for extreme improbabilities like gun jams, sudden weather changes, etc.

I'd also prefer to see more units with one "big" gun which can seriously threaten another 'Mech, plus a few secondary weapons, rather than having multiple semi-big guns that are individually incapable of affecting the outcome unless you land several shots in the same place or get a lucky critical effect.  Real warfare involves mostly "one hit, one kill" weaponry; BattleTech is very often a game of sandpapering your opponent until either one runs out of armor and starts taking critical damage, or one of you takes a "golden BB" in the wrong location.  I'd rather see something in the middle, where an individual hit is very often "significant", but rarely takes a unit out of the fight completely.  In my opinion, it should be significantly easier to do internal damage to all but the heaviest units: less armor, more internal structure, and therefore more "damage" that actually reduces effectiveness.  Sandpaper (BattleTech 3025 damage) isn't all that exciting until the armor runs out, but pulling multiple pieces off the map on the first round of fire (WH40K) isn't all that great either.

As pointed out in several posts, paring down the record sheet details takes away the semi-RPG side of the game, and turns your hereditary war machine, complete with specializations an weaknesses, into just another counter to pull off the board during the enemy's shooting phase.  I don't care for Alpha Strike, it simply has no appeal to me.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Fear Factory on 15 February 2019, 22:11:52
Shameless plug... BattleTech 2.0 (https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=61464.0)

Abou and I have been playing this way for a while now and it works. Games are faster, results are identical. There are ways to upgrade the game without completely changing it.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Papabees on 17 February 2019, 02:22:04
I've actually really been thinking about this for a couple years now. I feel like most of the game up to and including seeing if you hit is pretty good with some really minor tweaks(they are a few things to kill. Skidding I'm looking at you). Movement mods would be similar to Alpha Strike in that if you walk you get X, run you get X, regardless of total distance moved.  Once you hit though is where things really tend to bog down. So i'm thinking instead of all the dots and gobbly gook units still have individual weapons but the mech stats like Move, Heat Sinks, Armor are recorded via damage track (like the old Clickytech game. Heresy I know) So mechs have 4-12 Damage tracks> when you attack with a weapon you add the damage to your attack roll Margin of success and compare it to the armor rating of the unit. FREX, a ERPPC might have a damage of 6 while an Atlas has a Armor of 8. My MoS on the attack roll is three so 9 total. I beat the Armor so Atlas loses 1 damage track, which may or may not reduce his stats depending on how much damage he already has. You can have a crit mechanism and still handle heat the same way. The only thing that has me scratching my head a bit is how to handle missiles. Anyway, this is what has been bouncing around in my brain.   
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Fear Factory on 17 February 2019, 11:53:30
BattleTech is a game that has survived the test of time because of how "simply complicated" the rules are (Introductory). If that makes any sense... What I mean is, the rules are simple and straightforward and the math is simple, the results have some cinematic style payoffs that other games don't have. Like, kicking the leg off a 'Mech just to watch it get its head get smashed in from the fall.

Abou and I both share the same feelings about the game. What makes the game complicated are the steps it can take to achieve results, which can take time even if you are experienced. But the other problem is that if you remove some of these game mechanics (like most players on the forums choose to do) you remove a core mechanic. A good example is the cluster hit system, while you're rolling a ton of results for an LB-X cluster/SRM spread, you start getting some interesting results from head hits and critical hits. It's one of those things you don't notice unless you have some really hot dice.

There are changes you can make that actually modernize the game without anything drastic:

- TMM based movement (like Alpha Strike) with some restrictions.
- Aerotech 2 range brackets, but keeping the maximum range for weapons (example, Medium Laser: max range of 9)
- Physical attacks getting the same modifier, not including Charging and DFA, so they actually compete with one another
- Increasing autocannon damage to make them competitive weapons in the short and long game
- Terrain rules that change the meta to make certain weapons/cover more useful in situations (missiles apply the woods modifier negatively to the cluster hit table OR water doesn't require heat sinks in the legs to help with heat).
- The 2 cluster chart, change from 1 to 2 for the 7 result. Now, all cluster weapons throw their weight above 50% on 7+
- EDIT: Minor hit location change, the side arc 9 result to the corresponding rear torso location (encourages maneuvering).

And we have more in the works. These are honestly just minor tweaks that look like major changes to the game, to the point where I can hear the torches getting lit by the old players, but it is so much easier and faster to play for basically the same result. I can't see myself ever going back to counting hexes and putting down movement dice ever again, which is honestly, just a band-aid on an old system in an attempt to keep it going.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: MadCapellan on 17 February 2019, 13:04:30
Fixed range brackets is a terrible idea - weapons like the medium laser already deal significantly more damage for their weight/heat generated than larger weapons, & eliminating the benefits larger weapons gain from longer short/medium ranges ultimately just makes them even worse vs medium lasers than they already were. The game really doesn't need any more reasons to rush to point-blank range & exchange SRMs, medium lasers & fisticuffs than it already has.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: abou on 17 February 2019, 13:09:20
Fixed range brackets is a terrible idea - weapons like the medium laser already deal significantly more damage for their weight/heat generated than larger weapons, & eliminating the benefits larger weapons gain from longer short/medium ranges ultimately just makes them even worse vs medium lasers than they already were. The game really doesn't need any more reasons to rush to point-blank range & exchange SRMs, medium lasers & fisticuffs than it already has.
Honestly, we haven't had that problem in the way you describe it. It isn't even really AT2 range brackets either. It just seems to work. Only other thing I can think of would be to increase the general medium range and shorten the short range. Maybe 5/15/25 instead of 6/12/24.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bedwyr on 17 February 2019, 13:12:25
My standard for streamlining is getting it by my embedded engineer friend who, the last time we tried to play BT, said "Mike, I'm sorry. I just can't keep playing. All I'm doing is imagining how I can make this go much faster if I just write a program for it and I'm not enjoying myself."


Might be that's not possible, but it's worth putting that opinion into stark relief: software developers and engineers live and breathe the automation of dull repetitive tasks. Cluster hits are like catnip to this kind of trained brain.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 17 February 2019, 13:20:24
I think about it too and I took three programming courses like 20 years ago
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: MadCapellan on 17 February 2019, 14:00:35
Honestly, we haven't had that problem in the way you describe it. It isn't even really AT2 range brackets either. It just seems to work. Only other thing I can think of would be to increase the general medium range and shorten the short range. Maybe 5/15/25 instead of 6/12/24.

It "just seems to work" for you because you folks are accustomed to playing Battletech a certain way & continue to do so. Hats off to you for not trying to break the spirit of the game in a friendly session, but mathematically, that's what you're proposing. A 5 ton 8 damage 8 heat weapon has no value over a 1 ton, 5 damage 3 heat weapon unless there's some other distinguishing factor. Because of the 2D6 bell curve, medium range shots have always been unreliable and long-range shots extremely iffy.  By pushing an even greater ratio of the medium laser's weapon range into the "short" column, you are vastly increasing its effectiveness. By stripping away the ER Large Laser's 7 short range & 14 medium range, you are nearly completely eliminating any advantage it's paying 4 additional heat for. Variable weapon range brackets aren't any more complicated than fixed ones (you're already keeping overall weapon ranges intact - how are those any less complicated than the range brackets themselves?), & trying to remove them will only render even more weapons ineffective! I'm sorry, that's not really an improvement in any way.

EDIT: IF for some reason, range brackets are that complicated to you, consider changing them to multiples - a medium laser's range brackets are multiples of 3, large laser 5, ER Large Laser of 7 & so on. That way you're still just memorizing a single range number per weapon, but you're retaining the essence of the weapon. Not sure what you'd do about weapons like the Snub-Nose PPC, but it'd run into the same problems with your previous method as well.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Papabees on 17 February 2019, 14:13:58
It "just seems to work" for you because you folks are accustomed to playing Battletech a certain way & continue to do so. Hats off to you for not trying to break the spirit of the game in a friendly session, but mathematically, that's what you're proposing. A 5 ton 8 damage 8 heat weapon has no value over a 1 ton, 5 damage 3 heat weapon unless there's some other distinguishing factor. Because of the 2D6 bell curve, medium range shots have always been unreliable and long-range shots extremely iffy.  By pushing an even greater ratio of the medium laser's weapon range into the "short" column, you are vastly increasing its effectiveness. By stripping away the ER Large Laser's 7 short range & 14 medium range, you are nearly completely eliminating any advantage it's paying 4 additional heat for. Variable weapon range brackets aren't any more complicated than fixed ones (you're already keeping overall weapon ranges intact - how are those any less complicated than the range brackets themselves?), & trying to remove them will only render even more weapons ineffective! I'm sorry, that's not really an improvement in any way.
Well it's less complicated because you figure one to hit number and then just roll everything. I get your argument but to say there is no improvement probably isn't fair. I like you favor the variable ranges. One thing that could be done is to basically say that since you have one targeting computer you figure one target number using the worst range. FREX, I fire two PPCs, Two MLas, I use the range of the MLas to determine the to hit for everything . Gives an advantage back to long range weapons and keeps people from firing weapons that really have very little chance to hit. Just another thought.
 
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: MadCapellan on 17 February 2019, 14:20:24
The problem there is that so many weapons in Battletech are only different because of their to-hit numbers. There's only so much you can do with damage values & maximum ranges rarely come into play in a meaningful way. ER Lasers over standard? Better to-hit numbers. Pulse Lasers? Awful if it wasn't for their better to-hit numbers. Light PPC over Medium Laser? Better to-hit numbers. LRMs over MRMs? To-hit numbers. It's such an essential part of the game that you'd need to re-stat all the weapons to make more than a handful of them competitive. At that point, you might as well just write a new robot game.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Fear Factory on 17 February 2019, 16:22:38
Fixed range brackets is a terrible idea - weapons like the medium laser already deal significantly more damage for their weight/heat generated than larger weapons, & eliminating the benefits larger weapons gain from longer short/medium ranges ultimately just makes them even worse vs medium lasers than they already were. The game really doesn't need any more reasons to rush to point-blank range & exchange SRMs, medium lasers & fisticuffs than it already has.

I know what you're saying, but I was way more inclined to get into fisticuffs under the current system. With ours, it's a lot easier to maneuver and easier to hit at range while maneuvering, so you can dance outside of that 9 hex range for the same +2 medium range mod payoff. IMO, just based off of what we have run so far, I'm more inclined to dance in the high end of the short and most of the medium range bracket. I was also all about fast units and fighting at close range in standard BattleTech. It's a sacrifice in the way you described, but I think you're not considering it with the other changes we made. It's simpler, even if the math might be off, but I think the meta changed for the better overall.  :-\

It "just seems to work" for you because you folks are accustomed to playing Battletech a certain way & continue to do so.

Well, then try it out for a few games and then tell us if it's stupid. Part of the reason we started that thread was because too many people throw around ideas on the boards without actually trying them. At least we're trying something and testing it, even if you (an others) think it is "terrible."

...

I mean all of this respectfully. Every time I get into these discussions, for a second, I revisit the option of dropping the hobby like other players here have already done. At this point I feel like it's counter productive for me to buy it anymore. Alpha Strike got me back in, reignited that spark, but now here we are again with the core game causing me grief. I'm tired of hearing that any idea to streamline the game is terrible. Tired of seeing people reject the game because of the same old rules. And those people, like myself, are told to "get good" or talked down on, like BattleTech is the 1st class or a holy grail of gaming. I mean I get it, I'm one guy with a flawed opinion and it doesn't matter.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: nckestrel on 17 February 2019, 16:28:05
Just remember to relax. The thread is starting with the idea that there is something wrong with the current rules. If somebody says there is something wrong with your suggested fix, they’re not doing more than the thread started with.
Remember you don’t have to convince anybody. Nobody is deciding the rules here. Just relax and ignore those you don’t agree with, and add your input. 99% of the people reading your post aren’t replying. Plenty of people have heard your point.  You’ve made your point, don’t get too frustrated over the people that disagree with you vocally. If there’s something useful in what they say, learn from it. If there’s not, move on.
(Reminding myself of most of this is always helpful as well..)
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: ActionButler on 17 February 2019, 16:54:30
Alpha Strike’s fixed ranges are much better than the “range for every flavor of laser”, in my opinion. They keep the simulation of different damage at different ranges without new players constantly needing to check their record sheets.

Heck, I wouldn’t be opposed to trying the game without any range modifiers. If we remove the assumption that each hex is 30 meters and just pretend that any given battle starts out as a proverbial close-quarters knife fight, you’ve already sped up the game without sacrificing the detailed levels of damage.

Alternatively, my personal favorite “fix” is to assume that each hex is much larger than 30 meters and reduce each unit’s speed accordingly, you could move to a Command and Colors-style system where combat only happens at ranges of four or five hexes out.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: MadCapellan on 17 February 2019, 17:16:02
Well, then try it out for a few games and then tell us if it's stupid. Part of the reason we started that thread was because too many people throw around ideas on the boards without actually trying them. At least we're trying something and testing it, even if you (an others) think it is "terrible."

My friend, I've been playing this game religiously for over twenty years. In that time we tried a lot of just terrible ideas to "streamline" the game - no movement heat, aiming shots to the punch table & yes, using a single set of range bands. A single set of range bands isn't a new idea - it's what AS does after all - but that produces a host of other issues that had to be addressed in AS's implementation. I'm not opposed to ways to improve the game, & I'm certainly not replying just to rubbish your ideas, but it's very easy for a tiny group of players to fail to account for the way how they want to play & are accustomed to playing colors the results of their experience. That's where mathmatics come in, & the math is pretty clear that replacing all existing weapon ranges with a single set of bands will invalidate a lot of weapon systems. Maybe you're okay with that. Fair enough! But maybe there's a better way to accomplish your goals for simplification without doing that. I made a suggestion of my own. If you're interested, we could talk more about various possibilities to streamline the combat resolution system. But as proposed, you're discussing a system that would require a rework of weapon systems or a drastic bv revision, at the very least.

Quote
Alpha Strike got me back in, reignited that spark, but now here we are again with the core game causing me grief.

If you get the spark from Alpha Strike, is there a reason you want to still play the main game? It seems to me like Alpha Strike is already giving you most of what you want, & maybe you'd be better off applying rules tweaks to AS than Total Warfare.

 
Quote
I'm tired of hearing that any idea to streamline the game is terrible.

If I felt that way, I wouldn't have bothered entering this thread, but by the same token, any proposed "streamlining" of the rules isn't necessarily good or even truly streamlining. I'm open to discussing what could be better with Battletech, but a lot of apparently simple fixes cause a lot more issues than they resolve.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: MadCapellan on 17 February 2019, 17:45:43
Heck, I wouldn’t be opposed to trying the game without any range modifiers.

Eliminating range modifiers is actually a better suggestion in my mind than a single fixed set of modifiers. The biggest disruption caused by the fixed range bands is that effectiveness for long-range oriented weapons' effectiveness drops off at the same distance as short range weapons. Eliminating all range modifiers would preserve that effectiveness while eliminating one of the rows of the to-hit modifier table. The big problem you'll run into here is that long range weapons will become extremely effective in the opening rounds of the game, & on small boards it may feel like all weapons are in range at all times. If you use that method, you may want to set weapons' existing medium range as their maximum range to prevent close range sluggers from being completely obliterated before they can close across the map!
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Fear Factory on 17 February 2019, 17:48:41
My friend, I've been playing this game religiously for over twenty years. In that time we tried a lot of just terrible ideas to "streamline" the game - no movement heat, aiming shots to the punch table & yes, using a single set of range bands. A single set of range bands isn't a new idea - it's what AS does after all - but that produces a host of other issues that had to be addressed in AS's implementation. I'm not opposed to ways to improve the game, & I'm certainly not replying just to rubbish your ideas, but it's very easy for a tiny group of players to fail to account for the way how they want to play & are accustomed to playing colors the results of their experience. That's where mathmatics come in, & the math is pretty clear that replacing all existing weapon ranges with a single set of bands will invalidate a lot of weapon systems. Maybe you're okay with that. Fair enough! But maybe there's a better way to accomplish your goals for simplification without doing that. I made a suggestion of my own. If you're interested, we could talk more about various possibilities to streamline the combat resolution system. But as proposed, you're discussing a system that would require a rework of weapon systems or a drastic bv revision, at the very least.

