Ferro-fibrous armour

[_Cactus_]

What is the point of Ferro-fibrous armour? The rule in Total Warfare says if a critical hit lands in this location you should roll again. This is functionally the same as leaving the internal slot empty so what have I missed?

[theothersarah]

It gives you more armor points per ton when building a 'mech, at the cost of not being able to use a portion of the 'mech's total space for anything else. Light and Heavy variants give you less/more bonus armor in exchange for less/more consumed space.

I'll bet your next question will then be "what does Endo Steel do?" It makes the unit's structure weigh less at the cost of space, allowing you to use that saved weight for other things - provided you still have room to mount more things.

Check out TechManual for the construction rules, which include the rules for building 'mechs with those special components.

edit: Also, not relevant in normal play, in the context of campaign play these special armor and structure types have additional disadvantages. The units that use them cost more, and they are more difficult and expensive to repair. Endo Steel may save more weight but replacing destroyed body sections is hard, Endo Steel is higher-tech so it's even harder, and so it could be likely for the repair attempt to fail (and ruin the spare body section) especially if you have poor technicians and/or bad repair facilities.

On the other hand, armor is easier to replace and doesn't get ruined if the techs fail to do it properly, it just takes more time, so the more advanced armors are friendlier to field repairs even if they're still a bit harder to work with than standard armor. So if you only use one, you save less weight by using the fancy armor instead of the fancy structure, but picking armor over structure can save you some hassle and let you get the units back into action faster - or at all.

[_Cactus_]

Thank you. I'm playing with stock 'mechs and only have TW and TacOps so far. Hard copies of the books are not plentiful in the UK but the Techmanual is next on my list to hunt down.

[Daryk]

The pdf versions are relatively cheaper, and totally worth it if you have a way to read them.

[Demiurge]

Maybe this has been superseded but I remember at one point according to the fluff, endo-steel composites had to be made in zero-G, making the mass-manufacture of mechs built around the stuff incredibly annoying for planets not lavishly equipped with orbital industrial space stations.  This went a long way to explaining why there were designs that had FF armor but no ES internals, since according to pure game mechanics that was strictly sub-optimal.

If it still is the case that endo-steel needs to be made in zero-G, that would imply that there is very little cost difference between standard and ES skeletons for the Sea Foxes.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

The fluff hasn't changed, but material costs in Battletech are static- Endo-Steel still costs the same to produce in 3152 as it did when the Star League invented it.  This makes no sense in real-world economics but it's a game and in-universe cost is merely fluff anyway.

[theothersarah]

I wouldn't want to think too hard about the C-bill costs but the list price is probably the best-achievable price. The SLDF's procurement division probably would pay the list price for Endo Steel parts, but in the 3040s right after Endo Steel was put back into production I bet you might have to pay several (or many) times that.

(I think some stuff that lingered around for a while as experimental prototypes, like XXL engines, might have a list price that is more expensive than their potential baseline, though.)

[_Cactus_]

The pdf versions are relatively cheaper, and totally worth it if you have a way to read them.

I know, but I'm an old weirdo and would much rather have a book in my hands. I find it better for reading and for looking things up. I'll take a free .pdf without complaint but if I'm paying money I'll often pay a bit more for the format I want. It also means my gaming collection will only be slightly impacted by a major CME. 

[Daryk]

Totally fair!

[Demiurge]

The fluff hasn't changed, but material costs in Battletech are static- Endo-Steel still costs the same to produce in 3152 as it did when the Star League invented it.  This makes no sense in real-world economics but it's a game and in-universe cost is merely fluff anyway.

I thought it was more a case of TPTB not updating the prices and essentially discarding Cbill price as a means of balancing the game, as BV and BV 2.0 largely superseded that anyhow.

The "big picture" economic factors like number of jumpships/dropships, number of productive planets and number of production complexes has never really made sense anyhow.  But that's fine; nobody plays any sort of 4X Classic Battletech grand strategy game where that stuff would need to make sense.

