Author Topic: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion  (Read 34610 times)

NeonKnight

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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #90 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!
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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #91 on: 12 February 2019, 12:32:05 »
cleanup
« Last Edit: 29 May 2019, 16:11:58 by Easy »

carlisimo

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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #92 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.

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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #93 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

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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

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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #94 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.

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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #95 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.     
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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #96 on: 12 February 2019, 13:34:49 »
Right. It has its niche.
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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #97 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. 

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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #98 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
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Bedwyr

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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #99 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.
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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #100 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.
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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #101 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.

Bedwyr

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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #102 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.
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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #103 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.
« Last Edit: 12 February 2019, 15:31:22 by Scotty »
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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #104 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.




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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #105 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.
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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #106 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.
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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #107 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?

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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #108 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.
« Last Edit: 12 February 2019, 16:43:52 by Scotty »
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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #109 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.




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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #110 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.
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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #111 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.

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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #112 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

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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #113 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?

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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #114 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)
« Last Edit: 12 February 2019, 22:10:11 by Sartris »

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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #115 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?

Scotty

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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #116 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..
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AdmiralObvious

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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #117 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.

Crimson Dawn

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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #118 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).

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Re: Battletech Rules Modification Discussion
« Reply #119 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.
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