I know who you are. I've played for about 20 years, just not as religiously as you have. You've been on the forums for a long time. You can apply the same pack mentality we have with our house rules with current rule set as it has stood since the 80's. The same arguments pop up over and over again, may it be how sluggish games are or even how much the clans broke the game, and there is a reason for it. It's not just because people don't want to learn the game.

If you really have ideas about how to handle range brackets or anything else that replaces my crappy ideas, by all means, PLEASE PM them to me because I'm willing to try it out. There is obviously something I'm not grasping about game balance. You seriously just killed my interest to even attempt anything else on the core game, or possibly play it again unless it's in MegaMek. Alpha Strike might just be the only game for me. (EDIT: There is zero sarcasm here, I'm not trying to be snarky if I am coming off that way.)  :-\

If you get the spark from Alpha Strike, is there a reason you want to still play the main game? It seems to me like Alpha Strike is already giving you most of what you want, & maybe you'd be better off applying rules tweaks to AS than Total Warfare.

Alpha Strike is too abstract, even though I love it for what it is. It's a love-hate-love relationship. :-\
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: MadCapellan on 17 February 2019, 18:00:47
Well, I suggested having all range brackets be multiples of a single value (3/6/9, 4/8/12, 5/10/15, etc.), eliminating all the odd weapon combinations like the ER Large Laser (7/14/19?) or just eliminating range brackets entirely as suggested by ActionButler & simply give all weapons a maximum effective range equal to their current medium range. I'm sure we could consider a number of other possibilities as well, but if we're looking to give all weapons the same to-hit value, we might as well stick with Alpha Strike as a base, I suspect.

Alpha Strike is too abstract, even though I love it for what it is. It's a love-hate-love relationship. :-\

What parts of Battletech do you feel are missing from Alpha Strike? Maybe there's a way to add those back into Alpha Strike rather than trying to pull Total Warfare more towards AS?
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 17 February 2019, 18:29:24
What parts of Battletech do you feel are missing from Alpha Strike? Maybe there's a way to add those back into Alpha Strike rather than trying to pull Total Warfare more towards AS?

Even as somebody who absolutely loves Alpha Strike, the things that most frequently get mentioned as "I miss X part of BattleTech" are degrading performance as a result of locational damage, finer tuned heat management, and a perceived loss in the importance of individual unit's movement.

The latter is almost certainly a matter of experience and transitioning to new rules, coupled at least a little bit with having to get used to no longer micromanaging fast units' movement to maximize TMMs.

The former two are... not particularly possible to implement in Alpha Strike as it stands without effectively redoing the entire thing, and yanking it out of the niche it fills.

It's not about "moving Total Warfare toward Alpha Strike" it's about modernizing Total Warfare to attract and keep new players.  The two concepts are unrelated outside of the fairly uncontroversial opinion that Alpha Strike is a more modern game (and it shows).
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: abou on 17 February 2019, 18:30:17
MadCap, I have to admit that I thought about this over the afternoon and I am conflicted. Initially the idea of the alternate rules set was to induce a left-shift towards lowering to-hit numbers. By doing that you speed up the game. The other was to simplify the math for players, which is not a problem for me, but a common complaint. As it stands, the bracket solution is simply a compromise to achieve goals of game play.

On the other hand, I do agree with you and cannot get around the fact that the traditional ranges are there for a reason. One only need look at a Warhammer standing at 7 hexes to very quickly see where the problems are with the simplified system. In traditional rules, it is much wiser to fire the two PPCs for 20 heat since you generate a lower to-hit. However, with a bracketing system, it is probably smarter to fire one PPC, both medium lasers, and the SRM-6 for 20 heat. Yes, the PPC delivers a greater amount of damage to a single location, but you will do more damage over all with the second choice.

So, is there maybe a better answer that satisfies a quicker play style and simplification? Is the 3 hex window that larger weapons have over medium lasers while still being in medium range enough of an advantage? I don't know. You wouldn't want longer range hits to be too easy, but maybe you keep range modifiers lower. Maybe to-hit is changed from 0/+2/+4 to 0/+1/+3 or 0/+1/+2?

I don't have an easy answer. I know that if you and I were gaming partners, I wouldn't mind keeping the traditional rules set. Although I would probably still push for buffed autocannons.

PS. I've been playing the game since 1995 and I've made every mistake there is and thought about the game a lot.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Fear Factory on 17 February 2019, 18:54:19
Well, I suggested having all range brackets be multiples of a single value (3/6/9, 4/8/12, 5/10/15, etc.), eliminating all the odd weapon combinations like the ER Large Laser (7/14/19?) or just eliminating range brackets entirely as suggested by ActionButler & simply give all weapons a maximum effective range equal to their current medium range. I'm sure we could consider a number of other possibilities as well, but if we're looking to give all weapons the same to-hit value, we might as well stick with Alpha Strike as a base, I suspect.

I don't know if you realized it, just to be clear, but we do it like this:

Range brackets are 1-6 short, 7-12 medium, 13-24 long, 25+ extreme, all across the board, with the same +0/+2/+4/+6 modifiers. All weapons follow this but they have a maximum range on top of that.

So a medium laser effectively goes from being 3/6/9 to 6/9/-
A large laser 5/10/15 to 6/12/15
PPC 6/12/18 min 3
LRM's 6/12/21 min 6
SRM's 6/9/-
Machine gun 3/-/-

People go in assuming we're lumping weapons together like Aerotech and automatically throw it out because they miss the maximum range part. The maximum range helps keep a lot of the advantages bigger weapons have over smaller systems because they can still out range them. This, coupled with the Alpha Strike inspired movement system we have, seems to flow nicely. But yes, I understand that it does remove the ability for a weapon like the ER large laser to get a short range modifier at 7 hexes against a medium laser's +4 long range mod. The option is just to maneuver and stay outside of short range OR stay outside of the medium laser's maximum range of 9. The tactics are still there, it's just abstracted a bit more to keep the game moving at a decent pace.

However, this only really works because of the movement system we use with it, because you can only use your walking mode AND fire. Running was changed to sprinting. This makes it a lot harder to close in on your target. So the medium loses a bit more because of that, it seems. I don't want to derail this thread any further, though. I'm passionate about this because I felt like we had something that was a worthy compromise. It legitimately got me excited about playing again. Knowing that you changed Abou's mind... I just don't know anymore, because all this experience showed me is that I'm not all that interested in the core game anymore.

What parts of Battletech do you feel are missing from Alpha Strike? Maybe there's a way to add those back into Alpha Strike rather than trying to pull Total Warfare more towards AS?

Alpha Strike is way too abstract to achieve the amount of grit that BattleTech has, which is why IMO people try and modify the core game more often. I was in a campaign that went over a year and it felt good, but it wasn't really the same because of its scale. Abou pointed it out to me before, but BattleTech is unique in the way that 'Mechs can lose limbs and suffer critical hits because of its attention to detail. You really do miss out on a lot when you play Alpha Strike, but as it stands, Alpha Strike flows a lot better and is more appealing to the modern gamer because of it.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: MadCapellan on 17 February 2019, 20:13:52
Alpha Strike is way too abstract to achieve the amount of grit that BattleTech has, which is why IMO people try and modify the core game more often. I was in a campaign that went over a year and it felt good, but it wasn't really the same because of its scale. Abou pointed it out to me before, but BattleTech is unique in the way that 'Mechs can lose limbs and suffer critical hits because of its attention to detail. You really do miss out on a lot when you play Alpha Strike, but as it stands, Alpha Strike flows a lot better and is more appealing to the modern gamer because of it.

The former two are... not particularly possible to implement in Alpha Strike as it stands without effectively redoing the entire thing, and yanking it out of the niche it fills.

You'd be writing a lot of rules whole-cloth to be sure, but I don't see any reason why you couldn't create hit locations or create more granular heat management or damage degradation for Alpha Strike. If all you want is limbs blown of, a to-hit table & separate locations could certainly be made for the system with limited effort. Render AS's critical hit results more location specific & you're practically good to go.

Quote
It's not about "moving Total Warfare toward Alpha Strike" it's about modernizing Total Warfare to attract and keep new players.  The two concepts are unrelated outside of the fairly uncontroversial opinion that Alpha Strike is a more modern game (and it shows).

I followed as much. Alpha Strike got dragged into the conversation because Fear Factory was advocating eliminating variable weapon range brackets, something Alpha Strike has already done & somewhat accounted for. That, combined with him already expressing enjoyment of Alpha Strike made me wonder why he'd want to go back to a system he seems to have a lot of issues with.

MadCap, I have to admit that I thought about this over the afternoon and I am conflicted. Initially the idea of the alternate rules set was to induce a left-shift towards lowering to-hit numbers. By doing that you speed up the game. The other was to simplify the math for players, which is not a problem for me, but a common complaint. As it stands, the bracket solution is simply a compromise to achieve goals of game play.

Lowering to-hit numbers is an understandable objective especially when attempting to speed game-play, but doing it by changing the range brackets is actually increasing the to-hit numbers of your longer range weapons, so it's counter to your intention. The math isn't particularly simplified, either, although you may be doing fewer overall calculations if they are all the same value across all weapons. Still, I believe the end result you'll get is a substantially shallower, less balanced game.

Reducing ranged to-hit numbers to 0/+1/+3 isn't a bad idea if you don't mind medium-range fire becoming substantially more effective, but if you're looking for a way to reduce TNs across the board, just giving everyone superior gunnery skills is an easy way to lower them across the board w/o impacting game balance!

I don't know if you realized it, just to be clear, but we do it like this:

I followed you, but as I said this method has an inversely negative impact on longer range weapons, because hexes with a +0 to-hit are significantly more valuable than hexes at a +2 or +4 to-hit due to the way that impacts the die results of the 2D6 bell curve. Let's compare the accuracy of the medium laser & ER PPC under the standard & your house rules.
Wpn                   Short        Medium       Long                Avg Accuracy
                         72.2%       41.6%         16.6%
Official Rules
ER PPC               1-7 hexes  8-14 hexes  15-23 hexes     41.13%
Medium Laser     1-3 hexes  4-6 hexes     7-9 hexes        43.46%
Proposed Rules
ER PPC               1-6 hexes  7-12 hexes  13-23 hexes     37.62%
Medium Laser     1-6 hexes  7-9 hexes    -                      62%

Under the official rules, the average accuracy across the range of both weapons is roughly identical. Under your proposed system, the medium laser becomes nearly twice as accurate across the length of its effective range as the ER PPC, as the ER PPC sees a significant drop in effectiveness across multiple hexes while the medium laser is buffed in 2/3rds of its range brackets. This is terrible for making the game more interesting because it makes fewer weapons effective at dealing damage, and is terrible for game balance because you've made certain weapons significantly more effective than they previously were while rendering others worse, particularly in a way which is hardest of the weapons that are already the more questionable choices, like light ACs.

Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Fear Factory on 17 February 2019, 20:55:08
I followed you, but as I said this method has an inversely negative impact on longer range weapons, because hexes with a +0 to-hit are significantly more valuable than hexes at a +2 or +4 to-hit due to the way that impacts the die results of the 2D6 bell curve. Let's compare the accuracy of the medium laser & ER PPC under the standard & your house rules.
Wpn                   Short        Medium       Long                Avg Accuracy
                         72.2%       41.6%         16.6%
Official Rules
ER PPC               1-7 hexes  8-14 hexes  15-23 hexes     41.13%
Medium Laser     1-3 hexes  4-6 hexes     7-9 hexes        43.46%
Proposed Rules
ER PPC               1-6 hexes  7-12 hexes  13-23 hexes     37.62%
Medium Laser     1-6 hexes  7-9 hexes    -                      62%

Under the official rules, the average accuracy across the range of both weapons is roughly identical. Under your proposed system, the medium laser becomes nearly twice as accurate across the length of its effective range as the ER PPC, as the ER PPC sees a significant drop in effectiveness across multiple hexes while the medium laser is buffed in 2/3rds of its range brackets. This is terrible for making the game more interesting because it makes fewer weapons effective at dealing damage, and is terrible for game balance because you've made certain weapons significantly more effective than they previously were while rendering others worse, particularly in a way which is hardest of the weapons that are already the more questionable choices, like light ACs.

Look, I'm not an expert when it comes to math, especially statistics and probability in most cases, so I'm totally going to show it here...

I'm just not seeing the advantage a Medium Laser has over an ER PPC outside of 9 hexes. The way I see it, both weapons could be 100% accurate in all 9 hexes of the laser's range, but the medium laser is never ever EVER going to win outside of 9 hexes because it can't reach. The ER PPC has a 14 hex advantage. So the ER PPC isn't as accurate overall because it has more modifiers to worry about, but it's not going to matter outside of 9 hexes since both weapons are just as accurate within 9 hexes.

Within 9 hexes, if you spam medium lasers you're going to win in raw damage, but it's not going to be any more accurate than a single ER PPC. Isn't this a problem that already exists though?
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 17 February 2019, 21:05:12
In general, I think it would benefit BattleTech to streamline some things about the vast array of different weapon types, and range brackets is one of those.  I think in general that should be in standardization of brackets; of all the issues I have with BattleTech, the concept of range brackets are not one of them.

Each set of brackets being evenly divisible by a common number is important (which is just a fancy way of saying keep it 3/6/9 or 5/10/15, etc.) for both recall and for quickly eyeballing ranges.  There are a couple balance decisions I'd make during that process, but ultimately the entire point is make the whole catalog more approachable.  If I see the tag "ER" on a weapon, it should be easy for me to know off the top of my head "those weapons are on the next highest range bracket".  Arguably with the extra weight and heat, "Pulse" should mean a hit bonus (I favor half range penalties) at the same ranges.

That's like.... way down the list of things that I'd consider changing first, though.  First on the chopping block is the 2d6 location table, the critical hit resolution tables, and the cluster hits table.

EDIT: "average accuracy"?  That looks, sounds, and feels like a made up statistic to prove a made up point.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Fear Factory on 17 February 2019, 21:10:53
EDIT: "average accuracy"?  That looks, sounds, and feels like a made up statistic to prove a made up point.

I don't think it's made up. I just think taking the average of a weapon with a 9 hex range, and comparing that to the average of a weapon that reaches out to 23 hexes, without taking in consideration the 14 hex difference that the other weapon can't even reach, isn't right/fair. Unless I'm not understanding something which is why I asked.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Daryk on 17 February 2019, 21:14:11
Perhaps put more simply: you're talking about extending the short range of a Medium Laser to 6 hexes.  Holy cow!  Why on earth would I mount anything else when fighting on the postage stamp sized maps of most games?  Speed plus Medium Lasers = WIN under that paradigm.  As someone else said up thread, Medium Lasers don't need any more boosting.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: MadCapellan on 17 February 2019, 21:21:24
I'm just not seeing the advantage a Medium Laser has over an ER PPC outside of 9 hexes.

I'm not saying the medium laser has an advantage over the ER PPC outside of 9 hexes, I'm saying that because of the way the way the 2D6 bell curve interacts with the +2 to hit modifier of the range brackets, shots outside of short range are significantly less effective than shots within short range, and shots within long range are significantly less effective than shots within medium range. Ergo, for 5 more tons & 9 more heat, the ER PPC is no more effective than 2 medium lasers out to 9 hexes under your proposed rules, & that is a significant problem. Look at your chances to hit with a base to-hit number of 6+: 72.2% at short but almost half that, 41.6% at medium range. How much would you bet on a 40% outcome? What about 16.6% at long range? Probably not very much, because more likely than not you'd lose, & there-in lies the problem. You've doubled the effectiveness of the medium laser while making nearly all of the ER PPC's range advantage ineffective, when the weapon is already significantly heavier, generates more heat, & will deliver less damage than just loading up on medium lasers.

Quote
Within 9 hexes, if you spam medium lasers you're going to win in raw damage, but it's not going to be any more accurate than a single ER PPC.

Technically, because you are rolling more weapons, you are far more likely to score one or more hits with multiple medium lasers than with the ER PPC, & selecting the same heat worth of medium lasers will deliver more damage more frequently than you'll get from the ER PPC.

Quote
Isn't this a problem that already exists though?

