BattleTech - The Board Game of Armored Combat
Other BattleTech Games => MechWarrior and BattleTech Computer | Console Games => MegaMek Games => Topic started by: Warpimp on 31 May 2014, 15:48:59
-
Here is the project page for the Against the Bot rule set for Clan Play
Project Sketch
Tabs:
1. Force Creation
a. Clan Affiliation
b. Trial of Position(?) I like the idea of actually playing the warrior over a specific unit, as the Clans
c. Unit assignment
d. Mech Assignments
2. Honor System
a. Gaining Honor
b. Using Honor
I. Trials of Position (Promotion)
II. Trials of Refusal/Grievance
III. Trial of Bloodright
IV. Custom Configs/Mechs
V. Trials of Possession
3. Campaign Sytem
a. Trial/Mission Generation
I. Bidding
b. Events (I see this as having a lot more to happen than the Inner Sphere rules as you have combats for things life Grievances and the like.
I. Monthly- Fending off Trials from other clan units to get your stuff, Opportunities to Trial for Better equipment, techs, Missions and the like.
II. Yearly instead of defections you have reassignments of your warriors based on their skill and unit assignment, good warriors move up and bad ones move out.
4. Battle
5. Logistics
I. Unit Resources
II. Preparing for Missions
6. Era/Location Rules
a. Homeworlds
b. Operation Revival
c. Tukayyid-as a great number of forces were involved it is safe to assume a player has a good chance to be a part of the battle. It might be fun to reference the sourcebook on how to get your unit through the campaign.
d. Post Tukayyid
e. Refusal War
d. Bulldog/Bird dog
f. I know there is a lot that I am missing. Fill me in on different campaigns/eras and whatnot I am missing!
-
Here is a set of rules I've worked on but haven't had time to test yet.
While I was considering how to work out an honor system it occurred to me that the function of honor and prestige in Clan society is analogous to the function of money in the Inner Sphere. Instead of material wealth, it's a measure of social capital that can be used to get what one wants. Effectively, to purchase. While it may not be as satisfying as having something designated as honor points, interpreting the financial system as an abstraction of honor rather than a currency that can be converted into C-bills or Kerenskys, it has the advantage of using a familiar and already-existing game mechanic and not having to track an additional piece of data.
My rules for conducting missions against other Clans treats them as a series of Trials of Possession. The player rolls each month to see how many targets are available for attack or require defense and what the opfor's opening bid is. The player chooses how many if any to bid for (among allied commanders) and allocates units accordingly, then rolls for each to see whether the player wins the right to bid against the opponent. The lower the opening bid, the better the chance of success. The player then rolls to see what the opfor's final bid is and chooses which forces to commit from the original bid. A smaller force results in a bonus to the mission score. The unit is paid only for the trials fought and won, and the payment is modified to how honorably the battle was fought.
I also have rules for Bloodnames at unit creation and the chance for a warrior to earn a Bloodname as a special event, as well and circumstances and rules for trials of grievance and possession.
I also have extensive enemy charts, covering opponents in Clan space from 2807-3085 and the Inner Sphere from 3050-3085.
-
My idea was to use the difference in BV for a given battle to determine the honor gained. The only thing I don't like about it is the amount of book keeping.
-
There's going to be some micro regardless. Let's see where my thoughts have taken me so far. :)
Page = eventual tab of compiled spreadsheet.
Page 1: Force Creation
Here you will find two systems for creating your force. The first is suitable for quick starts and if you prefer to
think of your force overall; the second is ideal for roleplay and if you prefer to focus on your commanding
officer (or even another Warrior within the force.)
*The Quick Method*
Your force will belong to a Cluster (battalion) of one of the Clans. Roll 1d20 or choose. If you get an invalid
result (check the Legend,) check the alternative; if it is also invalid, reroll.
Legend:
# Clan may have been Absorbed or Annihilated before your time period.
$ Clan may not yet exist during your time period.
& Clan has a number of subdivisions. See subdivision notes, after the chart.
@ Invading / Inner Sphere Clan.
1 Blood Spirit
2 Burrock# / Stone Lion$
3 Cloud Cobra&
4 Coyote
5 Diamond Shark (AKA Sea Fox)@
6 Fire Mandrill&
7 Ghost Bear@
8 Goliath Scorpion
9 Hell's Horses
10 Ice Hellion
11 Jade Falcon@
12 Mongoose# / Wolf in Exile$
13 Nova Cat#@
14 Smoke Jaguar#@
15 Snow Raven@
16 Star Adder
17 Steel Viper@
18 Wolf@
19 Wolverine#
20 Widowmaker#
Subdivision notes:
Cloud Cobra maintains 19 "Cloisters" divided according to religion; this is not significant for gameplay.
Fire Mandrill has either 8, 7, or 5 "Kindraa" depending on time period. For gameplay purposes, this
distinction is significant as Kindraa often fight each other. Roll 1d8:
1 Smythe-Jewell# (2872)
2 Sainze
3 Faraday-Tanaga
4 Payne (3067: merges with Beyl-Grant)
5 Beyl-Grant (3067: merges with Payne)
6 Mattila-Carol
7 Mick-Kreese} (3067: merges with Kline)
8 Kline (3067: merges with Mick-Kreese)
---
Check to see if your Clan has any special rules (eg, no Solahma) and roll 1d4 for your Cluster type:
1 Frontline (uses OmniMechs)
2 Second-line (1d6 for each mech: 1-4 Clan Standard, 5-6 Omni)
3 Provisional Garrison Cluster (1d6: 1-4 Clan Standard, 5-6 Star League)
4 Solahma (1d6: 1-4 Succession Wars, 5 Clan Standard, 6 Star League)
Roll 1d6 for your starting force size: 1-2 Star, 3-5 Binary (two Stars,) 6 Trinary (3 Stars.)
For Frontline forces, 2d6: on a 12 the force is a Nova, and each 'Mech receives one Elemental Point.
Now roll for your pilots and 'Mechs (per typical AtB rules.) For Frontline and Second-line forces, a -1 bonus
should be applied to the pilots' Piloting and Gunnery values, minimum 0.
This should produce a force that is ready-op and prepared to take back Terra in Kerensky's name!
-
Moved from above to use the top as an index.
I mentioned this in the regular against the bot thread and decided it would need its own thread. So, what do you guys think an AtB Clan ruleset should be? Sandslice has gotten a great handle on it and has some ideas already:
I like the idea of an honour point system for the Clans as I feel you need a game mechanic reason to try to bid down but not too much that you might lose.
Perhaps something like this
The player can gain honor by:
o Winning trials
o number of units personally killed
o Bidding down
o Winning against prestigious units
o Surely there are more reasons, and that is why there is a thread
Honor can be used for:
o custom omni configs
o transfers to more prestigious units
o initiate a trial (grievance, position, bloodright, etcetera.
o refusing trials
I was thinking that birth type, Rank, Bloodname, and Unit could act as multipliers. So if you want to Trial for a Position as Khan, for example, you would need to be a trueborn Bloodnamed Galaxy Commander in charge of a prestigious Front-line Galaxy in order to have a serious shot at being taken seriously and getting the trial.
As for unit types I was thinking that the more prestigious the unit, the greater the chance for combat missions and thus, honour. So if you start losing trials and get sent down to a Solhoma unit, months could pass until you have a chance to slaughter some bandits, encouraging low bidding and crazy tactics for quick kills.
If a player's honor drops they could possibly go to a lower tier unit and may even end up in a Solhoma piloting a Hunchback IIC or as he or she gets more desperate and loses trial after trial and chances to prove themselves get farther and farther apart.
Uses for leadership skills?
Tactics is obvious, but I think perhaps turning commander initiative to off might better suit clan games (MekHQ generates pretty good tactics scores for every clan warrior).
