Against the Clans (Against the bot for Clan Campaings) Project Thread

[j10b10]

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.

[Warpimp]

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.

[Scotty]

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.

[neoancient]

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.

[Warpimp]

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.

[neoancient]

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.

[Warpimp]

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.

[neoancient]

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.

[Sir Chaos]

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.

[McSlayer]

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.

[Scotty]

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.

[McSlayer]

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.

[Mukaikubo]

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.

[TS_Hawk]

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

[Netzilla]

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).

[TS_Hawk]

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.

[Arkaris]

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.

[Mukaikubo]

So... ocherstone and neoancient, any work done tweaking/altering your respective rulesets?  O:-)

[neoancient]

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.

[ralgith]

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

[neoancient]

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.

[ralgith]

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 ;)

[ocherstone]

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.

[Mukaikubo]

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.

[neoancient]

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.

[Mukaikubo]

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.  :-[

[neoancient]

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.

[ocherstone]

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

[Mukaikubo]

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...