To some extent yes, but the proposed rules substantially exacerbate the problem. Medium Lasers are already an extremely efficient way to turn tonnage & heat into damage at 1-3 hexes. extending that to six doesn't make things better for every other weapon in the game.

EDIT: "average accuracy"?  That looks, sounds, and feels like a made up statistic to prove a made up point.

Are you trying to tell me that having shorter range brackets won't result in more misses when shots are taken at the same target at the same range? Reducing range brackets means reduced overall accuracy. You can try to say that most people won't take shots at long range, but that just points back to the fact that taking shots at long range isn't really worth doing due to how inaccurate it is.

Perhaps put more simply: you're talking about extending the short range of a Medium Laser to 6 hexes.  Holy cow!  Why on earth would I mount anything else when fighting on the postage stamp sized maps of most games?  Speed plus Medium Lasers = WIN under that paradigm.  As someone else said up thread, Medium Lasers don't need any more boosting.

EXACTLY
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Fear Factory on 17 February 2019, 21:50:03
I concede.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 17 February 2019, 22:46:54
Are you trying to tell me that having shorter range brackets won't result in more misses when shots are taken at the same target at the same range? Reducing range brackets means reduced overall accuracy. You can try to say that most people won't take shots at long range, but that just points back to the fact that taking shots at long range isn't really worth doing due to how inaccurate it is.

I'm suggesting that "average accuracy" is a terrible way to illustrate that issue, because the worst pulse laser in the game has a higher average accuracy now than anything you could hope to prove with the comparison you used, and the Heavy machine Gun has one of the highest "average accuracy" % in the game.

Your point was made with follow-up clarification but good lord is that a terrible metric to put any stock into.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Papabees on 17 February 2019, 23:09:44
"Pulse" should mean a hit bonus (I favor half range penalties) at the same ranges.

That's like.... way down the list of things that I'd consider changing first, though.  First on the chopping block is the 2d6 location table, the critical hit resolution tables, and the cluster hits table.

Totally with you. As stated up thread I feel like the biggest issue with the rules is everything that happens after I roll to hit.

On a side note, interesting idea with pulse lasers.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Fear Factory on 18 February 2019, 02:14:32
Well, if any of you are interested, this thread inspired me to focus my frustration on finishing a simple expansion (https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=64430.0) onto the Beginner Box I've been working on since I opened it. The quick start rules look great. My old project was called BattleStrike, but I scraped that and about started over.

All it does:

1 - Add a simplified heat scale without changing weapon stats
2 - Add pilot hits caused by head hits and ammo explosions from heat
3 - Add an abstract critical hit system using the standard chart with Alpha Strike-ish results
4 - Expand on terrain (Just threw in Depth 1 water, level changes, rough terrain, and partial cover)
5 - (Optional) Add physical attacks, either do one of those or fire weapons, all in the weapons attack phase.

I'm over trying to make suggestions on the base game. It's a losing battle.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: MadCapellan on 18 February 2019, 08:00:43
I'm suggesting that "average accuracy" is a terrible way to illustrate that issue, because the worst pulse laser in the game has a higher average accuracy now than anything you could hope to prove with the comparison you used, and the Heavy machine Gun has one of the highest "average accuracy" % in the game.

Your point was made with follow-up clarification but good lord is that a terrible metric to put any stock into.

Those weapons may be terrible, but the reason they are terrible isn't their accuracy! My intent was to show how big a difference the proposed rules made to weapon accuracy with a single value. It was the best way I could come up with on the spot to illustrate how much accuracy was being gained/lost. Yes, it is reflects only a single attribute of a weapon - it's average accuracy across the length of its range - but as that was the issue at hand & that was being discussed, I don't see why assigning it a specific value is inherently without merit.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Fear Factory on 18 February 2019, 12:51:17
Those weapons may be terrible, but the reason they are terrible isn't their accuracy! My intent was to show how big a difference the proposed rules made to weapon accuracy with a single value. It was the best way I could come up with on the spot to illustrate how much accuracy was being gained/lost. Yes, it is reflects only a single attribute of a weapon - it's average accuracy across the length of its range - but as that was the issue at hand & that was being discussed, I don't see why assigning it a specific value is inherently without merit.

I agree with you that the bracket thing was a terrible idea. We thought a maximum range cap per weapon would help, but obviously not. However, it looks far more terrible than what it should because your numbers assume two things:

1) Out ranging the medium laser, either by stats or combined with the mobility or range to do that, doesn't matter.
2) Every player is just going to spam medium lasers and fight in short range on 1 map. Which honestly has also been an issue under the current system.

So what is the actual issue here? Range no matter how it's been done since the 80's? Or weapon balance, which has been a pretty big issue with no attempts to fix it? All we get are band aids through weapons/equipment bloat, or blow it up with double heat sinks and ClanTech? Can't even do a simple fix for the infamous/rumored minimum range typo for Clan LRM's.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: MadCapellan on 18 February 2019, 13:14:41
In my experience, it is never a weapon's maximum long range that matters - it is its maximum short range. The drop off in accuracy at medium range & beyond due to the interplay between the 2D6 bell curve & the +2 per bracket modifier makes engagement at medium range questionable unless standing still & long range more of a crap-shoot than a valid tactic. Being able to attack you opponent at short range when their weapons are at medium or long is a very valid & beneficial tactic. Striking at long-range from outside your enemy's weapon range won't accomplish anything unless your gauss rifle is lucky enough to score boxcars or you roll a floating crit. The medium laser is a tad unbalanced due to its efficiency, but staying outside 3 hexes & still being effective is pretty easy under the standard rules - 6 hexes when all weapons have the same short range? Not so much.

So what is the issue? I don't have much of an issue with the weapon to hit rules, so I'm not sure I should be the judge, but imbalance between weapons strikes me as a larger issue than the ranged to-hit rules overall, although I offered a few suggestions regarding that area.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: abou on 18 February 2019, 13:41:28
I saw someone suggested a 3D6 roll for to-hit. That is interesting. But does that make things more complicated or do you need to muck with modifiers to make it work?

It could potentially increase the benefit to medium and long-range combat. However, does that open another can of worms?
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 18 February 2019, 14:07:41
I saw someone suggested a 3D6 roll for to-hit. That is interesting. But does that make things more complicated or do you need to muck with modifiers to make it work?

It could potentially increase the benefit to medium and long-range combat. However, does that open another can of worms?

depends on how easily you want to hit things. 12s is a 37% chance to hit with 3d6. 8s become an 84% success (181/216 possibilities). short range combat essentially becomes a turkey shoot.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: abou on 18 February 2019, 14:10:52
Oi... yeah, I don't like turkey that much anyway.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: MadCapellan on 18 February 2019, 14:47:13
The more dice you add to a roll, the more results cluster toward the median result. 3D6 will make results of 10-11 exceedingly common. If you're looking to flatten the effects of modifiers, you should try a 1D12 instead. This wouls have the knock-on effect of making shots at 12 significantly easier to hit, & head hits/crits much more common if you use it for hit locations......
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 18 February 2019, 15:04:26
D12 also gives you an extra permiatation as 2d6 can’t roll 1. The fringe hits of 10+ get a huge boost. Law of unintended consequences bites you with much more common failures on even normally easy PSRs and things like RAC jams
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: NeonKnight on 18 February 2019, 15:18:10
The more dice you add to a roll, the more results cluster toward the median result. 3D6 will make results of 10-11 exceedingly common. If you're looking to flatten the effects of modifiers, you should try a 1D12 instead. This wouls have the knock-on effect of making shots at 12 significantly easier to hit, & head hits/crits much more common if you use it for hit locations......

Personally, I'd rather make the jump to 2d10's

numbers between 2-20, would be nice.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 18 February 2019, 15:39:44
It's beneficial to keep things as simple in terms of materials required as possible.  All rolls using D6s is one of BattleTech's exemplary qualities.  D6s are everywhere.  Everyone has D6s.

Not everybody has D10s, and not everything in BattleTech could use D10s.  Moving to D10s would be a net negative to the end user.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Daryk on 18 February 2019, 15:46:42
If you need proof of what Scotty says here, just see 3rd Edition MechWarrior...  ::)
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bedwyr on 18 February 2019, 15:55:42
How about this idea. Go back to a cluster hit template (damage focused on hit location with damage to adjacent locations) and to re-introduce the lost chance of the hits damaging something important (head/crit), include some kind of aiming mechanic whether pulling from TO or coming up with something wholly different.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Greatclub on 18 February 2019, 17:09:02
Battletech has survived 35 years with little modification to the core of the game - lots of add-ons, but the core remains intact. How many other games can say that? Risk, Axis & Allies, a couple of the historical games?

Yeah, rolling on cluster, hit location, and critical gets tedious, and really should get a phone app, but it's so core to the results that it shouldn't be eliminated. IMHO, doing so would be throwing out the baby with the dirty bathwater.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 18 February 2019, 18:03:45
Battletech has survived 35 years with little modification to the core of the game - lots of add-ons, but the core remains intact. How many other games can say that? Risk, Axis & Allies, a couple of the historical games?

Mentioning other games where the primary complaint against them is how long they take to play seems like it doesn't recommend BattleTech very well.

Y
eah, rolling on cluster, hit location, and critical gets tedious, and really should get a phone app, but it's so core to the results that it shouldn't be eliminated. IMHO, doing so would be throwing out the baby with the dirty bathwater.

I feel like a not-insignificant number of older BT fans have Stockholm Syndrome'd themselves into liking how much time it takes to resolve decisions, or at least convinced themselves that It's necessary to preserve the spirit of the gameplay.

It's not.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Daryk on 18 February 2019, 18:35:42
No Stockholm here... It's how I choose to spend my time.  BattleTech is an armor focused game vice weapons.  40K is weapons focused, and that's what leads to the high casualty rate.  From the discussion here, it seems that's at least one definition of a "modern" game.  The real world is also weapons focused, and having been shot at, I'm more than happy to play a game where that doesn't automatically mean "one kill" if they hit.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: MadCapellan on 18 February 2019, 19:02:21
No Stockholm here... It's how I choose to spend my time.  BattleTech is an armor focused game vice weapons.  40K is weapons focused, and that's what leads to the high casualty rate.  From the discussion here, it seems that's at least one definition of a "modern" game. 

It's only "modern" in the sense that it's good for miniatures companies from a sales perspective, so that's what they tend to write. Games where units are rapidly eliminated by weapons fire are games that encourage purchasing more miniatures, because each individual miniature has less of a chance of having a meaningful effect on the game. You don't see many games geared towards conflicts between 4 miniatures on a side because that doesn't help the miniatures company's bottom line.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: nckestrel on 18 February 2019, 20:01:06
You don't see many games geared towards conflicts between 4 miniatures on a side because that doesn't help the miniatures company's bottom line.

If you get out of miniature gaming and into board games..
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 18 February 2019, 20:02:05
“I’ve been playing since high school and graduated in a year starting with 7, 8, or 9” probably isn’t the sensibility required to sell to the prime demos that buy the bulk of hobby stuff.

The quaintness of the rules won’t pay the bills forever, especially in short order after the old timers retire from buying BT stuff
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Daryk on 18 February 2019, 20:06:40
Even at average life expectancy, I figure I've got at least another 30 years before I have to "retire" from buying BattleTech...
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Papabees on 18 February 2019, 20:11:22
Yeah, rolling on cluster, hit location, and critical gets tedious, and really should get a phone app
There is one "the Battletech Dice roller"
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 18 February 2019, 20:31:06
Even at average life expectancy, I figure I've got at least another 30 years before I have to "retire" from buying BattleTech...

Not too many industries besides life insurance are betting on mass participation from that age group
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Daryk on 18 February 2019, 20:40:36
Sure there are, but that's a Rule 4 discussion if I ever thought of one...
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 18 February 2019, 20:50:54
No Stockholm here... It's how I choose to spend my time.  BattleTech is an armor focused game vice weapons.  40K is weapons focused, and that's what leads to the high casualty rate.  From the discussion here, it seems that's at least one definition of a "modern" game.  The real world is also weapons focused, and having been shot at, I'm more than happy to play a game where that doesn't automatically mean "one kill" if they hit.

See, this is kind of what I mean (regarding the second suggestion, not the first).  The primary thing slowing down BattleTech is not armor or its relative lack of importance.  It's, as Bedwyr's friend Mike said "I could write a computer program to do all of this so much faster".  It's a huge time sink not because of playing the game, but because of figuring out what the thing you did actually just accomplished.  The fact that MegaMek even exists is a fantastic example, because I could play a MegaMek game with a friend and the whole thing up to Lance size would take maybe an hour, if that.  Putting in actually on the table doubles or triples the time spent.  That's not time spent playing, it's time spent manually cranking the game's gears.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 18 February 2019, 21:09:55
It’s not so much that as a diminishing number of people find that aspect of the game appealing. Fun inefficiency is acceptable. It’s when the people you’re trying to sell the product find that aspect tedious that there an issue
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Daryk on 18 February 2019, 21:13:43
MegaMek must have improved leaps and bounds since I last tried it, then.  An AI company vs. company battle I set up (admittedly, years ago) took about a day to resolve.

I have to admit I'm also a little mystified at the people here who think they know what "the masses" are thinking.  That kind of knowledge is expensive.  Most of us here don't even have CGL's actual sales figures to go by.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 18 February 2019, 21:43:09
It’s obviously not enough to take on extra staff. Or that this is the first box in 5.5 to 6 years. I ran a campaign almost every week for five years  and helped my local agent at least once a month on Saturdays and the most common answer I got when I asked people to play was “yeah that was fun 15-20 years ago I play 40k/war machine/infinity xwing/netrunner/mtg now” - and this wasn’t some small shop. The 40k or mtg tournaments completely filled a 2000 sqft playing area to the point where they’d tell us to kick rocks if we tried to get one table on an event. I don’t need sales figures when the obvious is staring me right in the face
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: ActionButler on 18 February 2019, 21:47:14
Battletech has survived 35 years with little modification to the core of the game - lots of add-ons, but the core remains intact. How many other games can say that? Risk, Axis & Allies, a couple of the historical games?

There is a lot of truth in this. BattleTech has survived the test of time using the exact same rules that it has had for ages and that is pretty darned good.  The game does a very good job of catering to a certain subset of gamers who like very crunchy, very slow, very crunchy rules. However...

“I’ve been playing since high school and graduated in a year starting with 7, 8, or 9” probably isn’t the sensibility required to sell to the prime demos that buy the bulk of hobby stuff.

The quaintness of the rules won’t pay the bills forever, especially in short order after the old timers retire from buying BT stuff

There is also a lot of truth here. How much of Battletech’s survival is due to the fact that it appeals to a very niche group of gamers who will not be around to rebuy the same rules forever and ever? CGL made it very clear that they didn’t care if all of the new box sets were bought up by old timers, and that makes sense because if the product flies off the shelves, that shows demand. But if all that demand comes from the same people, the game won’t survive once that same group stops buying stuff.

More to the point, is that all we want to see out of BattleTech? Is just surviving good enough?  Especially if the cost of holding on to a set of 30 year old rules is that we eliminate the possibility that the game might flourish if it were to adopt faster, less crunchy rules?
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 18 February 2019, 22:49:06
It's fine to be crunchy it just needs less grit gumming up the gears.  I keep coming back to the cluster hits table, critical hit tables (because there are multiple), and the pointless detail of the hit location chart because they're very obvious extra layers that don't do anything but make resolving attacks take longer.

Mods, forgive me if I'm getting too close to Fan Rules territory.

It's been mentioned previously that moving on from the cluster hits table can be accomplished by making currently cluster weapons a fixed amount of damage to one location and another fixed amount to adjacent locations.  Ultras are one place that this becomes cumbersome but I don't think it's a particularly unheard of option to have them roll to hit twice (especially if the second shot is at a penalty to prevent an Ultra AC from being just two ACs taped together).  For everything else assigning damage adjacent works fine.

The various levels of critical hits tables and endless rolling to determine which slot you hit (seriously, it can go for a long damn time if crits have already started piling up) can be replaced with a fixed table by location; you could even replace the huge pile of mostly empty space where the current critical location table is with that.  A single roll and a single result, whether that's a destroyed weapon, an ammunition explosion, an engine or gyro hit, a limb blown off, whathaveyou. 