I was thinking Leadership rolls could be useful to fend off trials of grievance on an events table or something like that.
Strategy has several uses already in the AtB rules.
I think the hardest part will be how to make the repair/refit system interesting.
Thoughts so far?
-
It would be nicer if we had Clan bot :P but with the new slider adjustments for princess that can be done
-
It would be nicer if we had Clan bot :P but with the new slider adjustments for princess that can be done
I've noticed my Clan Battles go awfully awry when I try to use zell against the non-zell using bot. I am well on my way to a piloting a Stinger in a Solohma Cluster.
-
So i've been messing with using bv for honour and I do think I like using the difference to determine how much honour is at stake. Using BV lets you do things like bid away weapons using the edit damage options in Megamek to really tailor your bid and give a nice numeric value to everything.
-
Some thoughts in no particular order...
1 ) We probably need a feature request for MM, to modify Princess to obey Zell. A ) No physical attacks B ) Pick a target and only fire on it until it is dead C ) Zell is broken time for Free For All. There would need to be a checkbox probably in the Princess config window.
2 ) We probably need a feature request for MHQ, to modify the Contract window allowing payment multipliers of less than 1.
3 ) It would probably be a very very good idea to restrict the initial ruleset to the Clan Invasion. In this way more testing can occur in a focused area and all the edge cases for various additional Clans go away. This also simplifies the "enemy table", dodges most of the issues caused by Zell and Clan vs Clan combat with Princess, and allows all the testers to break and abuse the same stuff. Seriously, limit initial scope to allow perfection of a core ruleset!
4 ) Individual Initiative should probably be turned on. This will allow the Clan Pilots to better utilize their typical Tactics levels.
5 ) Random thought... the Clan in general sucks at "Strategy". Clan pilots should have comparatively low Strategy levels compared to an Inner Sphere pilot. This reinforces in game play what we know in Lore. Clan pilots are superior warriors but Inner Sphere commanders have spent the last few centuries practicing "Total Warfare" not some ultra-stylized Mech ballet with guns. Offhand doing something like limiting randomly generated pilots to Strategy level 2 (2 very rare, 1 rare, 0 common) and setting the initial cost for Strategy Level ZERO to 20xp in MekHQ might work toward simulating this concept.
6 ) The Random Events and Big Battles table need serious work. I can imagine a Random Event like ZergHorde defense as an IS Commander throws an insane number of units at a Clan Star following it with a second battle (no repairs allowed) where the main IS force attacks a depleted Star. I can actually imagine a lot of things like this... we need to brainstorm :)
7 ) Use CBills! Yes, a parallel Honor system is needed but MekHQ is already configured to track CB. Let it do the accounting :) Use Honor to do things like allow the increase in force size, change Omni configs, buy a new unit. So you might need 4 Honor Points to buy a Medium Omni which you will then need to pay for out of your MekHQ tracked CBills. 1 Honor point and 250k CB for Omni change, 50 Honor points to increase from Star > Nova. The exact numbers don't matter just the main point that whatever accounting MekHQ can do for us should be done.
8 ) The "Contract System" needs a complete overhaul. Any system must be adversarial in that it must simulate at least one other Clanner trying for the same "Contract".
9 ) The Initial Starting force should suck! Like LLLLL to a max of LLLMM!
OK that is enough for now... more later.
-
Some thoughts in no particular order...
1 ) We probably need a feature request for MM, to modify Princess to obey Zell. A ) No physical attacks B ) Pick a target and only fire on it until it is dead C ) Zell is broken time for Free For All. There would need to be a checkbox probably in the Princess config window.
I like this idea, have the devs ever mentioned anything about a 'Zellbot'?
2 ) We probably need a feature request for MHQ, to modify the Contract window allowing payment multipliers of less than 1.
3 ) It would probably be a very very good idea to restrict the initial ruleset to the Clan Invasion. In this way more testing can occur in a focused area and all the edge cases for various additional Clans go away. This also simplifies the "enemy table", dodges most of the issues caused by Zell and Clan vs Clan combat with Princess, and allows all the testers to break and abuse the same stuff. Seriously, limit initial scope to allow perfection of a core ruleset!
I think this will probably be a given for the first real real set, I want to wait until the 3050 xotl tables for the Inner Sphere are implemented for Mech HQ. For now, I have been using clan vs. clan engagements but it does have some zell issues for sure, but how the battles are conducted I don't think are as important as the ease of setting up battles.
4 ) Individual Initiative should probably be turned on. This will allow the Clan Pilots to better utilize their typical Tactics levels.
Agreed.
5 ) Random thought... the Clan in general sucks at "Strategy". Clan pilots should have comparatively low Strategy levels compared to an Inner Sphere pilot. This reinforces in game play what we know in Lore. Clan pilots are superior warriors but Inner Sphere commanders have spent the last few centuries practicing "Total Warfare" not some ultra-stylized Mech ballet with guns. Offhand doing something like limiting randomly generated pilots to Strategy level 2 (2 very rare, 1 rare, 0 common) and setting the initial cost for Strategy Level ZERO to 20xp in MekHQ might work toward simulating this concept.
To be honest I don't use the Strategy rolls anyway in mech HQ, they let you modify map rolls and the like, right? But I like your ideas on it.
6 ) The Random Events and Big Battles table need serious work. I can imagine a Random Event like ZergHorde defense as an IS Commander throws an insane number of units at a Clan Star following it with a second battle (no repairs allowed) where the main IS force attacks a depleted Star. I can actually imagine a lot of things like this... we need to brainstorm :)
7 ) Use CBills! Yes, a parallel Honor system is needed but MekHQ is already configured to track CB. Let it do the accounting :) Use Honor to do things like allow the increase in force size, change Omni configs, buy a new unit. So you might need 4 Honor Points to buy a Medium Omni which you will then need to pay for out of your MekHQ tracked CBills. 1 Honor point and 250k CB for Omni change, 50 Honor points to increase from Star > Nova. The exact numbers don't matter just the main point that whatever accounting MekHQ can do for us should be done.
I don't think you need to use c-bills, why not have techs roll to represent the requestion of parts and you get them when you get them? You get new warriors if you lose and you get whatever the random warrior you roll is.
8 ) The "Contract System" needs a complete overhaul. Any system must be adversarial in that it must simulate at least one other Clanner trying for the same "Contract".
Also agreed, I think trials are a must to get any sort of Mission. I think doing bids for "Missions" is something done a the cluster level. I see this system initially being for star to trinary size units that are part of the cluster's bid. Perhaps when you get a scenario we roll to see what percentage of the enemy BV you have to be under to get the bid. So if you are facing off against a BV 12000 IS company, you roll against the table and get a number between 50-100% to represent bidding. It comes up to 75% so your force has to be under 9000 BV.
9 ) The Initial Starting force should suck! Like LLLLL to a max of LLLMM!
Agreed.
OK that is enough for now... more later.
I really like these ideas. I think this rule set can definitely go somewhere. Keep them coming everyone!
-
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fanksfsfe3uezwp/Clan%20AtB.docx
That was my ruleset I was putting together. I seriously had no idea anyone else was working on it and had just PM'd Makinus to make sure I could post them. I think you're all in my head...
-
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fanksfsfe3uezwp/Clan%20AtB.docx
That was my ruleset I was putting together. I seriously had no idea anyone else was working on it and had just PM'd Makinus to make sure I could post them. I think you're all in my head...
Wow, that really covers most everything from my first skim-through. Do you have it in an excel format?
-
What do you guys think of having a commander's political affiliation be a part of events and the campaign?
-
I had started pecking at some stuff but good god y'all are so far beyond me I'd rather help with yours than continue wasting effort on mine! Excellent stuff.
