So I've always had a little bit of trouble with the way certain levels of technology completely stagnate and never really get better. The following is my attempt to introduce a more fluid version of technology. Part of the idea behind this is to simulate evolving levels of armor and weaponry and the effectiveness of those levels on the battlefield when older and newer pieces of equipment meet on the battlefield. Some examples of similar things I'm looking to simulate with this is for example guns, transitioning from cannon shells to rifled barrels to self propelled munitions to sabot rounds or a transition from layered steel armor to depleted uranium to reactive armor and to stand off armor pieces.
Compare the tech level of the highest rated piece of equipment to each other piece of equipment. Equipment of lower tech levels lose 5% of their armor and damage for each level lower, round to the nearest whole number, battle value is effected in a similar fashion but decreased by 2.5% per level of difference to a minimum value of 70% base. For prices, the base base price is calculated for the most recent Tech Level, the first tech level lower loses 10% of its value, 5% for every level past that to a minimum total cost of 60% of the original price.
Example (RFL-5D)
Tech Percent Example Price BV Example BV PPC dmg Lrg Laser dmg
Base 100% 10,208,000 100% 1395 10 8
-1 90% 9,187,200 97.5% 1360 10 8
-2 85% 8,676,800 95% 1325 9 7
-3 80% 8,166,400 92.5% 1290 9 7
-4 75% 7,656,000 90% 1256 8 6
-5 70% 7,145,600 87.5% 1221 8 6
-6 65% 6,635,200 85% 1186 7 6
-7 60% 6,124,800 82.5% 1151 7 5
-8 60% 6,124,800 80% 1116 6 5
Armor
Base TL -1 TL -2 TL -3 TL -4 TL -5 TL -6
100% 95% 90% 85% 80% 75% 70%
H 8 8 7 7 6 6 6
CT 22 21 20 19 18 17 15
CT(R) 8 8 7 7 6 6 6
ST 15 14 14 13 12 11 11
ST(R) 8 8 7 7 6 6 6
A 15 14 14 13 12 11 11
L 15 14 14 13 12 11 11
Equipment also increases its critical space, tonnage, and range status if there is a clan level equivalent of the item (the damage remains at Inner Sphere levels). Weapons receive the clan equipment statistics 2 tech levels after their introduction, other equipment receive clan statistics 3 tech levels after their introduction. In order to keep costs down, generally speaking, vehicles use a tech level 1 lower than BattleMechs use for their era.
Standard Tech Levels
Level 0 Primitive BattleMechs
Level 1 Age of War (also the tech level during the 3rd SW)
Level 2 Star League
Level 3 Star League Royal Units
Level 4 Early Clan (Inner Sphere Jihad Era)
Level 5 Clan Golden Century (Early Republic)
Level 6 Clan Invasion Era (Late Republic)
Level 7 Clan Jihad/Republic Era
The introductory dates of each piece of equipment should coincide with an era mentioned above.
Foreseeable issues
The primary issue of this is that, unless the base line tech level is determined well before gameplay, the calculations for determining actual armor and damage values may take additional time. There’s also the issue that many additional calculations will need to be made. The last issue, and probably the most important is the BV adjustment, the percentage decrease is probably not the way to go, but I'm having a bit of difficulty with coming up with a simple solution to this.
So I know something like this isn't exactly needed, but I felt like posting it and seeing what others thought about it, feel free to tear the idea to shreds at your own whims. :D