Critical hits are one of those places where there can be a ludicrous number of dice rolled in order to accomplish absolutely nothing when a hand actuator gets blown off.  I mean, what are the actual results when a critical hit check happens?  Most of the time, nothing.  Sometimes you lose something utterly meaningless.  Rarely, you lose something important like a weapon.  Equally rarely, you might take some MP damage or reduced effectiveness out of an arm.  Very rarely you have something truly catastrophic happen that kills the 'Mech.  What we as players trick ourselves into thinking is that anything significant happens on any given crit check, but in reality the vast majority of times a crit check happens the result is nothing.

Cut out the middle-man.  Structure damage to an arm?  Roll 2d6.  On a 2-6, nothing happens.  On a 7-8, an actuator is damaged; +1 to things in that arm.  On a 9, an important actuator got hit, +2 to things in that arm.  On a 10, say that a weapon got hit, destroy one at random.  If that weapon has ammo, make another check to see if it explodes (9+ maybe?  Spitballing here).  If there is no weapon but there is ammo, pick a ton at random to explode.  If there is no weapon or ammo, upgrade to an 11: arm disabled, can't do anything with it but it can still take damage.  On a 12, the limb is just plain gone.

And just like that, we've reduced a process that used to take potentially a dozen rolls (everyone on this board has experienced what happens on a 'Mech with seven slots occupied in an arm, you're lying if you say you haven't) and now it takes exactly one in the vast majority of results, and a whopping two at maximum.  The detail lost is negligible: the sum total of things that you used to be able to have but can no longer achieve are individually striking poorly placed heatsinks and electronics equipment.  That's it.  Truly a staggering loss.

Location tables are more complex and are absolutely infringing on fan rules in the wrong board, but it's entirely possible to similarly streamline the process without losing the detail that makes BattleTech BattleTech.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: AlphaMirage on 18 February 2019, 22:53:20
I like the vehicle style crit hit for Mechs.  It's tough to work through a dozen internal SRMs end game even if you are fast
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Greatclub on 18 February 2019, 23:12:43
(everyone on this board has experienced what happens on a 'Mech with seven slots occupied in an arm, you're lying if you say you haven't)

Haven't in a while, actually; that's what D8 are for. Also the D12, D10, D4 and a defaced quarter.

Codifying that and re-numbering crit slots on the sheet? I'm up for that.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 18 February 2019, 23:13:39
Haven't in a while, actually; that's what D8 are for.

If your answer to problematic rules is "don't follow them, make up your own" thank you for making my point for me.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Greatclub on 18 February 2019, 23:17:02
If your answer to problematic rules is "don't follow them, make up your own" thank you for making my point for me.

I'm using the rule, just using a hack to speed up the rules execution. There is a significant difference.

edit - It's equivalent to using a box-o-doom instead of making homebrew to get rid of critseeking.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 18 February 2019, 23:21:54
I'm using the rule, just using a hack to speed up the rules execution. There is a significant difference.

You'll have to point out to me the part of the rulebook that describes D8s and how to use them, because if you're not using a D6 you're not actually using the rule.

Which is entirely besides the point you're still making for me that if you have to use a hack the rules are clearly deficient.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 18 February 2019, 23:27:51
that's not even the primary issue with rolling for crits. you could start with the fact that neonknight made a cheat sheet table for crit effects to common components that's a half page - and it's constructed not insignificantly from footnotes.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: AdmiralObvious on 18 February 2019, 23:29:34
The current system is roll a D6 to get the "half" of the Mech that's hit, and another D6 for what actually gets hit. The only real reason I see that being a thing is because you have to be able to hit slot 1 somehow. I don't see why using a single die is any worse than the current system, you've got fairer odds with it.

I think the only reason the rule is the way it is, is because it's easier to use a D6, since they're the most common die out there.

It's a matter of time versus practicality of production and a way for players to just add in whatever they have on hand, instead of "you need a D(insert # that isn't 6 here) to play". You're sacrificing time for practicality.

Edit: It's also worth mentioning that there are 6 parts to any Mech (except for tripods) and using a D6 keeps it simple.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Greatclub on 18 February 2019, 23:29:40
You'll have to point out to me the part of the rulebook that describes D8s and how to use them, because if you're not using a D6 you're not actually using the rule.

...I'm unsure if you're serious or deliberately straw-manning.

it's not in the book, and you need a set of D&D dice to do it. if there are 11 or 12 items in a location, use a D12. If there are 9 or 10, use a D10. 7 or 8, use a D8. I'm sure you can see the rest of the progression.

Quote
Which is entirely besides the point you're still making for me that if you have to use a hack the rules are clearly deficient.

It works out as the same odds, but you need the poly dice. Since those would add another $5-10 to a box set, it would probably be best to just tack it as an optional procedure in the BMM.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 18 February 2019, 23:34:52
...I'm unsure if you're serious or deliberately straw-manning.

I'm completely serious, because even though you don't seem to care much, the fact that

it's not in the book

is really significant.  And equally significant, that it won't be in the book, because

and you need a you need a set of D&D dice to do it.

is not something that's ever going to get published in a BattleTech book (and for good reason, not needing a set of polyhedrals is one of the best decisions FASA and CGL ever made and stuck with).

You're not explaining some wild new way to streamline the game, but you're doing an excellent job whether you think it's silly or not of explaining why a new player is more likely to skip off of BattleTech like a stone on water than most other contemporary games.

EDIT: put a bit more directly: if you don't understand how this is a problem, you're part of it.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Crimson Dawn on 18 February 2019, 23:40:18
I think the point being made is that if you are actively avoiding following the rule directly as written by using a "hack" because you find the original to be too slow then that kind of implies that the rule is not ideal.  If it was why would you feel like you want/need to use a hack?
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 18 February 2019, 23:44:37
I think the point being made is that if you are actively avoiding following the rule directly as written by using a "hack" because you find the original to be too slow then that kind of implies that the rule is not ideal.  If it was why would you feel like you want/need to use a hack?

Bingo.  Cluster hits (and the "box of death") are exactly the same way.  If you need a hack for it, the rule must not be very good in the first place.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Greatclub on 18 February 2019, 23:47:31
Bingo.  Cluster hits (and the "box of death") are exactly the same way.  If you need a hack for it, the rule must not be very good in the first place.

It's an excellent rule for the scale we're simulating. It's just not very fast.

I think you need to stop playing battletech and take another look at battleforce or alpha-strike. They might be up your ally.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 18 February 2019, 23:56:44
It's an excellent rule for the scale we're simulating. It's just not very fast.

I think you need to stop playing battletech and take another look at battleforce or alpha-strike. They might be up your ally.

It's not normally considered proper etiquette to toot one's own horn, but take a gander at my custom title sometime. ;)  The big Alpha Strike games at conventions are my babies.

You may also notice that everything I've mentioned so far has preserved the level of detail in outcomes (well, ~95% or so) because the level of abstraction involved is so wholly not the point of what I'm trying to illustrate.  It's that BattleTech puts too much of the actual resolution of decisions on the player, which slows down the game and reduces the amount of time the player gets to actually, y'know, play the game.

Rolling dice on a chart, no matter how much fun you might find it, is not actually playing the game.  It's learning what the move you just made (or, potentially, made 10 or 15 minutes ago) actually did.

"It's just not very fast" is... uh, well.

If there was anything in this thread that counts as "exactly the problem", that's hitting the nail on the head right there.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: nckestrel on 18 February 2019, 23:58:21
It's an excellent rule for the scale we're simulating. It's just not very fast.
Rules that are consistently changed or avoided are showing signs they are not very good rules.
Declaring fire as a separate phase has reasons for existing, but many (if not most) players sidestep to outright ignore it.
Large numbers of small clusters are something that make opposing players groan from the soul-sucking time-wasting it is.  Yes it has reason to exist.  And yes, it is INCREDIBLY tedious. Tedium is not excellent by any stretch.
Quote
I think you need to stop playing battletech and take another look at battleforce or alpha-strike. They might be up your ally.
I was going to reply to this, but Scotty already got it..
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 19 February 2019, 00:08:25
"it's not a problem for me so it's not a problem" is perhaps the worst possible rubric by which to measure whether something is actually a problem
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Greatclub on 19 February 2019, 00:55:58
I know it’s a problem, I just don’t see a way to fix it. I actively dread battletech 2.0 as more likely to kill the game than having the current grindy system. Keeping CBT in print while they tried for the brass ring with alpha-strike was probably the best way CGL could have handled the attempt.

Edit - I could be wrong, I tend towards pessimism.

I tried alpha-strike a few times. It got better after the companion modifications came out, but my overall impression was resentment that it kept battletech from being played at the local mini-con for so long. Despite that, I think that the current boxes should have contained AS quickstart rules.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Charlie Tango on 19 February 2019, 04:49:47

Cut out the middle-man.  Structure damage to an arm?  Roll 2d6.  On a 2-6, nothing happens.  On a 7-8, an actuator is damaged; +1 to things in that arm.  On a 9, an important actuator got hit, +2 to things in that arm.  On a 10, say that a weapon got hit, destroy one at random.  If that weapon has ammo, make another check to see if it explodes (9+ maybe?  Spitballing here).  If there is no weapon but there is ammo, pick a ton at random to explode.  If there is no weapon or ammo, upgrade to an 11: arm disabled, can't do anything with it but it can still take damage.  On a 12, the limb is just plain gone.

And just like that, we've reduced a process that used to take potentially a dozen rolls (everyone on this board has experienced what happens on a 'Mech with seven slots occupied in an arm, you're lying if you say you haven't) and now it takes exactly one in the vast majority of results, and a whopping two at maximum.  The detail lost is negligible: the sum total of things that you used to be able to have but can no longer achieve are individually striking poorly placed heatsinks and electronics equipment.  That's it.  Truly a staggering loss.

Location tables are more complex and are absolutely infringing on fan rules in the wrong board, but it's entirely possible to similarly streamline the process without losing the detail that makes BattleTech BattleTech.

Were the units homogeneous in how they are structured,  this would work. They aren't  Much as you may deride them,  those other components (like heat sinks) are critical.

And you say things like "determine which weapon randomly.  How would you determine that randomly?  Oh yeah, with a die roll.   SMH.

You want to speed it up (and I do not understand the obsession with speed... )?  Don't reroll the "top or bottom" die on a location with two charts.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Easy on 19 February 2019, 07:59:30
Somewhere out there is the idea, or the dream, of a Total War compatible phone/handheld app with a list of optional rule boxes to check, a built in initiative and turn tracker and a clean interface that takes just a minute to tell you what all and where those four Artemis SRM6s hit, and what damage they did.

I've seen some prototypes used on Twitch. Some players stopping the game for gee-wiz observations, some getting tangled with off-camera production crew, but occasionally a complex lookup and roll getting resolved surprisingly quickly.

It could be, though, that since you would have code rules from official products in, there are IP licencing issues to negotiate.

(And, yes, I'm sure this has been tried. Try again.)

I'd be more willing to pay for an app that does that, than tries to reproduce a unit record sheet, or cleverly tries to make a unit-sheet-with-macros kind if thing, or tries to stuff a game board or 'mech database into it. Not looking for MegaMek on a phone, but an 'expert' app that folds-in a lot of the dice and table lookup work.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: ActionButler on 19 February 2019, 09:14:20
I think the point being made is that if you are actively avoiding following the rule directly as written by using a "hack" because you find the original to be too slow then that kind of implies that the rule is not ideal.  If it was why would you feel like you want/need to use a hack?

Exactly, 100% this.

The Box of Death, the cheat sheets, using entire extra sets of color-coded movement dice to remember how fast things moved, and all of those other things that we have come up with to make the game move faster are all really great ideas that very successfully address the issues that that they are meant to, but the fact that we need them at all is proof positive that the rules do not adequately address the speed of play or the sheer volume of stuff that people need to keep track of.  Modern games use static to-hit numbers with minimal modifiers, or they come with actual tokens to address movement/activation/whatever.  They don't ask players to run to their FLGS to buy a Plano container and a bunch of extra dice just to keep track of in-game mechanics.  For goodness sake, as much as I love Iron Wind Metals and the great work that they do, we still have to buy hex bases for our miniatures.  What other game doesn't package the miniatures and the bases together?  What is the logic of that?

I love Battletech.  I love the universe, I love the mechs, I love the factions (but not the Lyrans), I love the visceral impact of a battery of LRM 20s falling onto an unsuspecting enemy.  I wouldn't have signed up for this site if I didn't and I certainly wouldn't have agreed to be a mod if I didn't.  But at the end of the day, when all the dust has settled, if this system is so great and is so complete that it doesn't need any quality of life modifications, why don't any other games emulate it?  Why didn't another crunchy,  slow-burn, bubble-filling game pop up on the market during the decline of FASA?  Why do all of the big sellers - the 40Ks, the Warmahordes, the X-Wings, the Flames of War - why do none of those games have systems that ask players to roll as often, to keep track of as many modifiers, to buy as many play aids, or to do as much accounting as Battletech does?  Off the top of my head, the closest systems to Battletech's health bar armor that I can think of are the damage tracks for Warmahordes and for Armor Grid: Mech Attack. Both games play much faster and ask much less of their players.  Heroes of Normandy and Command And Colors both take the game off of the tabletop and put it onto hexmaps and neither asks you too keep track of as many modifiers or as roll as frequently as Battletech does. 

Someone pointed out, quite accurately, a few posts up, that none of us knows what the masses really want from a game or how well CGL does with Battletech.  That's 100% correct and something that everyone in this thread needs to keep in mind.  But... looking at the games that get the most shelf space, that have the most frequent product rollouts, that have the most active tables, we can make a pretty darned good educated guess at what people want to play and Battletech is not it.  If CGL can make a profit from selling Battletech's same 35 year old rules, that's great.  It fills a niche and it make a bunch of people very happy.  If it can't make a profit, though, or is only being purchased by the people who are already on board and we're only getting the same, rehashed rules again and again and again because CGL is worried about alienating the same handful of people who won't be around forever (which is to say... us), this game's life and success will be intrinsically tied to a very finite fanbase.  And that is my biggest concern, that by holding on to the same rules forever and ever, we are consigning the game to die off whenever we do.  We should have seen a flood of new members here recently.  CGL just rolled out the first new intro products in ages.  New minis, new maps, new price points.  An entire box specifically designed to draw in new players.  At a cursory glance, considering how difficult it is to find either of the new boxes in-stock anywhere, it seems like those products sold pretty darned well, which is wonderful.  But the number of new signups who are actively posting here are worryingly few. 
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: MadCapellan on 19 February 2019, 09:51:13
But at the end of the day, when all the dust has settled, if this system is so great and is so complete that it doesn't need any quality of life modifications, why don't any other games emulate it? 

Because most modern game companies are either miniatures companies (i.e., invested in selling the kind of mass spectacle, rapid casualty games I discussed above) or are board game companies producing luxury eurogame boxes. The reason is simple - visual impressions drive customer purchases, & game companies that manufacture visually appealing components in house can consistently produce a product that is both desireable & profitable.

Unlike Games Workshop, or Fantasy Flight, or Privateer, or Battlefront Miniatures, Catalyst Game Labs is not a miniatures manufacturer - it is a print publisher. Catalyst does not currently have the means to produce minis in the volume, quality, or price-point those companies do. Our boxed sets contain minis, but these are manufactured by a third-party supplier under contract. A rules set, no matter how optimal, cannot secure mass market dominance over games with greater visual appeal. There's more to the game business than the game, & Catalyst is a small company with fewer resources than many of the competitors that have been cited.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Fear Factory on 19 February 2019, 09:53:06
ActionButler... very well said.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 19 February 2019, 10:10:35
(And, yes, I'm sure this has been tried. Try again.)

Microsoft: Are you still unwilling to pay X?
CGL: We will give you Y
Microsoft: That's cute. 
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: NeonKnight on 19 February 2019, 10:24:10
Somewhere out there is the idea, or the dream, of a Total War compatible phone/handheld app with a list of optional rule boxes to check, a built in initiative and turn tracker and a clean interface that takes just a minute to tell you what all and where those four Artemis SRM6s hit, and what damage they did.

I've seen some prototypes used on Twitch. Some players stopping the game for gee-wiz observations, some getting tangled with off-camera production crew, but occasionally a complex lookup and roll getting resolved surprisingly quickly.