Ocherstone, some quibbles:
First, looking at the random trinary weight table, it seems a bit unbalanced. Running the numbers, a 'random' trinary will have on average 1.25 light stars, 0.4 medium stars, 0.95 heavy stars, and 0.4 assault stars. It seems like there's an odd paucity of medium stars. If it shifted to- just as a for example, keeping lights as the biggest chunk, mediums and heavies about the same, and few assaults:
(2d6 roll) result
(2-4): 3 L
(5): 2L 1M
(6-7): 1L 2M
( 8 ): 1M 2H
(9-10): 2H 1A
(11): 1H 2A
(12): Reroll as a supernova
You'd have a distribution of 1.06 light stars, 0.89 mediums, 0.74 heavies, 0.31 assaults. Just a suggestion to re-look at the weighting distribution!
The warrior skill distribution also seems a bit skewed; basically having there be only rare green pilots in front line clusters I guess is fluff-okay, but seems odd. More intriguing is that there is an epidemic of bloodnamed warriors. Each random frontline star should by this distribution have 1.67 bloodnamed warriors, which seems... overmuch? I can't imagine there are nearly that many bloodnamed mechwarriors who haven't even made star commander yet, that a typical trinary should have two. I'd suggest rewriting the final few lines as:
( 8 ): Veteran
(9): Veteran
(10): Veteran Bloodnamed
(11): Elite
(12+): Elite Bloodnamed
This way, bloodnames are pretty rare even in a frontline force, which I think is more reasonable; one in nine frontline mechwarriors will have a bloodname, so each trinary will be able to claim two, typically. Almost certainly a Star Captain and the second in command Star Commander. Even that may be too much, though!
I believe it's Abtakha, not Abthka.
Table 4d: Does the 1d4 mean that you're supposed to roll 1d4 and the resulting modifier as the example shows, or (as the text indicates) there's no roll involved?
Table 4e: So there's no way for a frontline veteran trinary to replace a full star at once? 4*.75+1 would be 4.
Under Trial of Position on page 14, you have results of 5 and 6 for a 1d4. Is there a set of modifiers I missed? Also, I didn't see how often honor duels are supposed to occur.
Page 15: Since we're using Clan organization, having the threshold for honor points to be gained be 1/4 seems odd; wouldn't 1/5 be simpler? That seems to be what you're using in the example.
Page 19: It seems harsh to have honor be a zero sum game like this. From the fluff, it sure seems that two opponents who both bid well and fought well, the winner would gain more than the loser would lose. Also, uh, if you bid down to 0 honor pool, there are no consequences if you lose; it kind of seems like that creates a perverse incentive to do that if your rolls went poorly.
In general, it seems like there is little reason not to bid away as much as possible every time; is this working as designed?
There are no consequences (or even extra benefits) to calling a Trial of Refusal?
Trials of Possession for factory ending up giving you something randomly rolled from the RAT seems odd; wouldn't a clan know what they're challenging for?
It'll be interesting to see how you splice in rules for attackign the Inner Sphere in this framework; any plans to do so?
I would also love to see rules for pilots winning bloodnames in play.
neoancient:
Doesn't seem like bloodnamed personnel get enough of a boost to avoid becoming solahma at first glance.
Mission generation, row 174-180: Is it still +1 for each successful battle, or has that gone away?
Those are some *awesome* tables for homeworld clan opponents.
Trials of possession, is there a penalty for declining to bid? Or does that count as a 1 in 6 chance of dezgra? Because if every battle, if I have to fight two trinaries and I only have 2 stars available, I decline to bid and it gives me a chance of getting wrecked, uh... that seems painful. If it's just -1 to overall mission score, that's less painful. Aside from that, I *LOVE* these bidding rules; the final bid table is wonderful for capturing the bidding process without too much micro.
Trials of possession, lines 52-54: Where is the benefit for deploying less forces than in your initial bid?
Trials of possession, lines 60-63. Bit of clarification, I'm a bit confused/not sure if you started talking about inner sphere enemies or not. If not, how can all trials occur at the same time in a month, but star assignments and battle rolls happen twice a week?
Ditto, lines 79+: So at the beginning the force pool is zero and enemies always have one fewer star?
A120: Typo, 11-12 is the result and not 11-2
Why would a player ever not request hegira?
That bidding table, OUCH. -3 to your mission score for 100% parity between forces? *OUCH*. I can already tell what I as someone who is not super-awesome at megamek will be houseruling first thing...
Trial of position: Interesting having enemies deploy staggered. I usually just have them all deploy at the start and have all three be different bots, kick the two bots I don't want early and replaceplayer them in when it's time for them to activate.
In other trials: Are you making a special events table? I can't find one where I could roll a Trial of Grievance/Bloodright.
All in all, there's parts of both sets of rules I really like, and I'd love to see you guys work together!
-
Also, with some research, certain Clans have different distributions in their forces, or other considerations.
For example, a Hell's Horses Cluster looks like this:
Three Trinaries of 'Mechs (and statistically, 2/3 of all of this Clan's OmniMech Stars are Novas)
One Trinary of aero
One Trinary of vee/infantry: each Point consists of two vehicles and one 25-man platoon of infantry.
Cloud Cobras don't allow Solahma to be anything except regular infantry.
Ice Hellion regular infantry is either mechanised or jump.
Blood Spirits (and Kindraa Sainze of Fire Mandrill) do not take bondsmen, and will never become bondsmen.
And so on. :)
-
I had started pecking at some stuff but good god y'all are so far beyond me I'd rather help with yours than continue wasting effort on mine! Excellent stuff.
I agree on almost all your points, and I did have some stuff out of order and not fully fleshed out. I've been sitting on this for a month and didn't want to wuss out any more and get some other people's perspectives when I messaged Makinus on Friday. When I saw others working on the same thing, I figured the at was out of the bag. I didn't even finish labeling the tables. I will absolutely look at everything you have and put out a 0.2 version, appreciate it.
Wow, that really covers most everything from my first skim-through. Do you have it in an excel format?
Is excel better? I didn't know if I should follow Makinus's lead or use Word. I can put it into Excel, no problem.
Also, with some research, certain Clans have different distributions in their forces, or other considerations.
For example, a Hell's Horses Cluster looks like this:
Three Trinaries of 'Mechs (and statistically, 2/3 of all of this Clan's OmniMech Stars are Novas)
One Trinary of aero
One Trinary of vee/infantry: each Point consists of two vehicles and one 25-man platoon of infantry.
Cloud Cobras don't allow Solahma to be anything except regular infantry.
Ice Hellion regular infantry is either mechanised or jump.
Blood Spirits (and Kindraa Sainze of Fire Mandrill) do not take bondsmen, and will never become bondsmen.
And so on. :)
Yeah, I'd like Clan specific distributions, Honor levels (Wolves will break zell no problem Pre-Refusal War), bondsman restrictions, so on. I just got to a point that I felt like I needed other people's input.
-
neoancient:
Doesn't seem like bloodnamed personnel get enough of a boost to avoid becoming solahma at first glance.
I had originally included a unit rating modifier to the starting Bloodname rolls, but that required having all details of unit creation completed first, and rolling for Bloodnames as the last step once the rating is known. The system is based on some rough calculations of frequency based on number of names available and estimated touman size. I agree that it doesn't properly account for higher concentration in the Keshik and Front-line units. Perhaps I should go back to the previous approach.
Mission generation, row 174-180: Is it still +1 for each successful battle, or has that gone away?
I should have stated that this chart is an addition to the standard AtB score system, not a replacement.
Those are some *awesome* tables for homeworld clan opponents.
Thanks. That's probably the part I'm most proud of.
Trials of possession, is there a penalty for declining to bid? Or does that count as a 1 in 6 chance of dezgra? Because if every battle, if I have to fight two trinaries and I only have 2 stars available, I decline to bid and it gives me a chance of getting wrecked, uh... that seems painful. If it's just -1 to overall mission score, that's less painful. Aside from that, I *LOVE* these bidding rules; the final bid table is wonderful for capturing the bidding process without too much micro.