But someone should totally make that game that would be tight.

The fact that MadCat Mk IVs exist in any numbers at all, and not only that but the Foxes have apparently managed to sell the things, suggests that the cost premium on XXLs has come down quite a lot at least.

Speaking of cost, I wonder what the long-term costs of ferro-fibrous protection are.  With structure, you can avoid having to patch the stuff up by not taking too much damage, so an expensive ES skeleton could be kept to basically the up-front cost of purchase by a careful mechwarrior.  But armor is constantly being shot off and repaired, so the long-term costs of FF armor would be higher.

[DevianID]

Eh, I feel the constraint on a 100 million xxl engine, versus 100 1 millon vehicles, is not the 'proof' that BattleTech economics is flawed.  100 million for a machine that is good at war, especially the type fought in battletech, is worth any price.  The limiting factor has always been in force concentration, and that MadCat IV puts a lot of potential in a small area, granting local superiority in an easy to move and maintain package.

There is a flawed argument from the 'reformers' that a cheap jet with a gun and nothing else is the perfect Air to Air machine.  The issue is that, an f35 can delete an infinite number of cheap gun jets, as the cheap gun jet just isnt capable enough to ever find or engage the f35.  It doesnt matter that the f35 costs 109 million, while a f5 cost 2.1 million--the f35 wont lose, and similar the MadCatIV wont lose compared to an equally space transportable force--a lance of Madcat IVs coming out of a leopard just wins versus a lance of urbanmechs, regardless of the c-bill cost.

Like, 90 million is a steal really.  A proper clan warship costs 20 billion or more, but isn't good at projecting power due to the de-escalated conflicts.  But for the same cost, you can drop 220 cutting edge MadcatIVs, which will be actually used and can actually be used without much effort.  Versus trying to coordinate 20,000 small 1 million cbill vehicles, the hassle of actually maneuvering, transporting and supplying 20,000 vees for the same cost as the MadCatIVs means you will probably never see a great enough concentration of 'trash tanks' to ever threaten the MadCatIV.

[Paul]

I thought it was more a case of TPTB not updating the prices and essentially discarding Cbill price as a means of balancing the game, as BV and BV 2.0 largely superseded that anyhow.

CBills isn't meant as a balancing mechanism, but a campaign mechanism.
Regardless, it's massively flawed, and fixing it all is a bit of an effort to put it mildly.

The fact that MadCat Mk IVs exist in any numbers at all, and not only that but the Foxes have apparently managed to sell the things, suggests that the cost premium on XXLs has come down quite a lot at least.

In universe this is true, and there's articles in shrapnel, notes in TROs and a few sidebars in books that support this. XXL engines are still expensive compared to regular fusion engines, but not the ludicrous levels that original costing had it at, when in-universe they were stupidly rare and no one mass produced them.

CBills shouldn't be seen as a true cost, but more as an attempt at fair market value, except that value is often stuck in 3025, 3050 or 3060 (etc) depending on when the item is introduced in print, and then never* adjusted for new realities.
* Some campaign systems modify for era slightly, but always as a static %, which is easy to use, but makes no sense.
Still, making wholly new price lists every time you make a new TRO is bad for obvious reasons.

For the Clans, I suspect their cost for XL engines is lower than for standard fusion engines, just because they have few reasons to make standards, so their manufacturing volume has to be very low. But descriptions in TROs don't seem to take that tack yet.

But armor is constantly being shot off and repaired, so the long-term costs of FF armor would be higher.

At listed costs, yes. Also, the construction benefit for it is rather tepid.

Eh, I feel the constraint on a 100 million xxl engine, versus 100 1 millon vehicles, is not the 'proof' that BattleTech economics is flawed.

I'm here to tell that the BT economy is completely broken. Costing of equipment even more so, since it's largely divorced from the fluff economy that gets to exist somehow without anyone examining it too closely.