It could be, though, that since you would have code rules from official products in, there are IP licencing issues to negotiate.

(And, yes, I'm sure this has been tried. Try again.)

I'd be more willing to pay for an app that does that, than tries to reproduce a unit record sheet, or cleverly tries to make a unit-sheet-with-macros kind if thing, or tries to stuff a game board or 'mech database into it. Not looking for MegaMek on a phone, but an 'expert' app that folds-in a lot of the dice and table lookup work.

But that App IS out there...I've been using it for years.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: ActionButler on 19 February 2019, 10:42:15
Because most modern game companies are either miniatures companies (i.e., invested in selling the kind of mass spectacle, rapid casualty games I discussed above) or are board game companies producing luxury eurogame boxes. The reason is simple - visual impressions drive customer purchases, & game companies that manufacture visually appealing components in house can consistently produce a product that is both desireable & profitable.

Unlike Games Workshop, or Fantasy Flight, or Privateer, or Battlefront Miniatures, Catalyst Game Labs is not a miniatures manufacturer - it is a print publisher. Catalyst does not currently have the means to produce minis in the volume, quality, or price-point those companies do. Our boxed sets contain minis, but these are manufactured by a third-party supplier under contract. A rules set, no matter how optimal, cannot secure mass market dominance over games with greater visual appeal. There's more to the game business than the game, & Catalyst is a small company with fewer resources than many of the competitors that have been cited.

And those are all very good and true and honest points that I agree with completely, but not a single one of them addresses the fact that, apart from counting how far you can move and then rolling some dice to see if you hit something, almost none of the core rules and concepts of Battletech are shared by any of the major games on the market today.  They don't tell you that, "oh, the rules aren't so bad if you bring a bunch of extra homebrew stuff along with you to make the sheer volume of dice rolling less onerous".  They don't say, "well yeah, we have different tables for hits and crits and cluster weapons and heat and every gun has complete different range profiles and there are so many movement and terrain modifiers that even elite pilots are lucky to score a hit and there are eleven different flavors of medium laser that are only slightly different from one another but you'll memorize them all after a while so its okay". 

Would it really stop being Classic Battletech if we just tried to make it more accessible to new players?   If we unified the tech base and removed all of the weapons that we don't need? Or if, instead of rolling XYZ times on the cluster table, an LBX autocannon rolls once for hit location for X amount of damage and automatically does Y damage to all adjacent locations?
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: dgorsman on 19 February 2019, 10:52:58
... after wading through all this, it looks like going to poker night and complaining about the time "wasted" shuffling and dealing when the point is fun.  Yes, I did say fun.  Trying to survive a swarm of missiles from an SRM carrier,  or a double load of buckshot from a WoB King Crab?  Count me in.  And it's more than a little insulting to suggest that I'm being held hostage, or should hate it but just don't realize it.

More tongue in cheek, given a choice between 45 minutes of fun, and a full afternoon, well I'm choosing the latter.   :thumbsup:
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: nckestrel on 19 February 2019, 10:53:46
ActionButler, I don’t think those would hurt. I also don’t think they would change BattleTechs position in the market to any noticeable degree. Nobody should be thinking BattleRech will lead the market because by tweaking the rules to make them slightly less complicated/tedious. They can be done for their own sake, making the game better for those that do play.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: MadCapellan on 19 February 2019, 10:58:19
...but not a single one of them addresses the fact that, ....., almost none of the core rules and concepts of Battletech are shared by any of the major games on the market today. 

That's because they aren't the same kind of game. They are marketing a completely different product with a very different business model, & earn their profits from very different avenues. GW isn"t earning record profits from codex sales - they are a miniatures company.

That's not to say I am opposed to improving the rules of Battletech to make them clearer, easier, or faster to resolve - I believe those are admirable objectives. I simply believe that the kind of game Battletech is - a pseudo-narrative skirmish game with RPG elements - is its core appeal, & is the reason why so many folks here such as yourself are still interested in "fixing" TW rather than playing Alpha Strike, & yet so many proposals to "fix" Battletech damage that appeal in mimicking games like Alpha Strike or other quick-play miniatures games. If the "fix" doesn't preserve the sense of being the vicarious master of a gargantuan mechanical avatar of unstoppable death, I simply can't support it!
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Easy on 19 February 2019, 11:01:36
cleanup
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Kovax on 19 February 2019, 11:06:29
I saw someone suggested a 3D6 roll for to-hit. That is interesting. But does that make things more complicated or do you need to muck with modifiers to make it work?

It could potentially increase the benefit to medium and long-range combat. However, does that open another can of worms?

You might (or might not) need to boost the base to-hit numbers by +1 to balance it out, otherwise Lights kind-of die when anything heavy even glances in their direction.  We've already got that problem now with lower gunnery skill numbers and pulse weapons; the larger dice range would make a 1 increase in gunnery skill less catastrophic against light opponents.  The odds of hitting on 4 or 5 when stuff sits still is probably more realistic, since that's target practice odds, but movement modifiers would almost certainly need to be bumped up slightly to preserve speed as a valid defense.  To cover that, I'd love to see a streamlined set of movement modifiers, where you get a +1 for every 2 hexes covered, rather than having to memorize or look up the 3/5/7/10 hexes to get a +1/2/3/4 modifier.  New players ALWAYS struggle with that.  With 3D6 and a base of 5 to-hit, getting a +6 modifier would give you 11+ at short range, and 15+ at long: a difficult shot, and firer movement and terrain could STILL take it up to 18 to hit (a true "Hail Mary" shot), but you don't get "impossible" shots in the open as in the current system (4 base, +4 range, +4 target movement, plus shooter movement = 13+).

As mentioned in several previous posts, cleaning up the odd range-bands for some weapons would go a long way: 1x/2x/3x times the base range, not something like 3/7/10 that has to be memorized for each individual weapon.  I'd also like to see a few items to fill that odd intermediate 4/8/12 gap between the ML/SRM and LL/AC10 ranges.  It might even pay to make "extreme range" a standard rule with the larger 3D6 dice range, so shots out to 30 hexes can be taken with many of the larger weapons, closer to what can be done with most modern day heavy equipment, although at relatively poor odds.  Infantry small arms should be an exception, where the odds of hitting at significantly longer ranges than at present should be POSSIBLE, but the damage should fall off dramatically.  If you've got 28 guys shooting, the odds of ONE hitting should be relatively decent, but getting most of the platoon's shots to hit at more than point-blank range would be asking for a miracle.  Perhaps it could use a cluster hit table with a -2 to the roll per range band (or even -1 per hex) with a minimum of 1 damage, so the odds of getting a point of damage out to 6 or maybe even 8-9 hexes would be fairly high, but getting much more than that would be increasingly unlikely at longer ranges.  Modern infantry ideal engagement ranges are generally in the 100-200 meter vicinity, but occasional kills are made at up to a kilometer or more.  Current BT rifle infantry combat begins at less than 100 meters, and then inflicts full rated damage for the entire platoon if you hit.  The rules for it seriously need to be reworked.

Maybe there's a better and faster way to mark off damage, but the concept of locational damage has been a winner, so reducing that to anything below 6 hit locations (1D6 instead of 2D6) would be a real mistake, and I'm fine with the current roll, just not with having to memorize both the front and side hit location charts.  Use one chart, but just make any shots to the OPPOSITE torso side hit the facing torso side instead.  You can still hit the more distant arm or leg past the closer one as it swings back and forth, so that's not an issue in my opinion.

So far, there have been no other good systems that deliver the granularity and detail that BattleTech manages to convey.  Clearly, it needs some updating and streamlining to reduce the number of charts and things to remember, but NOT at the expense of the detail, cinematic factor, and RPG flavor that it currently has.  Don't break what's positive about the game to chase some nebulous "ideal" solution that ends up leaving the current player base behind.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: ActionButler on 19 February 2019, 11:13:31
ActionButler, I don’t think those would hurt. I also don’t think they would change BattleTechs position in the market to any noticeable degree. Nobody should be thinking BattleRech will lead the market because by tweaking the rules to make them slightly less complicated/tedious. They can be done for their own sake, making the game better for those that do play.

Oh of course not.  Battletech is meant to be slow, and I respect that.  It fills a very specific niche in the tabletop wargame constellation and it shouldn't abandon that in favor of "mass spectacle" gaming (to paraphrase MadCap).  It will never be for everyone, but I refuse to accept that that means we can't at least think about making small QOL updates to make it a little more attractive and a little easy to pick up for new blood. 

If the "fix" doesn't preserve the sense of being the vicarious master of a gargantuan mechanical avatar of unstoppable death, I simply can't support it!

And I respect that.  I truly, genuinely do.  I don't want Battletech to be 40K 2.0.  40K is 40K 2.0 and it does a fine job of that.  I don't want Battletech to be Alpha Strike, either.  I want Battletech to stay Battletech, which is why, in my last post, my example of a QOL change is simply tweaking the way cluster weapons function to eliminate some dice rolls rather than throwing them out altogether and making every unit a powder keg that will gloriously explode as soon as it draws any amount of small arms fire. 
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 19 February 2019, 11:27:25
Were the units homogeneous in how they are structured,  this would work. They aren't  Much as you may deride them,  those other components (like heat sinks) are critical.

No, they really aren't.  At least, not to the extent that striking one heatsink on an arm is going to meaningfully impact the game.  Crit charts on torsos could absolutely include heatsink damage, and losing an arm still destroys the heatsink in it.  The dubiously meaningful crit result that has been lost is "a single hear sink was destroyed" (and I guess technically the possibility for multiple crits per hit, but those happen rarely anyway and can be simulated easily enough; the table in my post was the product of maybe five minutes' consideration).

And you say things like "determine which weapon randomly.  How would you determine that randomly?  Oh yeah, with a die roll.   SMH.

Shit, you got me.  Sometimes it actually takes three rolls.  My whole point has been ruined. ::)

You want to speed it up (and I do not understand the obsession with speed... )?  Don't reroll the "top or bottom" die on a location with two charts.

This method makes the "bottom 1" slot on a mech with seven slots filled a 50% chance to be struck.  Unacceptable.

It's not literally about speed, and It's damn sure not about speed at the expense of the game.  It's about 1) reducing the lag time between a player making a decision and seeing the results of that decision because BattleTech is damn near an industry leader in that category and 2) reducing the amount of non-decision information players have to process that shouldn't be their problem.

In a perfect world I don't need to have tables memorized to speed up gameplay.  The game's mechanics should be handling that without any undue involvement from the players.

Is my point seriously so hard to grasp or so poorly explained that I have to reiterate it twice or three times per page?  ???
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bedwyr on 19 February 2019, 12:57:41
But that App IS out there...I've been using it for years.

On iOS? I'm under the impression that any/most of these apps are Android ecosystem only.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: NeonKnight on 19 February 2019, 13:13:59
On iOS? I'm under the impression that any/most of these apps are Android ecosystem only.

Nope, android...I don;t do Apple ;)
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bedwyr on 19 February 2019, 13:22:45
Nope, android...I don;t do Apple ;)

That would be why a bunch of people may be going "wait, whut?". I've heard of this second-hand, but never seen a tool make it onto the Apple ecosystem.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Papabees on 19 February 2019, 22:35:19
I totally get you.
No, they really aren't.  At least, not to the extent that striking one heatsink on an arm is going to meaningfully impact the game.  Crit charts on torsos could absolutely include heatsink damage, and losing an arm still destroys the heatsink in it.  The dubiously meaningful crit result that has been lost is "a single hear sink was destroyed" (and I guess technically the possibility for multiple crits per hit, but those happen rarely anyway and can be simulated easily enough; the table in my post was the product of maybe five minutes' consideration).

Shit, you got me.  Sometimes it actually takes three rolls.  My whole point has been ruined. ::)

This method makes the "bottom 1" slot on a mech with seven slots filled a 50% chance to be struck.  Unacceptable.

It's not literally about speed, and It's damn sure not about speed at the expense of the game.  It's about 1) reducing the lag time between a player making a decision and seeing the results of that decision because BattleTech is damn near an industry leader in that category and 2) reducing the amount of non-decision information players have to process that shouldn't be their problem.

In a perfect world I don't need to have tables memorized to speed up gameplay.  The game's mechanics should be handling that without any undue involvement from the players.

Is my point seriously so hard to grasp or so poorly explained that I have to reiterate it twice or three times per page?  ???
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: mbear on 20 February 2019, 07:36:32
The current system is roll a D6 to get the "half" of the Mech that's hit, and another D6 for what actually gets hit. The only real reason I see that being a thing is because you have to be able to hit slot 1 somehow. I don't see why using a single die is any worse than the current system, you've got fairer odds with it.

I think the only reason the rule is the way it is, is because it's easier to use a D6, since they're the most common die out there.

And with that in mind, how about changing the rule so that if the attack roll that resulted in a structure hit was an odd number you'd use the top 6 crit slots and if it was even, you use the bottom 6 crits. That would get rid of one dice roll anyway.

Edit: OK I just saw this point.
This method makes the "bottom 1" slot on a mech with seven slots filled a 50% chance to be struck.  Unacceptable.
So never mind.

It's not literally about speed, and It's damn sure not about speed at the expense of the game.  It's about 1) reducing the lag time between a player making a decision and seeing the results of that decision because BattleTech is damn near an industry leader in that category and 2) reducing the amount of non-decision information players have to process that shouldn't be their problem.

Is my point seriously so hard to grasp or so poorly explained that I have to reiterate it twice or three times per page?  ???

To be fair, once you get into a multipage thread it can be difficult to keep track of the original idea, especially if you're clarifying it in later posts.

But to recap for my own understanding it sounds like you're saying:

1. There's a lot of information and work that a player has to handle now that you think is inappropriate to push onto the player*, and
2. You think the rules can be updated to remove that extra work.

Then you provided some examples of how you think #2 could be fixed, specifically with LB-X cluster hits. Later you presented an idea about the critical hit table, which may have some shortcomings in the eyes of other players.

Is that roughly correct?

*Note that these are my words; I don't think Scotty ever used the word "push" when describing the rules.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: BloodRose on 20 February 2019, 07:45:40
One thing I tried to speed up play with a couple of opponents was halving the range modifiers, so Medium range became +1 and long +2. It really made the game that bit faster, but still allowed the original flavour to be kept without detracting anything at all.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Daryk on 20 February 2019, 07:49:27
That's actually just the Sniper SPA...
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Charlie Tango on 20 February 2019, 08:06:56
No, they really aren't.  At least, not to the extent that striking one heatsink on an arm is going to meaningfully impact the game.  Crit charts on torsos could absolutely include heatsink damage, and losing an arm still destroys the heatsink in it.  The dubiously meaningful crit result that has been lost is "a single hear sink was destroyed" (and I guess technically the possibility for multiple crits per hit, but those happen rarely anyway and can be simulated easily enough; the table in my post was the product of maybe five minutes' consideration).

Shit, you got me.  Sometimes it actually takes three rolls.  My whole point has been ruined. ::)

This method makes the "bottom 1" slot on a mech with seven slots filled a 50% chance to be struck.  Unacceptable.

It's not literally about speed, and It's damn sure not about speed at the expense of the game.  It's about 1) reducing the lag time between a player making a decision and seeing the results of that decision because BattleTech is damn near an industry leader in that category and 2) reducing the amount of non-decision information players have to process that shouldn't be their problem.

In a perfect world I don't need to have tables memorized to speed up gameplay.  The game's mechanics should be handling that without any undue involvement from the players.

Is my point seriously so hard to grasp or so poorly explained that I have to reiterate it twice or three times per page?  ???

No,  we get the point:  You don't want granularity in the game.  The reason BT has that lag time is that it is one of the few games left out there with that depth of granularity, that isn't built for "Oh let's play this fast so we can go back to looking at our phones!"

You have your BT game built for lack of granularity in Alpha Strike, and you love it.  Great! 

And as far as making "quality of life" adjustments, think about this:  How many players out there still think hatchets hit on the punch table?  Or still think partial cover should be +3 and roll on the punch table?

You make those kinds of rules changes,  you're going to further fracture the player base along the lines of "new rules/old rules".   It would take *years* for those kinds of changes to percolate out into the fanbase and in the meantime, you're going to make it harder for those new players to find other players to play with.