Available trials are like contract offers. You don't have to accept anything you don't want to, but the more trials you fight the more you potentially get paid. If you try for more than you can handle, though, you may end up with a big repair bill and no money to pay for it. The payment section at the bottom of the page (163-177) probably ought to be in a more prominent place, since that is a key part of the way the system balances risk and bravado with reward.
As I said in my original post, I haven't done any testing and I suspect that this system will need a lot of adjustments to be balanced.
Trials of possession, lines 52-54: Where is the benefit for deploying less forces than in your initial bid?
Increase in contract score (152-161), which in turn increases the payment for a victorious trial.
Trials of possession, lines 60-63. Bit of clarification, I'm a bit confused/not sure if you started talking about inner sphere enemies or not. If not, how can all trials occur at the same time in a month, but star assignments and battle rolls happen twice a week?
I'm not sure what you're asking, but maybe this will clear it up. Missions (contracts) against Inner Sphere opponents are conducted on a weekly cycle as in standard AtB. If your enemy is Clan, then you can fight multiple trials simultaneously as part of the overall mission. The trials are conducted against the same opponent, but the forces are distinct. The units assigned to that trial are not available for any other trial or bidding until all forces on one side or another have been eliminated, whether that takes a single battle or two months. This applies both to the player's forces and to the enemy forces - each trial has a separate enemy force pool. Each trial is treated like a mini-contract.
Ditto, lines 79+: So at the beginning the force pool is zero and enemies always have one fewer star?
I had a feeling I didn't explain this very well. An example would probably explain it better.
The roll on the final bid chart gives an enemy force size of 8 points. For the first battle you roll an enemy force of 1 medium star: LLMMM. Since the force pool is empty at the beginning of the trial, you roll for all five enemy 'Mechs. By the end of the battle, one med and one light have escaped, which become the enemy force pool, and there are still three of the initial five points remaining to be rolled. In the next battle, the enemy force is one heavy and one light: MHHHA + LLLLM. What is in the force pool accounts for one of the light and one of the mediums, but there are not enough unrolled units in the original force to complete the enemy force. Starting with the heaviest, the final three points are rolled as one assault and two heavies. At this point the entire enemy force has been rolled, and if there are any further battles the enemy forces come from the survivors of this one.
A120: Typo, 11-12 is the result and not 11-2
Why would a player ever not request hegira?
If you request (and are granted) hegira, the retreating units are removed from the forces you bid for that trial. If hegira is refused, the battle continues until all units are destroyed or have fled the battle (in which case they are still available in future battles in that trial). If you choose to end when the victory conditions are met, the scenario ends at that point, your units suffer no further damage, and are available in future battles but you take a bigger hit to mission score. This does not actually match any use of hegira that I've seen in the source material (which would involve the entire force retreating and the end of the mission), but I thought that it was worth taking a bit of liberty to present the player with more strategic options.
That bidding table, OUCH. -3 to your mission score for 100% parity between forces? *OUCH*. I can already tell what I as someone who is not super-awesome at megamek will be houseruling first thing...
Perhaps, but note that this is the total reserves for each side, not the forces involved in a particular battle. I find that I destroy a much larger number of enemy units than I lose over the course of a contract even if the battles themselves are pretty even. Also (and again) I haven't actually tested this, so the numbers are just a guess and I'm sure will need to be adjusted for balance.
Trial of position: Interesting having enemies deploy staggered. I usually just have them all deploy at the start and have all three be different bots, kick the two bots I don't want early and replaceplayer them in when it's time for them to activate.
In other trials: Are you making a special events table? I can't find one where I could roll a Trial of Grievance/Bloodright.
I think it would be good to have a distinctly Clan special events table, but I didn't tackle it. Instead I substituted for Star League Cache I/II (Mission Generation 182-184).
-
Not at home so I can't look for myself, but in the two systems we have been shown do either of you use the Clan star designations (Striker, Battle, etcetera?) This might help us get a much more clan-like breakdown instead of just light-medium-heavy-assault.
-
Clan star designations (Striker, Battle, etcetera?)
I did not know clan stars had such designations - where can one find more information about them?
-
I did not know clan stars had such designations - where can one find more information about them?
They vary from Clan to Clan, which is why I didn't include them. Not sure of anyone else.
-
They vary from Clan to Clan, which is why I didn't include them. Not sure of anyone else.
I was more curiuos. I think this was a bigger part of the earlier sourcebooks that I have been reading. Sarna has a much better writeup of unit types from the warden and crusader field manuals.
-
Here is a rough draft of the honour system I have been tinkering with.
The Honour system will uses honour as the form of currency for the campaign, this will determine what the warrior gets to do besides sit and wait for battle.
Honour is primarily gained by winning battles. The amount of honour gained is equal to the difference in BV between the forces involved in each conflict in addition to modifiers based on a number of factors.
If the warrior is not in command he/she is awarded honour based on enemies defeated honourably (using the rules of zellbrigen). This only includes mechs by design.
Modifiers are as follows
Warrior is a member of a Keshik unit 1.1
Warrior is a member of a Frontline Unit 1.05
Warrior is a member of a Secondline Unit 1
Warrior is a member of a PGC 0.95
Warrior is a member of a Solohma Unit 0.75
If the warrior is Blooded s/she receives a .01 to a .1 bonus depending on the quality of his or her bloodline.
If the warrior is a ristar s/he receives a .05 bonus.
If the player's political philosophy is in line with his/her clan there is a .02 bonus.
If they player loses the battle honor is lost equal to the BV of the bidded force times all of his/her modifiers.
If the player bids more BV than the opposing force, no honor can be gained from the battle.
Using honour
There are many uses for honour in this ruleset:
Ristar
A warrior may spend 10000 honour to gain ristar status. If s/he ever drops below 0 honor this is trait is stripped form the player.
Promotion/Trial of
A player may spend honour to initiate a duel with an officer of the next higher level in order to be promoted.
The costs are as follows:
Star Commander 25000
Star Captain 250000
Star Colonel 1000000
(These numbers will need work)
Transfer
The player may spend honour points to transfer to a higher prestige unit
The costs to move up to a higher-tier unit costs equals twice the cost of the warrior's current rank.
Trial of Grievance/Refusal
The costs for particular trials is detailed in the events chapter.
Trials of Possession
A warrior may trial for specific units or personnel outside of the normal mission structure. Cost will be detailed later.
Custom configurations
Not every Warrior gets to say they have more wisdom than the Clan's leaders when choosing their Omni configuration. A warrior may spend honour equal to the new configuration's BV. This configuration will always be available to that individual warrior.
As events determine a Warrior may use honour to purchase a position in a Trial of Bloodright.
-
Some thoughts in no particular order...
1 ) We probably need a feature request for MM, to modify Princess to obey Zell. A ) No physical attacks B ) Pick a target and only fire on it until it is dead C ) Zell is broken time for Free For All. There would need to be a checkbox probably in the Princess config window.
2 ) We probably need a feature request for MHQ, to modify the Contract window allowing payment multipliers of less than 1.
3 ) It would probably be a very very good idea to restrict the initial ruleset to the Clan Invasion. In this way more testing can occur in a focused area and all the edge cases for various additional Clans go away. This also simplifies the "enemy table", dodges most of the issues caused by Zell and Clan vs Clan combat with Princess, and allows all the testers to break and abuse the same stuff. Seriously, limit initial scope to allow perfection of a core ruleset!
For the sake of Xotl's RAT, I'd also go further and suggest that we restrict to Frontline units (ie, Omnis.) The RAT doesn't support second-line yet.