[DevianID]

I'm here to tell that the BT economy is completely broken. Costing of equipment even more so, since it's largely divorced from the fluff economy that gets to exist somehow without anyone examining it too closely.

Right, we arnt examining the price of housing or a cup of coffee though to truly break down economic values.  We are directly comparing two machines, so my point is that 90 million isn't a very large number when the most pathetic units are 1 million, and the first decent units are 6+. In all my campaign games, while my new merc unit can't afford 90 million for a while, once you get a few vets under your belt you can also afford 90 million mechs versus 9 million mechs without batting an eye. 

But yeah, cbills isnt a good balancing tool or anything, nor does it give factory costs or development costs or prototyping values.  But its also not the bugbear people make it out to be, at least coming from actual campaign gameplay... I have found it a pretty great tool for campaign and solaris where a slight advantage of a good pilot is worth investing 100 million.

[Paul]

90 million isn't a very large number when the most pathetic units are 1 million, and the first decent units are 6+.

Then we're not going to see eye to eye on this issue.
Without even looking at it in detail, I'm pretty sure that I can find 15 units worth 6 mil to take on your 1 unit of 90 mil, with a 100% success rate if the job is fighting it.
That's not trying to discuss a game balance issue, (we seem to agree that CBills aren't meant to balance combat capability) that's a logistics issue.

In all my campaign games, while my new merc unit can't afford 90 million for a while, once you get a few vets under your belt you can also afford 90 million mechs versus 9 million mechs without batting an eye. 

That seems like an example of a broken economy to me.

Mind you, almost every scifi and fantasy setting that I know of has this problem.

I have found it a pretty great tool for campaign and solaris where a slight advantage of a good pilot is worth investing 100 million.

I don't agree with your example, but will agree that it's better than nothing. And it's almost decent in 3025 campaigns.

[idea weenie]

You also have transportation limits.  A Dropship that can carry up to 36 Mechs means you want the best 36 Mechs you can get in that Dropship.  A planet has to buy cost-effective equipment so would have the lower-tech stuff and lots of it.

So an attacker might have 36 individual Mechs worth 90 million each, while the defender has a total of 360 Mechs worth 9 million each.  But those 360 Mechs have to concentrate in order to defeat the attacker.  You won't need all 360 to concentrate, but on average 36 super-mechs will defeat 36 regular Mechs.

[Retry]

The "big picture" economic factors like number of jumpships/dropships, number of productive planets and number of production complexes has never really made sense anyhow.  But that's fine; nobody plays any sort of 4X Classic Battletech grand strategy game where that stuff would need to make sense.

But someone should totally make that game that would be tight.

The fact that MadCat Mk IVs exist in any numbers at all, and not only that but the Foxes have apparently managed to sell the things, suggests that the cost premium on XXLs has come down quite a lot at least.

A Battletech Grand Strategy Game sounds like my dream game...

Eh, I feel the constraint on a 100 million xxl engine, versus 100 1 millon vehicles, is not the 'proof' that BattleTech economics is flawed.  100 million for a machine that is good at war, especially the type fought in battletech, is worth any price.  The limiting factor has always been in force concentration, and that MadCat IV puts a lot of potential in a small area, granting local superiority in an easy to move and maintain package.

There is a flawed argument from the 'reformers' that a cheap jet with a gun and nothing else is the perfect Air to Air machine.  The issue is that, an f35 can delete an infinite number of cheap gun jets, as the cheap gun jet just isnt capable enough to ever find or engage the f35.  It doesnt matter that the f35 costs 109 million, while a f5 cost 2.1 million--the f35 wont lose, and similar the MadCatIV wont lose compared to an equally space transportable force--a lance of Madcat IVs coming out of a leopard just wins versus a lance of urbanmechs, regardless of the c-bill cost.

There's a major difference here: The modern-day air war is a paradigm where the fighter that can detect an opposing fighter while not being detected will win the engagement, and a single modern A2A guided missiles will easily and consistently wipe out any fighter targeted.