Teach that the game is complex.  Teach that the game involves tables for resolving lots of things. Teach the little helpers and hacks that make it work smoothly.  But screwing around with the base concepts in something this long established would be further destructive.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 20 February 2019, 11:09:48
No,  we get the point:  You don't want granularity in the game.  The reason BT has that lag time is that it is one of the few games left out there with that depth of granularity, that isn't built for "Oh let's play this fast so we can go back to looking at our phones!"

If this is what you think my point is then you very much do not get the point.   There's nothing inherently wrong with granuliarity as a concept to include in a game.  The problem BattleTech consistently stumbles on is that the granularity is presented in the form of a dozen tables players are expected to eventually memorize and dozens more that not even BattleTech thinks is feasible to memorize, when it should be presented in the final results only, to the greatest extent possible.

If it's possible to achieve similarly detailed results (it is) with a process that the players aren't responsible for hand-cranking through every step of the simulation (also possible), that is a more desirable process than what we have now.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Apocal on 20 February 2019, 11:19:47
And as far as making "quality of life" adjustments, think about this:  How many players out there still think hatchets hit on the punch table?  Or still think partial cover should be +3 and roll on the punch table?

You make those kinds of rules changes,  you're going to further fracture the player base along the lines of "new rules/old rules".   It would take *years* for those kinds of changes to percolate out into the fanbase and in the meantime, you're going to make it harder for those new players to find other players to play with.

This is an argument against any rule changes at all. Surely, you don't think errata is quite that bad, do you?
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Fear Factory on 20 February 2019, 12:58:15
Total Warfare is what overcomplicated things. Look at what happened to vehicles. Overcomplicated by adding a ton of dice rolls and effects in an attempt to make them competitive against mechs. Who really wants to tract stun effects and different types of stabilizer hits? Disabled weapons? There were much easier ways to do this without using wonky multi turn effects.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Papabees on 20 February 2019, 13:33:14
If it's possible to achieve similarly detailed results (it is) with a process that the players aren't responsible for hand-cranking through every step of the simulation (also possible), that is a more desirable process than what we have now.

Ding, Ding, Ding. This is exactly it. Why use three rolls to resolve a thing when you could have a rule where one roll does it. FREX, LRMs; Instead of rolling for # of missiles have the to hit MOS determine it. A little less than to hit not very many missiles, a few over all missiles. Easy but the same results with much less cranking.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: nckestrel on 20 February 2019, 13:40:13
Ding, Ding, Ding. This is exactly it. Why use three rolls to resolve a thing when you could have a rule where one roll does it. FREX, LRMs; Instead of rolling for # of missiles have the to hit MOS determine it. A little less than to hit not very many missiles, a few over all missiles. Easy but the same results with much less cranking.

Just to be clear, not at all the same results. As a clear example, if you need a to-hit roll of 12, currently if you hit that 12 you have a chance of hitting with all your missiles.  With your proposed change, your only possibility is the minimum number of missiles hit.
I'm not saying I'm against it or for it, but let's be honest when a rules change would change the results, in some cases very drastically.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: NeonKnight on 20 February 2019, 13:43:03
Ding, Ding, Ding. This is exactly it. Why use three rolls to resolve a thing when you could have a rule where one roll does it. FREX, LRMs; Instead of rolling for # of missiles have the to hit MOS determine it. A little less than to hit not very many missiles, a few over all missiles. Easy but the same results with much less cranking.

However (to play  >:D Advocate), that would mean if a player needed a 12 to hit, if they then hit, their MoS will only ever be "0" which means they would always get the least amount of missile hits. Conversely, if a players needs 2 or less to hit, then they are always guaranteed a superb number of missile hits.

And then there are: AMS, Artemis, NARC and other similar systems. How do they fit in?
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 20 February 2019, 13:45:31
Total Warfare is what overcomplicated things. Look at what happened to vehicles. Overcomplicated by adding a ton of dice rolls and effects in an attempt to make them competitive against mechs. Who really wants to tract stun effects and different types of stabilizer hits? Disabled weapons? There were much easier ways to do this without using wonky multi turn effects.

only if you use vehicles (and these rules were originally in Max Tech so some of us have been using them for over twenty years). 

 there were no changes in TW that made a company v company game of mechs only last interminably longer than it should. that's been true since the beginning.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 20 February 2019, 14:05:52
However (to play  >:D Advocate), that would mean if a player needed a 12 to hit, if they then hit, their MoS will only ever be "0" which means they would always get the least amount of missile hits. Conversely, if a players needs 2 or less to hit, then they are always guaranteed a superb number of missile hits.

And then there are: AMS, Artemis, NARC and other similar systems. How do they fit in?

Even though I don't agree with the specific example being used (for reasons that are largely a matter of 'not far enough', not the general idea), wouldn't it make sense for an almost impossible shot to naturally have fewer missiles hit and an almost impossible to miss shot naturally result in more hits?  Glancing/Direct Blow from TacOps both do that already.

only if you use vehicles (and these rules were originally in Max Tech so some of us have been using them for over twenty years). 

 there were no changes in TW that made a company v company game of mechs only last interminably longer than it should. that's been true since the beginning.

One could argue that the partial cover changes made games take longer. ;D

Joking aside, this would be a fine counterargument if Total Warfare didn't include vehicles or other units.  It does, so they must be included for consideration.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 20 February 2019, 14:21:48
i thought i had tacitly agreed that vehicles complicate things but i can see how that was missed. so, yes, vehicles, especially applying crits, can be a massive pain - especially since in a lot of cases, there aren't weapons in the sides so side crits more often than not loop back to crew stunned. I had to implement a specific die marker just to track it so we didn't lose count. I also for the life of me never remember the specifics of commander hit, driver hit, etc. i had to cut back on the number of infernos i used as well because a shower of those quickly grew cumbersome.

the problem though is that these are extensions of the cumbersome rules that we've been talking about. it's like noticing a rash that spread -  this new outbreak is just a continuance of what was already a problem.




Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: NeonKnight on 20 February 2019, 14:22:19
Even though I don't agree with the specific example being used (for reasons that are largely a matter of 'not far enough', not the general idea), wouldn't it make sense for an almost impossible shot to naturally have fewer missiles hit and an almost impossible to miss shot naturally result in more hits?  Glancing/Direct Blow from TacOps both do that already.

Sure, if you're willing to forgo that a next to impossible shot should never be any of the following:

Through Armor Critical
Head/Cockpit Hit

If your argument for the inclusion is: No, sometimes a shot is just super lucky, then why is a proposed MoS of 0 never a 'lucky shot with all missiles hitting' then?

And I'm not including corner case/hardly ever used OPTIONAL rules from TacOps here.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 20 February 2019, 14:52:25
Sure, if you're willing to forgo that a next to impossible shot should never be any of the following:

Through Armor Critical
Head/Cockpit Hit

If your argument for the inclusion is: No, sometimes a shot is just super lucky, then why is a proposed MoS of 0 never a 'lucky shot with all missiles hitting' then?

And I'm not including corner case/hardly ever used OPTIONAL rules from TacOps here.

This is a false equivalence.  It makes prefect sense that a very low likelihood of a hit results in a smaller proportion of a cluster weapon hitting.  That is actually how cluster weapons are largely presented in the fiction, too.  Your counter, which I'll paraphrase as "if this thing that is very unlikely is no longer possible, then nothing that is highly unlikely should still be possible," is a classic case of assuming that the reasons for each thing being unlikely should be treated the same - they very much should not.

I brought up TacOps rules because they already model exactly what Papabees was describing,  no other reason.

In any case, I mostly agree with you, but the reason that's only mostly is an important thing not to lose track of.

(Personally, I favor fixed damage to one location and reduced fixed damage to any adjacent location, with things that modify cluster rolls modifying the damages)
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bedwyr on 20 February 2019, 14:55:40
This is your guys's periodic moderator caution to engage the argument rather than the person as the discussion gets more tense. Please keep that in mind as your brains think of Retorts because the other guy is Wrong. On the Internet. And must be Countered. Lest Untruths dominate the Internet. :)

Thanks.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Apocal on 20 February 2019, 15:58:52
Just to be clear, not at all the same results. As a clear example, if you need a to-hit roll of 12, currently if you hit that 12 you have a chance of hitting with all your missiles.  With your proposed change, your only possibility is the minimum number of missiles hit.
I'm not saying I'm against it or for it, but let's be honest when a rules change would change the results, in some cases very drastically.

However (to play  >:D Advocate), that would mean if a player needed a 12 to hit, if they then hit, their MoS will only ever be "0" which means they would always get the least amount of missile hits.

Not necessarily; it could be instead of using the MoS, the MoF still allows a few missiles to hit, just not very many. Like rolling a 3 on the cluster table if miss the TN by 1.

Conversely, if a players needs 2 or less to hit, then they are always guaranteed a superb number of missile hits.

And then there are: AMS, Artemis, NARC and other similar systems. How do they fit in?

I'd imagine they'd still improve or degrade the end result, although the big sticking point is launchers with a large number of missiles and the lack of granularity running things via the MoS/MoF. If Artemis/Narc still gave their present bonuses, that would become quite an effective boost in their relative strength. Personally, I think that is a good thing, because I don't see Narcs as being worth it, but that's an opinion, not an objective fact.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: NeonKnight on 20 February 2019, 16:12:46
Not necessarily; it could be instead of using the MoS, the MoF still allows a few missiles to hit, just not very many. Like rolling a 3 on the cluster table if miss the TN by 1.


And that is the same as what I am saying. If a player needs to roll a 12 to hit, it is like saying that player always rolls the lowest result on a cluster table.

Conversely if a Player rolls a 12 while needing to roll a 3 to hit, its saying they always hit with every missile.

There is a reason why duck hunters hunt with buckshot after all...you don;t need to be a crack shot, just need to shoot in the general area of the duck to take it down. https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-shoot-ducks-with-shotguns

And that is why I have a hard time with the MoS/MoF aspect. It's saying Lucky shots can never happen, and Easy shots never have a chance to fail (because of faulty missiles/ammunition).
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Apocal on 20 February 2019, 16:17:22
And that is the same as what I am saying. If a player needs to roll a 12 to hit, it is like saying that player always rolls the lowest result on a cluster table.

You could anchor MoS = 0 to being something like 7 on the cluster hit table, you know...
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: RoundTop on 20 February 2019, 16:36:32
You could anchor MoS = 0 to being something like 7 on the cluster hit table, you know...

I've stayed out of this, but I want to add something in breifly.

The big problem with MoS for cluster weapons is that it makes them more powerful (hunh?!) or less powerful. 

The biggest thing with Battletech is the to-hit roll being pass/fail. You make the shot or you didn't.  This applies to PPCs or missiles.  But with an MoS system, you are either penalizing missiles (for needing MoS >0 for average damage), which often shoot at longer ranges anyways (and higher TNs).   Or you use MoF, where even if you "miss" by 1 or 2, some still hit.  The problem is that this gives cluster weapons a "pulse bonus", where you can shotgun spam it, knowing you almost can't hit on a 12, but if you get 10s you can still deal damage to that light mech. This unbalances everything else, as cluster weapons now become more powerful (Which isn't a bad thing for IS LRMs, but for SRMs, LBX, and clan weapons, it is not good).

Do I have a suggestion for making it better? No, no I don't. But making it MoS/MoF based will unbalance cluster weapons compared to all other weapons (either + or -), which would mandate a much larger re-check.


I think there is an argument to simplify criticals to using polyhedral dice (it is much faster than the 1d6+1d6 system) with an optional 1d6+1d6 if you don't have polyhedrals.

Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: ActionButler on 20 February 2019, 16:42:13
And that is the same as what I am saying. If a player needs to roll a 12 to hit, it is like saying that player always rolls the lowest result on a cluster table.

Conversely if a Player rolls a 12 while needing to roll a 3 to hit, its saying they always hit with every missile.

There is a reason why duck hunters hunt with buckshot after all...you don;t need to be a crack shot, just need to shoot in the general area of the duck to take it down. https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-shoot-ducks-with-shotguns

And that is why I have a hard time with the MoS/MoF aspect. It's saying Lucky shots can never happen, and Easy shots never have a chance to fail (because of faulty missiles/ammunition).

As much as I hate MoS mechanics - and I suuuuuuper hate MoS mechanics - it actually DOES make a lot of sense for cluster attacks, IMO (depending on how many missiles or LBX pellets an MoS of 0 equals and how the scale advances from 0). 

You're trying to pull off an almost impossible attack and you succeed?  Great work! Well done! But it was almost impossible, so you aren't going to see a lot of payoff even though you did make the shot.

You're trying to make a really easy shot and you roll high? Also great work! You took an easy shot and our highly advanced targeting computers and ballistic weapons did the rest of the work for you. 

I mean... that just seems pretty reasonable.  In the former case, the lucky shot did, in fact, happen.  You didn't hit with a lot of missiles, but it was a difficult shot so getting a full flight on-target was probably unlikely anyway.  In the latter case, why shouldn't an easy shot be easy to make?  Or, more to the point, why shouldn't a player be rewarded for rolling high on an easy shot? 

Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: NeonKnight on 20 February 2019, 16:59:40
As much as I hate MoS mechanics - and I suuuuuuper hate MoS mechanics - it actually DOES make a lot of sense for cluster attacks, IMO (depending on how many missiles or LBX pellets an MoS of 0 equals and how the scale advances from 0). 

You're trying to pull off an almost impossible attack and you succeed?  Great work! Well done! But it was almost impossible, so you aren't going to see a lot of payoff even though you did make the shot.

You're trying to make a really easy shot and you roll high? Also great work! You took an easy shot and our highly advanced targeting computers and ballistic weapons did the rest of the work for you. 

I mean... that just seems pretty reasonable.  In the former case, the lucky shot did, in fact, happen.  You didn't hit with a lot of missiles, but it was a difficult shot so getting a full flight on-target was probably unlikely anyway.  In the latter case, why shouldn't an easy shot be easy to make?  Or, more to the point, why shouldn't a player be rewarded for rolling high on an easy shot?

And while on the one hand I agree, on the other hand it loses a lot of the 'hand-waveium' behind the scene rationals for such cluster rolls in the first place:

Consider: Needing a 12 means the 'Lock-on window' is extremely tight, and by rolling a 12 means I had fire right as lock was achieved. GREAT, now the cluster roll is the representation of the Anime-eque, missiles screaming in, some hitting a tree branch, the mech ducking and jiving, etc, whatever head-cannon visual you want to give it. So, sure maybe it was a lucky shot I barely got off, and maybe your 'mech pilot was looking for his dropped Bon-Jovi 'Slippery When Wet' retro '80's 8-trak cassette while standing in the open?

On the flip side...I need a 2 to hit (for whatever reason) and I fire, but (hand-wavium), their was an internal glitch in the optics of the missiles, or they happened to be loaded up with Windows 3.1 Operation system and don't have the current Updates and patchs to DRIVERS, and as a result most of the missiles  simply sputter and fall useless to the ground mere meters infront of me. Sure, I had Solid LOCK-ON TONES for the Weapons system, but the missiles were total garbage, and only a few of them actually had the true lock on.

THESE are the stories we tell around my gaming table as to explain the Crap-tacular vs spectacular cluster rolls. And turning them to an 'average always' MoS/MoF aspect based on my rolls takes a lot away from the narrative that is the game.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 20 February 2019, 17:13:51
Making up stories to explain the arbitrarily assigned meaning to sequential results on 2d6 is, and I'm understating things a little bit here, in every single way absolutely ****** irrelevant as it pertains to how the rules work.

You will still be able to have fun establishing a narrative for your games no matter what the actual mechanics are.  No one is or I wager ever will tell you that you can't or shouldn't do that, or may even applaud you and your group for imagination.

With that applause in mind: no one (group of) player's imagination should hinder the mechanics of the game.  Ever.  It's as classic an example of the cart pulling the horse as I've ever heard.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: NeonKnight on 20 February 2019, 17:35:52
And yet, you seem to speak to how you understand the why's and werefores of how/why the rules are that way. I look to what was prevelent in the media (Macros, Gundam etc) around the time came out, and what I believe was the reasoning behind the rules as they are.