7 ) Use CBills! Yes, a parallel Honor system is needed but MekHQ is already configured to track CB. Let it do the accounting :) Use Honor to do things like allow the increase in force size, change Omni configs, buy a new unit. So you might need 4 Honor Points to buy a Medium Omni which you will then need to pay for out of your MekHQ tracked CBills. 1 Honor point and 250k CB for Omni change, 50 Honor points to increase from Star > Nova. The exact numbers don't matter just the main point that whatever accounting MekHQ can do for us should be done.
It's a useful conversion. We'll just need to remember that Omnis tend to use XLE, and thus tend to be very expensive for MHQ purposes.
8 ) The "Contract System" needs a complete overhaul. Any system must be adversarial in that it must simulate at least one other Clanner trying for the same "Contract".
Not necessarily. I agree that each Mission may be subject to a bid between two Clan forces; but not every Mission will. I'd provide for a chance.
9 ) The Initial Starting force should suck! Like LLLLL to a max of LLLMM!
It discriminates against Clans that use heavier toumans; for example, the Ghost Bears use the Viper as their main recon, the Firemoth mainly as Elemental carriers, and otherwise prefer heavy up-gunned units like Mad Dog and Executioner. Kinda Steiner-like, actually. The restriction would make a fine Ice Hellion Star, though... :P
OK that is enough for now... more later.
[/quote]
-
For the sake of Xotl's RAT, I'd also go further and suggest that we restrict to Frontline units (ie, Omnis.) The RAT doesn't support second-line yet.
Related note: the Clan 3050 xotl RATs included with megamek have an issue with how the salvage units are included. The higher-rated units have more of the units from the top of the table. But the top 75 (926-1000) is salvage. And it uses IS salvage, not other clan salvage, as the xotl table suggests. This results in the A rated units having twice as much IS salvage as C rated, and F rated having none.
I made a version that uses the other clan tables for salvage: http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,37368.msg873363.html#msg873363
Not sure if it works in the current version of megamek, though (something about an update for name standardization?).
Hopefully they'll update the included tables once the megamek update for linked RATs comes out.
-
Some thoughts in no particular order...
1 ) We probably need a feature request for MM, to modify Princess to obey Zell. A ) No physical attacks B ) Pick a target and only fire on it until it is dead C ) Zell is broken time for Free For All. There would need to be a checkbox probably in the Princess config window.
This gets brought up every now and then:
http://megamek.info/forums/index.php?topic=1540.0
The short of it is that there are no current plans to have Princess follow Zell and if it ever does happen, it will be a very low priority project for the reasons outlined in the above thread.
-
Related note: the Clan 3050 xotl RATs included with megamek have an issue with how the salvage units are included. The higher-rated units have more of the units from the top of the table. But the top 75 (926-1000) is salvage. And it uses IS salvage, not other clan salvage, as the xotl table suggests. This results in the A rated units having twice as much IS salvage as C rated, and F rated having none.
I made a version that uses the other clan tables for salvage: http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,37368.msg873363.html#msg873363 (http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,37368.msg873363.html#msg873363)
Not sure if it works in the current version of megamek, though (something about an update for name standardization?).
Hopefully they'll update the included tables once the megamek update for linked RATs comes out.
This weekend I checked in an update to the experimental branch that takes care of this and adds the IS 3050 Xotl tables. So, it won't be in for the coming MM release, but it will be in the one after.
-
I like the idea of clan campaign focused on 1 warrior, so in force creation I would setup one warrior just like would for commander in AtB rules 2.29.
Then I would do an inititial mechwarrior trial of position:
Cadet must decide if he will follow zellbrigen during the trial or cause a melee.
Zellbrigen Trial:
Cadet will face three opponent one at a time (to start set all three as players on same team in MegaMek, and kick and replace with bot current opponent).
The three opponents are as follows: same experience level in lighter class mech, 1 greater experience level in same weight class mech,
and lastly 2 levels of experience greater in heavier weight class mech.
Melee Trial:
Set in MegaMek following:
Player 1 the Cadet as team 1.
Player 2 is another Cadet (1 experience level lower in same weight class of mech) as team 2.
Player 3 is 2 warriors of same experience level in lighter class mechs, 2 warriors that have increase of 1 experience level in same weight class mech,
And 2 warriors of 2 levels of experience greater in heavier weight class of mech.
Results of the trials is measured in # kills the cadet makes:
Kills Rank # of warriors to add to force # tech teams to add to the force
1 Warrior 0 1
2 Star Commander 2 2
3 Star Captain 6 3
4 Star Colonel 20 7
5 Star Colonel 25 8
6 Star Colonel 30 9
7 Star Colonel 35 10
edited on 6/4/14 reduced # warriors
-
Here is a rough draft of the honour system I have been tinkering with.
The Honour system will uses honour as the form of currency for the campaign, this will determine what the warrior gets to do besides sit and wait for battle.
Honour is primarily gained by winning battles. The amount of honour gained is equal to the difference in BV between the forces involved in each conflict in addition to modifiers based on a number of factors.
If the warrior is not in command he/she is awarded honour based on enemies defeated honourably (using the rules of zellbrigen). This only includes mechs by design.
Modifiers are as follows
Warrior is a member of a Keshik unit 1.1
Warrior is a member of a Frontline Unit 1.05
Warrior is a member of a Secondline Unit 1
Warrior is a member of a PGC 0.95
Warrior is a member of a Solohma Unit 0.75
If the warrior is Blooded s/she receives a .01 to a .1 bonus depending on the quality of his or her bloodline.
If the warrior is a ristar s/he receives a .05 bonus.
If the player's political philosophy is in line with his/her clan there is a .02 bonus.
If they player loses the battle honor is lost equal to the BV of the bidded force times all of his/her modifiers.
I was thinking of rewarding Honor Points (HP) as follows:
To determine # of HP earned (lost) first you must determine victory multiplier.
Victory Multiplier = [Your remaining BV – Your Starting BV + Opponents Starting BV – Opponents Remaining BV] / Your Starting BV
If Victory Multiplier is negative you suffered a defeat and will loose HP.
Next add the following modifiers to the Victory Multiplier to find the HP modifier:
If Victory and Freeborn -0.1
If Defeat and Trueborn -0.05
If Victory and Trueborn +0.05
Has a Bloodname +0.1
Political Philosophy Bonus +0.05 (Awarded if political philosophy is same as clans philosophy)
# HP earned (lost) = HP modifier x Your Starting BV
-
I was thinking for solo campaign bidding needs be simple so I worked up these rules:
The commanders of the attackers now begin bidding to see who will participate in the trial (see Bid chart below).
The lowest bid becomes the attackers force and the difference between lowest bid and second lowest bid becomes the available reinforcements.
2d6 Results Bid Result as % of Defender's BV
2 or less 20%
3 30%
4 40%
5 50%
6 60%
7 70%
8 80%
9 85%
10 90%
11 95%
12 100%
Bid Chart Modifiers:
Attacker is Front line: +1
Attacker is Second Line -1
Attacker is Solaham -3
Warrior is Freeborn: -2
Warrior has Bloodname: +2
Trial of Possession (minor): -1
Trial of Possession (major): -2
Trial of Grievance: +1
-
Wow, I'm impressed....
all I can say is great work guys... and very thorough efforts indeed.
-
I have 2 ideas on use of Leadership Skill
1. For Clan Politics. When council votes make Leadership Skill. Margin of Success will set vote ratio to be used in the Trial of Refusal that would follow.
Example 1: If MoS is 2, then you would be the Defender (Champion) at Trial of Refusal and can have double BV of the Attacker.
Example 2: If MoS is -4 then you would be the Attacker at the Trial of Refusal and the Defender could have 4 times your BV.
2. Leadership Skill level would equal number of Points under Player Control, the other Points (units) would be controlled by Bot.
-
I have 2 ideas on use of Leadership Skill
1. For Clan Politics. When council votes make Leadership Skill. Margin of Success will set vote ratio to be used in the Trial of Refusal that would follow.