Battlemechs don't operate in that paradigm.  Outside of something extremely unusual (Void Signature System), battlemech A is going to see Battlemech B at about the same time as B detects A, and the first hit will not typically result in a mission kill.  Speed, weapon stopping power, armor, local terrain all remain significant factors.

1x F-35 will always win against 1x F-5, and it'll also always win against 4x F-5s.  It does not follow that 1x Mad Cat IV will always win against 4x Marauder 2Rs.  Honestly, even the gap between the Mad Cat IV and the Succession Wars era Marauder 3R is smaller than the gap between F-35s and F-4s, so a Lance of 3Rs could give a singular Mad Cat IV a run for its money if the Savage Wolf mechwarrior is the wrong variant.

The improvement between the original Mad Cat and the newer IV exists, but the gulf is likewise not world-shattering.  The XXLE mostly enables the IV to have quite a bit better armor protection due to incorporating Ferro-lamellor armor protection, but its nominal payload increase is negligible and its effective payload actually decreases because of XXLE having dramatically higher overall heat production from movement, and many of the IV's variants do not seem to account for that penalty.  So a fight between a Mad Cat and its upgraded IV version would only have a slight advantage for the IV.  (As much as I like the Mad Cat, I think the Vulture IV upgrade did a better job at improving its respective base model, but that's a discussion for another thread).

There's a good argument to upgrade from SFEs to XLEs because Dropships and Jumpships are still the dominant cost of strike force groups, so doubling or tripling Battlemech cost significantly improves your invasion effectiveness while barely impacting the cost of the overall invasion fleet.  But when your Battlemechs are so expensive that your Battlemech complement costs more than both the Dropships they're in and the Jumpship they came from, things start to get a bit weird.

[DevianID]

so a Lance of 3Rs could give a singular Mad Cat IV a run for its money if the Savage Wolf mechwarrior is the wrong variant

This is the part I think the disconnect is.  Just because you have 14 Marauder 3Rs for the price of 1 MadCatIV, does not mean you get to put 14 Marauder 3Rs up against the MadCatIV.  If you always got to deploy every cbill in every engagement, then OK, but that isnt the argument nor the game.  Even in campaign operations/chaos campaigns, the place cbills matter, you build a unit and field lances at a time (or whatever force size your opponents agree on ahead of time).  Cbills ramp up quickly on XL and XXL, but when you have the money they offer something you cant get without them.

In the lore, this is the case with transport limit, so its not just a game issue.  A scout jumpship is 389 million, a leopard is 168 or a union is 215, and the entire package is not combat useful at all.  So the smallest overhead investment for transport is 139 million per bay, while a reasonable one with a union is 50 million per battlemech.  So when you have already put 50 million to get that transport bay to its target, you dont want 12 Marauder 3Rs to pop out if you can afford better.  As your transport fleet burgeons along with the mass quantity of forces fighting, the value of elite units goes down.  If you have a potempkin loaded with overlords... well yeah at that far end of the spectrum the forces involved are so great that the elite nature of a madcatIV is lost in the weeds.  But, like in HBS battletech, if you have a leopard to deploy/work with, you want the 4 nastiest, most high tech elite monsters that you can afford, with the pilots to match.

I brought up the point about 1 F35 versus 50 F5s, because if 1 F35 had to fight 50 F5s at the same time, there isnt enough missiles or fuel to do it.  But, like the MadCatIV, the f35 doesnt have to make its 'money' back in one single fight.  It can win fights one at a time, and come back again and again.  And yes, like the f35, there is some luck involved with a single unit and no backups... both may suffer some crazy circumstance that results in a unit being lost, but 6 f35s or 6 MadCatIVs wont all suffer malfunction simultaneously. 

It is also contingent on pilot skills too.  You dont put a top gun graduate in an F5(urbanmech) on the front lines, and you dont put a cadet logging flight hours to qualify for their license in an f35(MadcatIV) on the front lines.  A top gun graduate (gunslinger) is worth 90 million on a mech, easy peazy no question about it.