Does it make my view right? No. Does it make your view right? No

It is what it is, and at the end of the day, I suspect no matter how much we wish and pray upon, CGL is beholdened to a liscense agreement to work within the rules as they are (as purchased by TOPPS) and while they may add to or tweak said rules, they cannot rebuild into an entirely new set of rules.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: nckestrel on 20 February 2019, 17:38:22
The mechanics are meant to give some meaning, or it’s a pure math exercise and not a game.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 20 February 2019, 17:54:46
The mechanics are meant to give some meaning, or it’s a pure math exercise and not a game.

Of course!  The mechanics are the vehicle by which we (the players) explore the narrative that we (still the players) set out to establish.  But they shouldn't take the place of the narrative itself.

And yet, you seem to speak to how you understand the why's and werefores of how/why the rules are that way. I look to what was prevelent in the media (Macros, Gundam etc) around the time came out, and what I believe was the reasoning behind the rules as they are.

You may notice a theme to my posts: the player comes first.  Everything I suggest is, while certainly not prefect or even necessarily good, ultimately aimed at improving the player's engagement with the game.  This is also where BattleTech categorically fails as an engaging game: the player does not come first, the mechanics do.  Fixing that should be the ultimate goal.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Apocal on 20 February 2019, 18:04:18
I've stayed out of this, but I want to add something in breifly.

The big problem with MoS for cluster weapons is that it makes them more powerful (hunh?!) or less powerful. 

The biggest thing with Battletech is the to-hit roll being pass/fail. You make the shot or you didn't.  This applies to PPCs or missiles.  But with an MoS system, you are either penalizing missiles (for needing MoS >0 for average damage), which often shoot at longer ranges anyways (and higher TNs).   Or you use MoF, where even if you "miss" by 1 or 2, some still hit.  The problem is that this gives cluster weapons a "pulse bonus", where you can shotgun spam it, knowing you almost can't hit on a 12, but if you get 10s you can still deal damage to that light mech. This unbalances everything else, as cluster weapons now become more powerful (Which isn't a bad thing for IS LRMs, but for SRMs, LBX, and clan weapons, it is not good).

Oh I know. I didn't think it was important since, as you said, pulse weapons are already in the game and we have precedent for cluster hitters getting to-hit bonuses like LBXs and HAGs against aircraft.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: ActionButler on 20 February 2019, 18:40:14
And while on the one hand I agree, on the other hand it loses a lot of the 'hand-waveium' behind the scene rationals for such cluster rolls in the first place:

Consider: Needing a 12 means the 'Lock-on window' is extremely tight, and by rolling a 12 means I had fire right as lock was achieved. GREAT, now the cluster roll is the representation of the Anime-eque, missiles screaming in, some hitting a tree branch, the mech ducking and jiving, etc, whatever head-cannon visual you want to give it. So, sure maybe it was a lucky shot I barely got off, and maybe your 'mech pilot was looking for his dropped Bon-Jovi 'Slippery When Wet' retro '80's 8-trak cassette while standing in the open?

On the flip side...I need a 2 to hit (for whatever reason) and I fire, but (hand-wavium), their was an internal glitch in the optics of the missiles, or they happened to be loaded up with Windows 3.1 Operation system and don't have the current Updates and patchs to DRIVERS, and as a result most of the missiles  simply sputter and fall useless to the ground mere meters infront of me. Sure, I had Solid LOCK-ON TONES for the Weapons system, but the missiles were total garbage, and only a few of them actually had the true lock on.

THESE are the stories we tell around my gaming table as to explain the Crap-tacular vs spectacular cluster rolls. And turning them to an 'average always' MoS/MoF aspect based on my rolls takes a lot away from the narrative that is the game.

I get what you’re saying, I just don’t understand why you can’t do the same thing and tell the same stories with the MoS mechanism (unless we are imagining different mechanisms).

Need a 3 to hit because your target isn’t moving and you roll a 12? There’s your Macross Missile Masacre.  Dozens of warheads raining down on the unsuspecting target, stripping away armor and peppering the surrounding area.

Roll snake-eyes instead? There’s mid-battle your firmware upgrade.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Apocal on 20 February 2019, 18:44:36
I get what you’re saying, I just don’t understand why you can’t do the same thing and tell the same stories with the MoS mechanism (unless we are imagining different mechanisms).

Need a 3 to hit because your target isn’t moving and you roll a 12? There’s your Macross Missile Masacre.  Dozens of warheads raining down on the unsuspecting target, stripping away armor and peppering the surrounding area.

Roll snake-eyes instead? There’s mid-battle your firmware upgrade.

If I understand him correctly, he wants the full range of outcomes available on every hit. Other people accept limiting that range on both bounds in favor of a shorter time between decisions and consequences.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: NeonKnight on 20 February 2019, 19:15:25
I get what you’re saying, I just don’t understand why you can’t do the same thing and tell the same stories with the MoS mechanism (unless we are imagining different mechanisms).

Need a 3 to hit because your target isn’t moving and you roll a 12? There’s your Macross Missile Masacre.  Dozens of warheads raining down on the unsuspecting target, stripping away armor and peppering the surrounding area.

Roll snake-eyes instead? There’s mid-battle your firmware upgrade.

Except...Battletech is not like D&D. Rules mechanics wise there is no difference between rolling a 2 or a 12.

If I need a 13+ to hit, no matter how many 12's I roll, I still miss. If I need a 0 to hit (due to skills, modifiers, etc) rolling a snake-eyes does not equal a miss, I still hit.

D&D and similar games have the Critical Success/Failure rule, Battletech does not. Hence the example.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Fear Factory on 20 February 2019, 19:23:43
i thought i had tacitly agreed that vehicles complicate things but i can see how that was missed. so, yes, vehicles, especially applying crits, can be a massive pain - especially since in a lot of cases, there aren't weapons in the sides so side crits more often than not loop back to crew stunned. I had to implement a specific die marker just to track it so we didn't lose count. I also for the life of me never remember the specifics of commander hit, driver hit, etc. i had to cut back on the number of infernos i used as well because a shower of those quickly grew cumbersome.

the problem though is that these are extensions of the cumbersome rules that we've been talking about. it's like noticing a rash that spread -  this new outbreak is just a continuance of what was already a problem.

Abou and I have discussed how to do this. Most of it is in the BattleTech 2.0 thread we made. It's possible to make it faster and easier to deal with. Haven't tested this yet, but I'm confident it'll be a lot better, mostly because it's a simplified compromise between the old and new rules.

I really don't want to post more house rules, please delete this if you think it's necessary, but this is an example of where some of that grit was just way too much.

Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: AdmiralObvious on 20 February 2019, 20:16:33
Going further into the weeds, if you wanted to, you could add the fumble and success RPG rules. Though this would somewhat dramatically decrease th number of "normal" numbers by two in the current system (that's a little more than 15%).

2 fumbles and should be a guaranteed miss. 12 is a miracle and at minimum means a success where you should have ordinarily failed miserably. You might need to roll a 30 with all modifiers, but if you roll a 12, you succeed (or at least don't fail).
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: ActionButler on 20 February 2019, 20:48:31
No, we actually do need to stay out of the weeds, otherwise the conversation has to go to the Fan Rules section. And, so it doesn’t seem like I’m trying to get the last word in, I’ve removed my previous post.

Though anyone is free to continue the discussion in a new thread in Fan Rules. Like I said a few posts ago, I normally don’t care for MOS systems, but I can *sort of* see it working here.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: NeonKnight on 20 February 2019, 20:50:28
Hey what happened to your Response to my Post Mr Butler?

I was gonna respond, but now I can't as I don;t want to put words into your mouth. :(
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: ActionButler on 20 February 2019, 21:09:56
See my last post, Neon.

As a fan of the game, I really love being a part of these discussions, but as a mod, it just isn’t right for me to go around blathering on about alternate rules and then saying “but for real, guys, we shouldn’t talk about alternate rules”. The last thing in the world that I want is to seem like I’m trying to skate around the rules that I’m here to remind folks of.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Papabees on 20 February 2019, 21:38:40
I guess, philosophically for me, I want the rules to aid my immersion in the game not hinder it. As the rules stand now I feel like they hinder it and could be adjusted to give "essentially" the same results (I changed from exactly because you were correct, it would not mimic the exact results. However, it would give a fair summation of them over time which I would be more than happy with). The only things that would really be impacted would be BV values, which are easy to change.

Catalyst just seems to be married to the idea that the rules "must not change". Not sure why.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 20 February 2019, 22:28:21
And here's where I swoop in to half-skate around the rules instead. :P

Everyone loves controversial subjects, right?  Well here's one for you, conveniently proven to at least be halfway reasonable by the PC game: non-simultaneous turns.

Getting into the nitty gritty of it is obviously for the fan rules board and not here, but I think it has some very favorable advantages, namely:

1) Player engagement and interactivity.  Obviously this is one that I harp on a lot, but it's really evident when games resolve by-unit instead of by-force.  The simultaneous nature of phases in BattleTech means that especially during the movement phase unless you are currently in the process of ****** up (even through no fault of your own, like trying to stand and failing) then there's not actually much happening.  There's strategy, of course, but it's the strategy of a chess match, denying moves to your opponent and realizing good positions.  It's a slow burn.  And then everything of import happens between the shooting and physical phases, typically in one (relatively slowly resolved) swoop.  And then after that it's back to the slow burn.  It's very much a game of highs and lows, but the lows vastly outnumber the highs.

When each unit moves and shoots in the same activation, the strategic calculus can change at the drop of a hat, regardless of what part of the turn it is.  All players have to be engaged, either because their turn can come up at any moment, or because what they were planning on doing radically shifts.  It's less good (but still an improvement) in 4+ player games particularly where one team has more players than another, but the immediate engagement is still there through other moves.  Why that's a bonus: I played in a campaign game less than a month ago with four players and six enemies.  One turn, I was the first move in a turn we lost initiative.  The next time I was required to think about the game was almost 15 minutes later when the shooting started.  In between I could have happily zoned out and missed nothing of consequence.  That's not possible in a game with immediate feedback on all moves.

2) Ambushes can actually happen.  What happens in an attempted ambush in BattleTech?  Either you invent a new rule that says the victims can't shoot or have some major penalty, or you modify existing hidden unit rules to make it so that the ambush can actually happen.  Because if you don't, your "ambush" is just a non-standard deployment zone, and the simultaneous shooting phase means nothing resembling an actual ambush happens.

Tactical ambushes, clever moves you can set up for your opponent to walk into suddenly have an immediate emotional payoff.  In regular BattleTech, the move completes and your opponent gets a brief moment of "oh, damn" and then it's on to the rest of the phase and then the shooting phase, potentially minutes where the emotional payoff - on both sides - of a properly executed ambush have time to fizzle.  Meanwhile, when the ambush becomes apparent and then completes in the same fluid motion, the effect is immediate.  The Berserker casually strolling through a level 3 building to end up one hex behind your <insert 'Mech here> and then stand there twiddling its thumbs until the physical combat phase is "That's BattleTech!  Oh well, sorry <'Mech>".  The Berserker casually strolling through a level 3 building to end up one hex behind your <insert 'Mech here> and then immediately cut it in half without missing a beat registers closer to "HOLY SHIT".  There's no fizzle (unless it misses, in which case the payoff is still immediate, just in the form of good-natured mockery instead of mortal terror).

3) Light 'Mechs retain a use well into the late-game years.  A fast 'Mech with some pulse lasers in the 3100s is just begging to get beaten by something meaner than it is because it can never, no matter how hard it tries, pull off that magic backstab and get away scot-free without some significant help.  By itself a light is a nuisance, they only become dangerous when used in groups or as part of a larger Lance to make sure that it isn't focused on.  It becomes wholly dependent on a lot of things, not least of which are your opponent either not winning initiative or your opponent deliberately ignoring the backstabber.  Both of those things can be mitigated, but neither of them can truly be avoided with skill - it's all either luck or your opponent's mistake.

I love Light 'Mechs.  In a non-simultaneous game, a Light 'Mech goes for the kill at the end of a turn, striking from behind.  It doesn't score a kill (but the enemy absolutely experiences that moment of pants-shitting terror), but unlike in a simultaneous game, the 'Mech it lit up doesn't get the perfectly-informed opportunity to flip arms and make it really pay.  The next turn, the backstabber sprints away, unharmed.  Or potentially very harmed, if the opponent is able to respond with another well-placed move.  It's now a game of play-counterplay, cat and mouse, and potentially of honest-to-god suspense.  Cat and mouse games as they stand right now are more frequently than not "who won initiative this turn?" and that's the end of it.

There are definitely downsides, but this post is also really long, and it's not really a forum post if it admits weakness, right? :D
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: AdmiralObvious on 21 February 2019, 00:57:20
At the fundamental level, I really don't like the PC game. For a variety of reasons of course.

I really don't like the way the game plays in the move and shoot before the the opponent has an opportunity to even move or shoot.

This isn't relevant for heavier Mechs getting shot at by Lighter Mechs, but when a light Mech gets alpha struck because the game decided "you walked into an ambush" against an assault which happened to be on the enemy roster, you're toast.

It does make the game play a bit faster, but since you're on a PC, you don't even need to roll the dice on each action. It would be better for tactical play and positioning (in my opinion) if the PC game stuck with the current BT rules. The way it currently plays is fundamentally different, and I don't like it at all compared to the board game.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Daryk on 21 February 2019, 04:41:32
Non-simultaneity is one of the reasons I gave up on the PC game.  It's not necessarily a bad game, but it's not BattleTech.  Being able to eliminate assault 'mechs with no significant damage taken in return just feels wrong.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Apocal on 21 February 2019, 04:48:46
3) Light 'Mechs retain a use well into the late-game years.  A fast 'Mech with some pulse lasers in the 3100s is just begging to get beaten by something meaner than it is because it can never, no matter how hard it tries, pull off that magic backstab and get away scot-free without some significant help.  By itself a light is a nuisance, they only become dangerous when used in groups or as part of a larger Lance to make sure that it isn't focused on.  It becomes wholly dependent on a lot of things, not least of which are your opponent either not winning initiative or your opponent deliberately ignoring the backstabber.  Both of those things can be mitigated, but neither of them can truly be avoided with skill - it's all either luck or your opponent's mistake.

I love Light 'Mechs.  In a non-simultaneous game, a Light 'Mech goes for the kill at the end of a turn, striking from behind.  It doesn't score a kill (but the enemy absolutely experiences that moment of pants-shitting terror), but unlike in a simultaneous game, the 'Mech it lit up doesn't get the perfectly-informed opportunity to flip arms and make it really pay.  The next turn, the backstabber sprints away, unharmed.  Or potentially very harmed, if the opponent is able to respond with another well-placed move.  It's now a game of play-counterplay, cat and mouse, and potentially of honest-to-god suspense.  Cat and mouse games as they stand right now are more frequently than not "who won initiative this turn?" and that's the end of it.

There are definitely downsides, but this post is also really long, and it's not really a forum post if it admits weakness, right? :D

I don't believe light mechs eventually evolving away from their traditional backstabbing role is necessarily a bad thing. It seems to me that it matches more or less the way you had some truly light, speedy tanks fielded early in WW2 that were pushed aside the moment everyone converged on the better armed and protected mediums and heavies as proper fighting units while lights were used for scouting, screening, escort, etc.

Anyway, I'm in agreement with most of what you wrote otherwise, I just think that focusing on keeping lights relevant as backstabbers might require far more wide-ranging changes, although something with initiative would help.

At the fundamental level, I really don't like the PC game. For a variety of reasons of course.

I really don't like the way the game plays in the move and shoot before the the opponent has an opportunity to even move or shoot.

This isn't relevant for heavier Mechs getting shot at by Lighter Mechs, but when a light Mech gets alpha struck because the game decided "you walked into an ambush" against an assault which happened to be on the enemy roster, you're toast.

It does make the game play a bit faster, but since you're on a PC, you don't even need to roll the dice on each action. It would be better for tactical play and positioning (in my opinion) if the PC game stuck with the current BT rules. The way it currently plays is fundamentally different, and I don't like it at all compared to the board game.

Well, if you lose initiative and don't move defensively as a light against an assault on the table, you're probably toast as well, at least outside of the introtech era.