Example 1: If MoS is 2, then you would be the Defender (Champion) at Trial of Refusal and can have double BV of the Attacker.
Example 2: If MoS is -4 then you would be the Attacker at the Trial of Refusal and the Defender could have 4 times your BV.
2. Leadership Skill level would equal number of Points under Player Control, the other Points (units) would be controlled by Bot.
I like this!
I've noticed that with Clan campaigns there is actually more emphasis on the RP side than the inner sphere. I guess since repairs and supllies are more of a given, it makes sense.
-
I'd like it better going by numbers or by tonnage. Going by BV is... well, the major problem I have with the AtB rules is that your BV will generally be overshadowed two or three times by the sheer weight of enemy numbers due to how enemies are rolled. Keeping tonnage or numbers near parity (or at least in ratio) gives enough advantage to the player (who generally has customized and/or better pilots) that such a trial is possible to win.
As opposed to a Trial of Refusal where you basically get to die because four Clan Heavy 'Mechs get to focus on your one high skill Clan Medium 'Mech.
-
I guess since repairs and supllies are more of a given, it makes sense.
I don't think repairs and supplies would be much of a given unless you're playing an elite front-line unit of one of the more powerful Clans. One of the major forces that shapes Clan society is the scarcity of resources in the Kerensky Cluster. Besides driving competition between Clans, it plays a part in the decision to invade the Inner Sphere, and contributes significantly to the conflict between the wealthier invading Clans and the poorer homeworld Clans.
Though they find the idea of fighting for profit to be repulsive, economics are as important to a Clan campaign as to an Inner Sphere one, and tracking C-bills is the best way to account for economics. Unlike a mercenary unit, in which the financial balance can be conceived as an account that designated unit personnel can access, the finances would represent Clan resources that are available to the unit. The same is actually true of Inner Sphere units that belong to a governmental faction. The funds are budget items in the military budget, and are administered by division or regimental command, and the unit accesses them through requisition requests. This is all abstracted in a system of payments and purchases that works just like the mercenary system. In a Clan setting the budget is more likely to be expressed in terms of factory output than in numbers looked over by accountants, but the basic idea is the same: units are supplied based on mission needs and performance.
I think that for anything with an economic value (units, parts, maintenance, salaries [i.e. room and board], etc.) a Clan campaign should use C-bills, though certain modifications to payment and purchase rules may be in order. If there is a system of honor points, these should be used for other things that can still have a significant impact, such as bonuses to certain rolls, additional recruitment rolls, or to change part or unit availability. Honor points could also be used when the unit increases its rating. It would still function at the old rating until a certain number of honor points are spent (the larger the unit, the more points required). This could even move the unit from a second-line Galaxy to front-line, as is sometimes done to replace battle losses.
-
Perhaps we could have your honorblevel correspond to the administration skill and use that for requisition. I really don't like the idea of Clan Warriors "Buying" anything. Ibthink it makes the game decidedly unclanlile when you start looking at things in thatvlight.
-
Perhaps I can explain what I mean better with a set of examples:
1. An agent of a mercenary company makes contact with an agent of of another unit wanting to sell a Griffin. They agree on the price of 5M C-bills. The money is transferred from the buyer's account to the seller's and the 'Mech is delivered to the buyer's location.
2. AFFS has a contract with Achernar BattleMechs to produce a certain number of Enforcers for several trillion C-bills. Twelve of them are designated for the 14th Avalon Hussars, and one makes its way to the player's company. The regiment's staff accountants debit 3.5M from the operations budget for that company.
3. The Tokasha Mechworks, in possession of Clan Ghost Bear, produce a Hellbringer (Loki) OmniMech. Ghost Bear has easy access to most of the raw materials used to produce it, but some had to be acquired from other Clans. One was taken from Smoke Jaguar in a Trial of Possession, and the rest were purchased by the Ghost Bear merchant caste from Snow Raven merchants. The Hellbringer is part of a group of units designated for Rho Galaxy, who assigns it to a MechWarrior in the 48th Battle Cluster. The Mech belongs to the Clan (as long as they can keep other Clans from taking it) and used by the assigned MechWarrior until destroyed in combat or taken by another MechWarrior in a Trial of Possession.
Only one of these three cases involves an outright purchase of a 'Mech, but the game mechanic is the same in all three cases: you click a button in MekHQ, the 'Mech is added to your units, and the cost is debited from your available resources. The terminology of "purchase" and "finances" come from using the mercenary unit as the standard, and are problematic for Inner Sphere government forces as well as Clans. The same applies to contracts, breaches, and payments: government forces would more properly use terms such as mission, dereliction of duty, and mission support (as per IOps Beta) and I can't think of an equivalent for estimated profit. Perhaps mission effectiveness, but that's stretching it.
-
But with the Clans there is no pool of resources that the unit loses when getting replacement equipment. In MekHQ, you can use the acquisition rolls to see if you can get a unit/part and how long it takes.
-
What the player's unit has is a pool of potential resources. It's a measure of how much of the Clan's resources the unit can expect to receive. As the unit uses these resources in the form of acquiring 'Mechs or replacement parts or housing personnel or in transit to another system, the amount of resources available to the unit goes down. The unit can increase the amount by proving itself in battle and showing it's worthy of more resources.
-
But with the Clans there is no pool of resources that the unit loses when getting replacement equipment.
Of course there is: the Clan, as a whole, only has so much equipment to supply its touman with. And within AtC, C-Bills can represent how much of that pool of equipment the Clan´s leadership thinks they can spare for the unit.
-
I'd like it better going by numbers or by tonnage. Going by BV is... well, the major problem I have with the AtB rules is that your BV will generally be overshadowed two or three times by the sheer weight of enemy numbers due to how enemies are rolled. Keeping tonnage or numbers near parity (or at least in ratio) gives enough advantage to the player (who generally has customized and/or better pilots) that such a trial is possible to win.
As opposed to a Trial of Refusal where you basically get to die because four Clan Heavy 'Mechs get to focus on your one high skill Clan Medium 'Mech.
Well I suppose I am the first and only one to think that this would need to be addressed...
As a long time player, the reality of all of the above, forces any intended fight to use all of the above, or at least a combination of several of the above methods of "leveling a fight".
Anyone who does a fight by tonnage alone ends up with a fight of who knows the best mechs for its/their tonnage. This would be highly unbalanced based on the extreme disparity between the fight worthiness between numerous mechs of the same tonnage. This only allows the players who knows which mechs are the "current" best mechs available for a given tonnage to have a large advantage. I had someone who knew of the "creation" of the Direwolf H, which I had never heard of before, he pulls it out and wins by using something just released...
Lets call this "Min/Max" or "Milking" the tonnage.
Any one who does a match based on numbers alone ends up being a matter of who knows the largest and deadliest mechs available, most likely assaults with good pilots, heavies and Mediums with average pilots, and possibly light mechs if they all choose bad Pilots. This leads to battles won simply by players who pick only the best mechs available.
So does it show skill if a player wins in a battle if he chooses 4 identical mechs in a fight? So is a player who chooses 4 Grasshopper GHR-5N's, or 7 Templar TLR1-OC's, or 4 Clint IIC 2's, or 4 Catapult CPLT-K4's, to a battle, considered to be a skilled player?
I mention these mech choices just because they were forces of players that have won tourneys in the past, who claimed their skill in battle. In essense, a good battle with somewhat realistic restrictions makes for a better test of skills, imho.
BV is the closest to match forces... but because there are always players who can min max the mechs available List "lets call it munching the unit" there also does need to be, in addition, a unit numbers limit, on the total number of units and a limit on total tonnage of the entire unit.
... and if you really want to balance a battle, trying to have both players play their unit list and their opponents list...
then you'll both know what is truely balanced.