Like, I mention solaris in an earlier post.  I wouldnt bet on the Marauder 3R if it was versus the MadCatIV, and the fact that the Marauder is cheaper wont help it win that fight.  By the time a Marauder did get a win, your stable would be barren with no fans to celebrate your lucky upset over the MadCatIV, as you fed that MadCat countless mechs before you got lucky.

[Retry]

I think you've locked in too much to the 3Rs.  The 2Rs were more of the crux of that paragraph, the 3Rs was a side comment that a there's scenarios where even those rust buckets could pose a moderate threat to Mad Cat IVs (ex: Urban combat environments or constrained terrain).  The 2Rs is about where 'Mechs start to be somewhat threatening in a broader range of scenarios to a Mad Cat IV since the 2R's ERPPCs have enough range to return fire against kiting Battlemechs with long range weapons.

But for simplicity's sake let's focus on the vanilla Mad Cat, no MAD-2Rs, -3Rs, or Urbies.  The base Mad Cat and the IV upgrade differ in four main ways:
-Mad Cat uses an XLE, IV Cat uses XXLE
-Mad Cat uses Ferro-Fibrous armor, IV Cat uses Ferro-Lamellor (~20% better protection, or more vs select weapons like small arms, SRMs, LBX pellets)
-IV Cat has an armored gyro.
-Mad Cat has 27.5 tons of free payload, IV Cat has 28.

Other than that they only differ by the exact equipment omni configurations each has by default, but since they're omnis it's a bit moot.  In fact the two are close enough in tonnage that you can usually finagle variants so that Mad Cat configurations can mostly be ported to the IV cat and vice versa, though it won't always be possible due to crits.

On paper the IV cat has both superior firepower and superior armor compared to the Mad Cat.  However, in practice it's actually the Mad Cat that has a (very slight) edge in firepower: The half-ton advantage on paper is more than eaten up by the XXLE's extra heat production.

The basic problem is that going from a SFE to an XLE has much greater yields than going from an XLE to an XXLE.  SFE->XLE halves the weight by 1/2 of what's typically a fairly heavy engine at the cost of C-Bills and some side torso vulnerability.  XLE->XXLE reduces the weight by only 1/3rd of what's not a terribly heavy engine type in the first place, has extra side torso vulnerability, and has a unique disadvantage in that it's an inefficient engine type that produces much higher waste heat (2/4/6 idle/walking/running).  That last disadvantage effectively eliminates what would have been the IV cat's firepower advantage, and the extra heat load can be difficult to account for on the IV Cat's chassis which is already fairly tight with crits (Most of the canon IV Cat variants don't even try to account for it, and it makes their configurations worse off for it).

Even so, the Mad Cat IV is still overall an upgrade over the vanilla Mad Cat (mainly due to F-L armor), so if it was a reasonable price difference they'd be a compelling replacement.  Problem is IV cats cost 90 mill to the Mad Cat's 24 mill.  Price difference simply is not reflective of the IV's performance gains (& tradeoffs).

Using the Scout+Union as reflective of the typical weight of a usable package giving a base 50 million per bay, outfitting them with Mad Cats costs about 74 million per bay, while outfitting them with IV cats costs 140 million per bay, nearly double.  Because the cost is nearly double, you could just about afford purchasing another Scout+Union+Vanilla Cat combo, giving you a second high-end Battlemech company for the cost of the souped up IV Cats.

This is what I meant when things get weird when your Battlemech complement starts costing more than your Jumpships + Dropships.  When we ran campaigns including units with production XXLs, we divided their costs by 1/2 or even 1/3rd, precisely because of this problem.

Caveat: I'm approaching this from the standpoint of a government making decisions on how to allocate their defense budget, not as a Merc company or a Solaris stablemaster.