Tabletop's initiative and phase system would be awful for a PC turn-based tactics game. Suicide bombing strategies are too easy to use, unless otherwise mitigated by other mechanics aad even addressing that, the last-mover advantage on the TT is far too strong -- to the point where at least one poster here openly stated that they concede the game if they lose initiative rolls too many times in a row -- for the relative dearth of player means to influence it. Mechanics so influential as that have to be paired with meaningful interaction in the PC turn-based tactics world. I'm aware there are ways to tilt initiative rolls your way if you use RPG skills, play with quirks or use certain tricks in force composition, but there is no meaningful play/counter-play involved: more is better, always.

It works on the table, but in a PC game -- especially one with PvP aspects -- it would very quickly become a race to field the Cyclops with the meta pilot build stacking initiative bonuses atop that, if at all possible. A single optima is poor game design and there aren't many reasons to do it when you have a computer to crunch numbers and handle record-keeping.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Papabees on 21 February 2019, 09:05:35
For initiative I've seen some games where the loser gets a +1 to the die roll for every consecutive turn of initiative they lose after the first. It's probably the most important aspect of the TT game.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 21 February 2019, 09:06:48
to the point where at least one poster here openly stated that they concede the game if they lose initiative rolls too many times in a row

you haven't really played battletech until you've lost initiative fourteen times in a row. twice. yes everyone laughed at me.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Fear Factory on 21 February 2019, 09:26:52
you haven't really played battletech until you've lost initiative fourteen times in a row. twice. yes everyone laughed at me.

It's more common that you think...

 :D
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 21 February 2019, 09:27:50
good. i don't deserve to be alone in this miserable club
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Bedwyr on 21 February 2019, 10:00:53
It's more common that you think...

 :D

Heck we have an admin famed for it.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: abou on 21 February 2019, 12:20:10
Famous last words that were thankfully not from me.

"Pft... I can beat a four."

*rolls three*
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Fear Factory on 21 February 2019, 13:58:59
Famous last words that were thankfully not from me.

"Pft... I can beat a four."

*rolls three*

Or me.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Charlie Tango on 22 February 2019, 10:38:23

You may notice a theme to my posts: the player comes first.  Everything I suggest is, while certainly not prefect or even necessarily good, ultimately aimed at improving the player's engagement with the game.  This is also where BattleTech categorically fails as an engaging game: the player does not come first, the mechanics do.  Fixing that should be the ultimate goal.

Actually, no, in your method the mechanics come first,  not the players.  The "I needed a 12, roll box cars, get the full spread on the missile table and take the guy out" are the stories that get told on down the line,  those are the moments of joy or frustration that make the game *more * than just a mechanical numbers exercise.  Things like MoS/MoF rules take that away.    The joy in the telling of things has been lost I think because we don't have fiction to give us examples to relate to what's going on in the tabletop game. Back when I wrote a few stories of my own,  I LOVED writing 'Mech combat because it was fun in taking what happens on the tabletop and translating that into something that was exciting and interesting to read.  I think that has been lost,  and I think that if we as players incorporated more of that back into the game, you'd have more engangement.


And one more comment on "the game forces you to memorize tables" argument:  I've been playing for 30 years at this point and I couldn't (without looking) give you the Front/Back hit chart.   I've never been forced to memorize a table to play this game
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Papabees on 22 February 2019, 10:46:48
I'd have to respectfully disagree on some points. The story of the "I needed a 12" get's told simply because that is the current mechanism by which amazing results happen. If there was some other mechanic that derived improbable but entertaining results I think we'd tell those stories as well. As to connecting with the game because of the fiction. I totally agree.
Actually, no, in your method the mechanics come first,  not the players.  The "I needed a 12, roll box cars, get the full spread on the missile table and take the guy out" are the stories that get told on down the line,  those are the moments of joy or frustration that make the game *more * than just a mechanical numbers exercise.  Things like MoS/MoF rules take that away.    The joy in the telling of things has been lost I think because we don't have fiction to give us examples to relate to what's going on in the tabletop game. Back when I wrote a few stories of my own,  I LOVED writing 'Mech combat because it was fun in taking what happens on the tabletop and translating that into something that was exciting and interesting to read.  I think that has been lost,  and I think that if we as players incorporated more of that back into the game, you'd have more engangement.


And one more comment on "the game forces you to memorize tables" argument:  I've been playing for 30 years at this point and I couldn't (without looking) give you the Front/Back hit chart.   I've never been forced to memorize a table to play this game
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Papabees on 22 February 2019, 10:52:40
I wonder how impactful changing the Medium and Long range mods to +1, +2 would be? Aside from BV, I mean. Obviously that would change. I don't think typical Long range shots hitting about 25% of the time would necessarily be bad. I suppose Pulses would need to get reduced to -1 at the same time but...
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Sartris on 22 February 2019, 11:01:34
+1 at medium also has an impact on short range weapons. 9s turning into and 8s turning into 7s is a big deal. the impact on med lasers and AC/20s is pretty powerful.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Fear Factory on 22 February 2019, 12:37:29
Movement is the biggest offender. Just do flat TMM per mode. No more movement dice and having to count hexes for the best TMM.

Change attacker modifiers to offset flat TMM average:

Stand Still -1
Walking +0
Running +1
Jumping +2

Choose movement mode and move using normal rules. TMM generated is for the mode, not total hexes moved. So if your walk rating is 7 it generates a +3 mod.

No TMM is generated for walking if you end your turn in the same hex. Running applies to the same hex plus adjacent hexes.

This is a big help for those who play fast units.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Scotty on 22 February 2019, 14:13:12
Actually, no, in your method the mechanics come first,  not the players.  The "I needed a 12, roll box cars, get the full spread on the missile table and take the guy out" are the stories that get told on down the line,  those are the moments of joy or frustration that make the game *more * than just a mechanical numbers exercise.

While I certainly respect your ability to enjoy this particular scenario, the unspoken assertion included in this quote is wrong.  I don't mean "your opinion is terrible" wrong  (your opinion is not terrible), I mean factually incorrect.

The players had nothing to do with that series of rolls.  Literally nothing.  Dice rolls are not deterministic.  No player influenced the cluster roll.  No players had anything to do with boxcar appearing on the dice. No player had the slightest damn bit of influence over how that result played out.  The moment the player decided to fire a weapon at a target, their role in the story ends until the next movement phase.

You are conflating (not deliberately, I suspect) the idea of an impressive result with player engagement.  Players can absolutely be excited by improbable outcomes, but the easy logical pitfall to stumble into is that it matters how that result was achieved, that the process by which BattleTech arrives at the result "all the missiles, good kill" is unique and that being unique is engaging.  It doesn't, and it isn't.  You're viewing it through the lenses of "this has made me feel engaged for 30 years, therefore it must be engaging" and put bluntly the players that can save BattleTech are not you.  Or me.  Or anyone else that has been playing BattleTech for decades.

Player engagement is when a player is able to make decisions that meaningfully impact the game and ensuring those decisions are both frequent enough and impactful enough that the player feels like their involvement in the game is both meaningful and entertaining.

If the answer to "Can I write a program to do this without the player's input?" is "yes", then in a player driven game we should strive to make that process as quick and easy as possible so the player can spend more time playing the game and less time manually cranking the simulations gears.

(P.s. I wasn't arguing in favor of MOS/MOF anything)
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: mbear on 25 February 2019, 07:02:18
I'm just throwing this out there: Ars Cardboard reviewed a Fallout tabletop game that might have some ideas we can use to meet the goal of making the game more fun.

Fallout: Wasteland Warfare: A “rad” miniatures game full of Nuka-Cola flavor (https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/02/fallout-wasteland-warfare-a-rad-miniatures-game-full-of-nuka-cola-flavor/)

I find it especially noteworthy because the subhead of the article is "But be prepared for some complexity."

In particular I think the initiative system may interest some of you.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Karasu on 25 February 2019, 12:19:58
I've stayed out of this, but I want to add something in breifly.

The big problem with MoS for cluster weapons is that it makes them more powerful (hunh?!) or less powerful. 

The biggest thing with Battletech is the to-hit roll being pass/fail. You make the shot or you didn't.  This applies to PPCs or missiles.  But with an MoS system, you are either penalizing missiles (for needing MoS >0 for average damage), which often shoot at longer ranges anyways (and higher TNs).   Or you use MoF, where even if you "miss" by 1 or 2, some still hit.  The problem is that this gives cluster weapons a "pulse bonus", where you can shotgun spam it, knowing you almost can't hit on a 12, but if you get 10s you can still deal damage to that light mech. This unbalances everything else, as cluster weapons now become more powerful (Which isn't a bad thing for IS LRMs, but for SRMs, LBX, and clan weapons, it is not good).

Do I have a suggestion for making it better? No, no I don't. But making it MoS/MoF based will unbalance cluster weapons compared to all other weapons (either + or -), which would mandate a much larger re-check.


I think there is an argument to simplify criticals to using polyhedral dice (it is much faster than the 1d6+1d6 system) with an optional 1d6+1d6 if you don't have polyhedrals.

I'll admit to this being a bit of a slow response here.
Because there is a way to adjust the results by varying what the MoS 0 actually gives, it's merely a case of statistics and comparison to produce a table that matches the outcomes that currently take place.

I'm vaguely intrigued by the possibility of different weapon systems using 'splash' style resolution (damage location hit and adjacent ones) or 'shotgun' style resolution (damage based on MoS) as a way to differentiate them.  Doing MoS with missiles would maybe allow just aggregating all LRMs: "You fired 2 LRM15s?  roll to hit on the 30 chart."
But that gets very technical and is probably for Fan Rules.
Title: Re: Re: Will Catalyst produce and sell more plastic miniature sets?
Post by: Daemion on 26 February 2019, 10:02:37
My hope was to grow the game into a campaign... .

I know I'm late to this discussion, but I would like to point out that the changes you're suggesting will have a drastic impact on one of the aspects of extended play that can bring people back: Salvage.

With the declare before you resolve rules, you run the chance that a Mech that simply got head-chopped might have also suffered an ammo breach and there's nothing left in the same fire phase.

I know, because I've played and still play plenty of campaigns, and salvage is in many ways important. An enemy's machine may end up replacing a ride lost by one of your pilots later on.

Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Talen5000 on 08 March 2019, 05:21:22
How about this idea. Go back to a cluster hit template (damage focused on hit location with damage to adjacent locations) and to re-introduce the lost chance of the hits damaging something important (head/crit), include some kind of aiming mechanic whether pulling from TO or coming up with something wholly different.

One rule I've used on occasion....

Roll for hit location as normal.
Apply half the damage.
Move 1 up and 1 down on the hit table
Apply half the remaining damage to each.
Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Daemion on 09 March 2019, 14:33:43
That combined with the attrition of the game, really puts Battletech in the "Light Tactical Game" genre, which by its very nature really should be a pretty short game.  I put Battletech in about the same category as X-Wing when it comes to "tactical weight", the difference is that an X-Wing match takes about 30-45 minutes to complete, while Battletech, on a good day with everyone acting quickly takes 3-4 hours, but more realistically 4-6 hours.

But, that's the thing. For me, BattleTech is less a game and more of a social event. While each player works through a portion of combat, we're kinda chatting about other things. Hence, the tactical depth is great for that.  You don't have to think too hard to map out your turn, and then you can change focus for a few minutes while talking about a random subject, and then still be able to come back to my plan without any issues.

Commentary is very much a part of this game for our group.

I will admit that we have come to this pretty quickly when we first started playing as a group.  So, we kinda expect it.

Maybe it's the expectation of the game, compared to more modern games, that is the problem.

In some recent RPG sessions, I notice we do the same thing.  And, those can take a few hours to resolve what in actuality are very minor scenes in a larger story.  One or two in a night, maybe with combat, maybe without. I don't see people complaining about length of RPG sessions. But, a lot of people expect it.

Sure, a social event does not a tournament game make. But, I recall running through a grinder with fresh players and a veteran or two, and the banter, the interaction was there, and enjoyable. I ask anyone who went to GenCon and participated in one of the major story-line games that lasted pretty much all day if they weren't gabbing and bantering with the other players.

That's the era this game came out of.  That's the style of game it really is.

And, I still find the detail to be very engrossing, because, when something unexpected happens, like a failed piloting roll taking off a limb from falling damage, we spend minutes going back and forth illustrating with words what we think happened, or should have happened.  Sometimes, when someone rolls snake-eyes on a to-hit roll, someone will joke about the target healing a point, or something to that effect.

I've played X-wing and Trek: Attack Wing, and I didn't get that kind of interaction or creativity.

So, I feel torn in that I do want a BT game that is faster and can resolve a battle more promptly, maybe with less pip tracking and some form of refined damage tracking system, somewhere in between BT Core and Alpha Strike.  But, at the same time, I enjoy the social event. 

It also helps that a lot of the games we run are campaign style missions.  Coming up with a reason to fight, who against, and what makes a win is actually kinda fun outside the actual game session.  Then, being able to make a presentation of it to my friends, and see how they enjoy it is a big boon.  Just about like a GM working up the next session for the group or different parts of it.

Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Daemion on 09 March 2019, 15:05:40
In the abstract, how about an Alpha Strike game that has some kind of mechanic where limbs fall off or there is some other kind of mechanical sense of armor/systems degredation?


In the context of normal BT, what about missiles having a standard dispersion pattern centered around the hit location?

You mean like Heavy Gear?  Each time a gear gets hit, it takes 1 or 2 points of damage, as long as it's not catastrophic. Then an item is eliminated from use.

Now, applying this to Alpha isn't hard.  If I recall, damage to internals is an automatic crit result on a small chart. It's effects based.  But, I'm still of the opinion that you shouldn't have to power through armor to get there.

For example, a PPC to a Wasp's right arm will still take off that right arm, cutting its damage in half.  So, that's armor and internals all at once.

Maybe implement a crit chance roll or threshold for damage on Mechs which have armor. Maybe allow hard hitting weapons like an AC/10 or 20 or gauss or PPC to modify it in some fashion.

You don't have to worry about tracking locations, but you still get some of the random damage aspects of the core game. 

Personally, I would actually simply go with a change in damage scale, like 5 point groupings of the core game being the new 1.  I'd allow for special instances of grouping smaller weapons or individual shots from them.  Then I'd find a way to keep the locations, but streamline how they're determined to get hit.

Complete aside: Something I really want!  I want a version of the game that can properly emulate modern combat, which is also found in a lot of anime, and an interface with the current BT style system. Why? I've always wondered how x-Mecha that functions as it's portrayed (Like, say, an M1 Abrams) would compare with BattleTech. Haven't gotten over that.



Title: Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
Post by: Daemion on 09 March 2019, 17:57:36
One is regarding Scotty's comments which I completely agree with, in that a good miniatures game as is the case with many modernly designed miniatures games, is that they keep players engaged and I agree that administration and bookkeeping cannot be counted as engaging players.

Okay. I would like to point out something.  Pardon me for playing catch-up, but I don't internet often, so it's a thing for me to have to spend a day reading up on a topic I enjoy.

But, as I go, things occur to me.  Like this.

Magic: The Gathering may not be a miniature's game, but I imagine that it fit's the bill for an interactive game.  However, that breaks down the more people you add in a group game. It doesn't matter if it's teams on two sides, or a giant melee.  Once your turn's done, you have to wait through everyone else's turn before you can interact again, more often than not.  This does not include the reactionary control player who has an instant or two in his hand.

However, I've seen it happen way too often, especially with younger players. And we did this every other weekend.  TV is on, and something interesting is playing, and when their turn was done, the younger players, and some adults, would turn to watch the tube while they waited to be attacked or their turn came up.

So, this isn't a problem with just BattleTech. It's a problem with games in general, that when you have too many people involved, it's hard to stay engaged. And I don't see any game that can fix that.  I don't see any way to really fix that beyond keeping the number of players down to something manageable (2-4 seems to be optimal), or designing a game in such a way that each player's turn is so damn short that they don't really make any decisions which feel meaningful.

Two-player BattleTech has never had a problem with engagement. Not from all the time I've played. 3-4 also seems to work well, because each side can consult, strategize and whatever while another person's busy.

And, quite frankly, I am all too fond of rolling fistfuls of death to handle weapons fire resolution.