-
I think you're forgetting that this is as bot campaign. The players are capable of min-maxing as much as they wish, and the opponents will not, period. It's also important to make a campaign *winnable*, because fighting a constantly losing campaign is not a whole lot of fun.
-
Hmm ... well for me I do the same atb campaign... except I don't use a bot... as they are too stupid and easy to beat without giving them huge advantages in BV... which is the only way an atb can be a challenge for players... and in reality it is still best to sub real players as OPFOR as much as possible in the atb campaigns...
But for this, as a Clan atb campaign, you need to use both BV, tonnage, and numbers... to make the battles a challenge for players..
and... Depending on the terrain, (which should also modify the BV difference of battles), the bot should have at least 20-30% more BV than suggested... to make it a challenge, imho... anything less just sounds too "Monty Haul" for me.
-
Hmm ... well for me I do the same atb campaign... except I don't use a bot... as they are too stupid and easy to beat without giving them huge advantages in BV... which is the only way an atb can be a challenge for players... and in reality it is still best to sub real players as OPFOR as much as possible in the atb campaigns...
But for this, as a Clan atb campaign, you need to use both BV, tonnage, and numbers... to make the battles a challenge for players..
and... Depending on the terrain, (which should also modify the BV difference of battles), the bot should have at least 20-30% more BV than suggested... to make it a challenge, imho... anything less just sounds too "Monty Haul" for me.
I've beaten this drum before in the other ATB thread, but: Remember there are people, like me, who are not even nearly as good at Battletech as you are. Keep the base rules as a middle ground and the people who are good can houserule extra challenges and the people who are bad can houserule themselves a chance to actually have fun and not get wrecked every single fight.
-
This gets brought up every now and then:
http://megamek.info/forums/index.php?topic=1540.0
The short of it is that there are no current plans to have Princess follow Zell and if it ever does happen, it will be a very low priority project for the reasons outlined in the above thread.
What about just adding a simple slider to Princess? Gang up or individual take down? true it may not be simple but princess despite what is going on here will never work for the clans unless something else is added to it. Its best to play either with someone or play a game against yourself with you also controlling the clans
-
What about just adding a simple slider to Princess? Gang up or individual take down? true it may not be simple but princess despite what is going on here will never work for the clans unless something else is added to it. Its best to play either with someone or play a game against yourself with you also controlling the clans
I do have plans to eventually add an "honor" slider that will affect things like firing on ejected crew, retreating enemies and focus-fire tactics. However, it's still pretty low priority. There are simply too many other relatively basic functions that Princess needs to handle/handle better (VTOLs, infantry, path-mapping with fast units and so on).
-
I do have plans to eventually add an "honor" slider that will affect things like firing on ejected crew, retreating enemies and focus-fire tactics. However, it's still pretty low priority. There are simply too many other relatively basic functions that Princess needs to handle/handle better (VTOLs, infantry, path-mapping with fast units and so on).
Thanks Net that is a little bit more reassuring.
-
But with the Clans there is no pool of resources that the unit loses when getting replacement equipment. In MekHQ, you can use the acquisition rolls to see if you can get a unit/part and how long it takes.
I like this idea more than using Cbills as well.
But I also agree with the other side, that the clans have a pool of resources. In the end though, if the pool of resources is low, then the acquisition roll will take longer to get the equipment in, if the pool is abundant then the parts/mechs/warriors will arrive sooner. The question would be how do we determine how large is the resource pool that is dedicated to the players force. Using the players honor level is a poor way to determine clan value. This might require a separate table that is rolled on monthly or yearly.
Cbills only define how the unit in question has access to money to obtain resources, not whether those resources actually exist. The existence of resources is completely at a clan level.
I've beaten this drum before in the other ATB thread, but: Remember there are people, like me, who are not even nearly as good at Battletech as you are. Keep the base rules as a middle ground and the people who are good can houserule extra challenges and the people who are bad can houserule themselves a chance to actually have fun and not get wrecked every single fight.
This is another really good point. Half of all players are going to find the bot challenging. The rules need to be built for them, and then experienced players can make an optional "Hardcore" ruleset when it comes to building the opfor. While in a stand up even fight, I can crush the bot, under the atb rules where I can be facing 3x my forces that are often heavier units it does not bode well for me in the repair side.
Clans fight fairly close to even up in the number of mechs (which will actually make a Clan campaign more difficult due to lack of salvage). So all differences need to be in tonnage and bv. By the standard of Clan warfare, an attacking force usually attacks with less than a defending force due to the bidding system.
-
So... ocherstone and neoancient, any work done tweaking/altering your respective rulesets? O:-)
-
I've made a couple of small tweaks and a few corrections and clarifications, but not much more. I still have a few other MM-related projects to work on before I get back to working on this.
Edit: I just finished getting one of those projects ready for sharing, and it should be useful to those interested in this thread. Here is a Java app that takes a Clan, an era, and a phenotype and selects an appropriate Bloodname. My analysis of the source materials and explanation of the method I used are in the readme file. For all the details, see the source code in the second attachment.
-
Neo... would you mind if I included that internally in MHQ so as to generate bloodnames automagically? It would be especially useful in the Personnel Market for one... and also I think I'll add in a menu option to randomize the surnames of an entire force to be used when creating new forces :D
-
I was thinking you might be interested in doing something like that. I've already got it working in my customized version of MekHQ, and I just submitted the patch. It adds a Bloodname check to Campaign.newPerson and includes the dialog as a stand-alone tool available from the View menu.
-
I was thinking you might be interested in doing something like that. I've already got it working in my customized version of MekHQ, and I just submitted the patch. It adds a Bloodname check to Campaign.newPerson and includes the dialog as a stand-alone tool available from the View menu.
You rock ;)
-
So... ocherstone and neoancient, any work done tweaking/altering your respective rulesets? O:-)
I think I'll be able to post my updated ruleset tomorrow. I'm glad others are interested.
-
Excellent! I've been itching to give them a playtesting and write up the results, it may be a good way to spend part of a lazy July 4th weekend.
-
In that case here's my current draft. Not much has changed, but I corrected some errors and rewrote part of the Trial of Possession rules in an effort to make them clearer.
-
Well, I think you're going to have to get someone who is better at Battletech than me to play-test these rules. :-\
Binary Creation
Okay! All went pretty well here! I took 10 mechwarriors; I gave the first -1/-1 to G/P, and the second -1 to one of those as a coin flip for the officer; mercs get 4 officers, I figured I'd get two. So! I rolled, and my star captain got a bloodname, and rolled Sniper and Jumping Jill for the specials! This was pretty rad. After creation, my force was (and I had to ****** around building a quick-and-dirty RAT, since I decided to try Star Adders circa 3045):
1st Star (Scout)
Star Captain Antonio McMillan, 2/3 w/ Sniper and Jumping Jill, Dragonfly A
Mechwarrior Pushpanjali, 4/5, Arctic Cheetah D
Mechwarrior Yura, 4/5, Fire Moth Prime
Mechwarrior Myong, 3/4, Kit Fox B
Mechwarrior Alberto, 4/5, Puma A
Weight: 150 tons (Light Star), BV: 9,231
2nd Star (Battle)
Star Commander Tony, 2/4, Nova Prime
Mechwarrior Panthea, 3/4, Hellbringer Prime
Mechwarrior Zero, 3/4, Stormcrow Prime
Mechwarrior Thiongo, 4/5, Shadow Cat Prime
Mechwarrior Majdiyya, 4/5, Adder Prime
Weight: 250 tons (Medium star), BV: 15,245
For techs, I rolled 1 vet, 5 regular, 3 green, with 1 regular doctor as my support. That brought me to a "C" rating per the dragoon rating, but I sighed and awarded myself a Lion dropship because it'd be kind of stupid for a young bloodnamed star captain with all omnis to be a second line force. That made me a "B", so, hey, front line!