[Greatclub]

Assuming that the second jumpship is avalible. Remember that SW4 FedSuns crashed their economy by commandeering every jumpship in sight; crashed it so bad that they had to delay 3039 by 4-5 years. The Clans thousand light year logistics route between the homeworlds and IS is another example.

The math on that 50M mech bay changes again if there is a hard limit on how many you can get for any money.

[Retry]

Assuming that the second jumpship is avalible. Remember that SW4 FedSuns crashed their economy by commandeering every jumpship in sight; crashed it so bad that they had to delay 3039 by 4-5 years. The Clans thousand light year logistics route between the homeworlds and IS is another example.

The math on that 50M mech bay changes again if there is a hard limit on how many you can get for any money.

The long-term solution to a Jumpship shortage is to invest in Jumpships and related infrastructure.  Procuring Lances of Mad Cat IVs that as a group cost more than the Jumpships/Dropships themselves (for maybe ~10-15% extra performance compared to vanilla Mad Cats) is at best a bandaid solution to the jumpship shortage problem and at worst an actively detrimental measure that soaks up resources that would have been better allocated relieving the Jumpship shortage.

Increasing the effectiveness per-bay is most useful when doing so does not meaningfully reduce the number of bays you can field.  Switching from Urbies to MAD 2Rs is a huge individual capability boost that barely impacts the amount of bays you can field at all, so your overall capability goes way down.  Upgrading from MAD 2Rs to Mad Cats is also a very large individual capability boost, and even though the extra cost can reduce the amount of Jumpships and Dropships a bit (and thus available bays) your overall capability still increases because the individual capability boost outweighs the bay loss.  But upgrading from Mad Cats to IV Cats (if we take the 90m figure to be the "real" cost) reduces overall capability: The individual capability boost is small (base Mad Cats are already very good), but you lose a large amount of bays, nearly half, because the IV cat cost is so dominant.

Yeah, the Fed Suns managed their 4SW economy very poorly (and honestly none of the neufeudal factions can be consistently good at the economy due to their very structure).  That problem would not be fixed by building Mad Cat IVs, even if they somehow had the capability to do so, but it could be alleviated by investing in Jumpships (or just avoided by not nationalizing everything).  Ditto Clans: their clan invasion era logistics problem would not have been helped by diverting resources from Jumpships and XL 'Mechs to prioritize some sort of early XXL 'Mech platforms.
 
Again, this is from the perspective of national defense economics for fictional entities.  Mercenary operations will differ, as they don't generally have their own Shipyards.

[Demiurge]

For the Clans, I suspect their cost for XL engines is lower than for standard fusion engines, just because they have few reasons to make standards, so their manufacturing volume has to be very low. But descriptions in TROs don't seem to take that tack yet.

This would actually be a really cool idea, and I could see some nifty fiction and designs coming out of it.  A bit about, say, Clan Wolf technicians having to re-learn how to do SFEs because that's all the captured factory they've been given can make could be fun.  It could also be invoked as a reason why Clan light engines aren't a thing; Clan research has been entirely focused on higher power to weight ratios and they see light engines as a retrograde step.

Survivability?  What's that?  Warriors are supposed to die in their twenties!

[Greatclub]

The fluff is that light engines aren't an intermediate between std and XL, but a different branch on the tech tree.

[Demiurge]

The fluff is that light engines aren't an intermediate between std and XL, but a different branch on the tech tree.

Not per TechManual, which states that they're an attempt to mimic the compactness of clan XL engines at some expense to weight.

[Calimehter]

Speaking of cost, I wonder what the long-term costs of ferro-fibrous protection are.  With structure, you can avoid having to patch the stuff up by not taking too much damage, so an expensive ES skeleton could be kept to basically the up-front cost of purchase by a careful mechwarrior.  But armor is constantly being shot off and repaired, so the long-term costs of FF armor would be higher.