Missions
I rolled 1d6-1 and got 3 'contracts'/missions. One Garrison against hte Jade Falcons, facing a Veteran Solahma mech force for... 18 months. One planetary assault on the Coyotes against a Veteran 2nd line mech force for 9 months, and a pirate hunt against Regular bandits for 6 months. I wasn't sure whether 'veteran' meant I should be facing an average of 3/4 pilots or 2/3 pilots, but I decided on the latter.
For the rest of creation, I decided a lot of these were kind of meaningless. Command? Independent, since I'm not going to let anybody horn in on my fight. Salvage? Full, because salvage goes to the winner. Support? The hell with that, full straight support makes more sense than anything. Transport? Full. I'm not sure if you want to keep all those, because some of them are nonsensical for the clans... and I have to say overall I am not particularly comfortable with using C-bills for stuff. I threw up my hands and ignored it for now, and just made it a "New Mission" in MekHQ instead of "New Contract". Oh, and I accepted the planetary assault, because it was shorter- seriously, 9 months?! and not against Solahma who, even if I beat them, I'd probably lose the mission due to honor.
So! I got to Foster on Thursday 2/13/3045, and promptly rolled no objectives. Okay! So fast forward to March 1st, and got 3 objectives! The first 2 each had an importance of 1 and the last 4, so I bid each of my stars to one of the first two objectives. The dice rolls told me the defenders had opted to retain 4 points for each bid, so knowing I was going to be fighting MUCH better pilots on average I kept my full star for each.
So! First battle roll on Monday 3/3/3045 (I got no special events on the first). Battle star rolled nothing. Scout star rolled The Chase (Att), which... uh, if this is a trial of possession, does that fight type really make sense? A lot of them don't seem to, so I just decided, why not make it a Probe(Att)? This way I'd basically only have to kill 1 before losing 2. The star roll came out that I would be facing 4 medium mechs, and other rolls showed me a 40x20 Sandy-Hills map at dusk. Okay. So, I would be bringing my Scout Star vs:
Dragonfly B, 2/3
Dragonfly B, 2/5
Dragonfly Prime, 2/3
Goshawk 2, 4/4
Total BV: 10,819. So the BV ratio was 85.3%, meaning I start 2 points in the hole for this trial. Theoretically, then, if I won this battle in glorious fashion and annihilated my enemy in a single fight, my score for the trial would be:
-2 (not a low enough BV, dishonorable)
+1 for the enemy being a Veteran
+1 for getting one battle victory
Total: 0, trial defeat
So, knowing that I literally could not possibly win my trial this mission and that even if I won, if I granted hegira I would lose and if I fought them to the death I would lose, I kinda knew going in this was going to be unpleasant.
Happily, that turns out not to matter, since I got my face stomped into the mud.
First time? I foolishly tried to hold to zell, and got ultramurdered by the bot who didn't care. Well, I figured, I could cut that whole "zell" thing out since the bot didn't care anyway, and tried again! Hoo boy, fighting those 2-gunnery clan pilots is fun fun fun. I tried three times, and didn't "win" per the rules once (I lost 2 mechs before taking 1 down, every time). For funsies each time I tried to fight to the death, and well, once I managed to kill 2 and cripple 1 out of 4 before I was annihilated. The other times were... worse. And this is with a BV ratio that was bad enough that I couldn't win in one fight.
So, in conclusion, to be able to playtest this I'd have to mangle it with lenient house rules to the point where it wouldn't actually be playtesting your rules, because I am not very good at Battletech. Sorry. :-[
-
As I stated when I originally posted this, I haven't had a chance to do any testing yet and I'm sure it needs a lot of modifications. I had been planning on doing some testing before sharing, but I went ahead and put it out there because the topic came up and I wanted to be in on the conversation. I really don't expect anyone else to go through the torture of play-testing a rough draft that they had no input in creating, but if someone is willing to try I'm not going to stand in their way. :-)
That being said, here are a couple points of clarification:
1. The bidding bonus does not apply on a per-battle scenario, but on a per-Trial scenario. You may require multiple battles against the opponent until one of you is left standing. For each battle you would get +1 for veteran and +1/0/-1/-2 for battle outcome, then an additional -2 modifier for BV difference.
2. Even if you were to end with a score of zero or lower, it would not necessarily mean mission defeat. Mission success/defeat depends on the total of all trials fought during the mission.
The BV adjustments probably needs a big overhaul. It's weighted based on the much larger engagements that I'm used to playing, in which you only encounter a small portion of a rather abstract enemy force at any given time. This system results in a series of smaller engagements in which it's more likely that the entire enemy force is on the field at once. It probably ought to run much closer to even.
Command rights really only apply to mercenary units. Clan units are technically integrated, as they are part of the Clan Touman, but they effectively operate as independents because no attached units are necessary. I intended to leave the salvage clause in place. Isorla belongs to the Clan. The warrior who won it gets first dibs, but hoarding is anti-Clan. The other clauses make sense if you accept my arguments earlier in the thread about C-bills as an appropriate way to measure availability and distribution of Clan resources. If you're not persuaded and you would prefer to play without paying for units and parts, then support, overhead, and transport clauses don't mean anything anyway.
It might also help to explain my concept behind the mission as a series of Trials of Possession. The ideal trial would be a small force from each of two Clans meeting on a plain and determining possession of an entire with a single battle, and that may be what many of us might think a Clan campaign should look like. From reading sourcebook material, it appears to me that this is pretty rare. A planetary assault consists of a much longer campaign involving contests over smaller objectives. Though the strategic execution of a Clan military campaign is very different than that of a conflict between successor states, the basic approach is really very similar: win the objectives and hold them.
Edit: Looking back over this, I think I overstated my case in the final paragraph. I think such a quick trial would be more common in the earlier eras, and the more extended type of mission that is represented in my system would be more characteristic of the post-3060 era.
-
Well here's my update. I ran out of time to finish the Clan specific, but I fixed a few things. Hope you enjoy.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/03m6yquu36l157e/Clan%20AtB%20.2.docx
-
That being said, here are a couple points of clarification:
1. The bidding bonus does not apply on a per-battle scenario, but on a per-Trial scenario. You may require multiple battles against the opponent until one of you is left standing. For each battle you would get +1 for veteran and +1/0/-1/-2 for battle outcome, then an additional -2 modifier for BV difference.
2. Even if you were to end with a score of zero or lower, it would not necessarily mean mission defeat. Mission success/defeat depends on the total of all trials fought during the mission.
Sure! What I was reacting to is that with 85% or more of the bot's BV, and bringing only a single star, there was no way to get a score above zero if the bot rolled a hegira request; either I'd take it, the trial would finish, and I'd get 0 points towards the broader mission, or I wouldn't take it, blow them all up, the trial would finish and I'd get 0 points towards the broader mission. Just a quirk of how the scoring rules interact with fights that are likely to have the entire enemy force in one mission- which, honestly, seems like a lot will if we're starting with 2 stars.
Everything else is fair, and I think I'll try to run a clan force that's in the Inner Sphere; I suspect pretty strongly that going by the rules as written, every match against an IS force is going to be a squash because there's no incentive to bid down to parity. Still, it'll let me work out some of the frustration of Princess clowning me around the map. :)
Edit: Oh my god, Pirate Hunting 3025 mechs with a clan star is so far from fair it hurts. I forced myself to stick to rigorous zell and wrecked a company with one star and I think one mech took non-armor damage. Awesome! ...probably should have some mechanical incentive to bid low when facing non-clan opponents, though. Something as simple as "You don't get points towards mission success for winning a battle where you have the BV advantage"; yeah, you still may want to do it if you know you're winning the campaign and are just waiting for their morale to break, but you can't get too used to having the advantage! It may also be worth looking at neoancient's Honor Points rules and seeing if a slimmer version of those- maybe one for the unit as a whole? could help, too...