About 20-ish years ago we did a Mechwarrior RPG where the PCs were running a small Solaris stable.  We went full accountant-Tech for that one (to the point where one of the player's had their accountant fiance balance their books for them partway through) . . . and one of the first things we discovered was that any Mech with Ferro-Fibrous armor would -bankrupt- their stable in a big hurry.  With Battletech armor being ablative, it would be a huge expense vs. standard armor after every fight.

When they did finally get a Mech with FF armor, one of the first things I did as a GM was get them a sponsorship deal with an armor company who would cover their FF armor material orders in exchange for promoting their product.

[Daryk]

Glad to hear my gut instinct about Ferro has been validated by an accountant!  I could never get my accountant wife to do that... ;)

[Paul]

About 20-ish years ago we did a Mechwarrior RPG where the PCs were running a small Solaris stable.  We went full accountant-Tech for that one (to the point where one of the player's had their accountant fiance balance their books for them partway through) . . . and one of the first things we discovered was that any Mech with Ferro-Fibrous armor would -bankrupt- their stable in a big hurry.  With Battletech armor being ablative, it would be a huge expense vs. standard armor after every fight.

When they did finally get a Mech with FF armor, one of the first things I did as a GM was get them a sponsorship deal with an armor company who would cover their FF armor material orders in exchange for promoting their product.

Interesting!
I realize I'm asking a lot about something that happened that long ago, but could you expand a bit on why that conclusion is drawn?
I take it that in most battles in an RP setting, your armor becomes your most voluminous consumable, but still believe ammo would beat it (depending on the design of course). That likely shifts away from armor further in a setting where damage is more likely to include internal damage, like a sol7 campaign.

[Calimehter]

Ammo was a concern too, of course.  One player was running a pair of Artemis IV LRM-20's on an Archer, and after paying out for reloads after the first session or two, he took a lot fewer long-range shots than he normally did for one-off fights. :D

With the armor, though, there wasn't much that could be done to avoid it becoming a problem, thanks to the ablative armor technology of the BT universe.  With FF costing double, it was like they had taken twice as much damage as they actually suffered after each bout.  And with Solaris matches being pretty even for the most part, even successful fights tended to see noticable armor loss.  When you compared it to a non-FF mech, it was kind of like having one Mech's "income" pay for two Mech's worth of repairs in terms of C-Bills. 

The fight purses from the old FASA Solaris 7 book formula didn't keep pace without a "GM assist" like the one I provided, at least not as a minor independent stable like they were.  But even throwing out the old S7 rules and their situation as being a bad-case-scenario . . . double cost armor is just a tough sell in an ablative armor universe for armor that ablates at the same rate as the standard stuff.  I doubt anyone who wasn't running on a Great House budget was happy trying to keep a FF Mech in good shape if they saw any kind of regular action.

[Demiurge]

About 20-ish years ago we did a Mechwarrior RPG where the PCs were running a small Solaris stable.  We went full accountant-Tech for that one (to the point where one of the player's had their accountant fiance balance their books for them partway through) . . . and one of the first things we discovered was that any Mech with Ferro-Fibrous armor would -bankrupt- their stable in a big hurry.  With Battletech armor being ablative, it would be a huge expense vs. standard armor after every fight.

When they did finally get a Mech with FF armor, one of the first things I did as a GM was get them a sponsorship deal with an armor company who would cover their FF armor material orders in exchange for promoting their product.

Very interesting!

I wonder if any of the special armor types would be worth it from a cost perspective on Solaris VII.  Maybe stealth armor if it prevented enough hits to offset the cost of the armor?

[DevianID]

Ill have to dig out the old solaris payouts.  I don't remember them being so stingy with cash, but its been a long time.

I have run the more recent campaign operations / chaos campaign, and those give you some huge windfalls with salvage, which I guess isn't a thing in Solaris.  In campaign ops, one of the first things I spring for is Ferro because it doesn't take forever to install it, and selling 1 salvaged mech covers all the Ferro youd ever need.

[Daryk]

Wow... how do you make payroll?  Actually paying all your AsTechs usually soaks up most of the spare cash laying around...