Author Topic: Desperately need a new edition of MWRPG: AToW is a weak link.  (Read 41568 times)

Iracundus

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Re: Desperately need a new edition of MWRPG: AToW is a weak link.
« Reply #240 on: 07 November 2015, 19:24:58 »
Fuel is relatively cheap (or free, if water is plentiful enough), and the going rate for crew salaries is also fairly low.  The majority of costs would probably be in financing the ship itself and repair parts.  I think BattleTech does a relatively good job of pricing spacecraft, but that means they're impractical to finance on a scale most of us are familiar with.  "Small business" doesn't encompass anything requiring capital investments in the millions (much less billions).

The issue of Battletech interstellar finance is another issue entirely...Banks no doubt would be wary of loaning to individuals that can jump across borders to another state where there is no realistic hope of extradition or loan recovery.  Either traders will need to buy ships outright, or be part of a corporation, official consortium, or otherwise have assets that can be pledged as security.  Of course, such traders probably would also need a solid business plan beyond just jumping around randomly, and would need a history of profitability. 

I am guessing small time traders may be renting space on board a richer trader/merchant master's dropship.  This would subject them to the availability of dropships or jumpships to wherever they want to go however. 

Kitsune413

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Re: Desperately need a new edition of MWRPG: AToW is a weak link.
« Reply #241 on: 07 November 2015, 19:53:24 »
The writer for GURPS Traveller: Far Trader made a good attempt at it, and also the various issues that would matter in the interstellar shipping business (based on naval freight shipping).  While not perfect, it was a good framework for people that liked to crunch the numbers or for trader campaigns.  Things like this would be useful for AToW to enable other character types and campaigns.  After all, in Handbook House Steiner there are Life Paths for Merchant Master.  Examination of the idea of the lone or small time trader and how they can exist in a scarce Jumpship trading environment would be useful.

Being a Sea Fox player I think about what would make a fun trading game a lot or mechanics that might work.

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ATOWC did a good job giving all those traits that were useless post-chargen something to be useful for. Unfortunately the optional rule for that pretty much made tracking C-bills all but pointless. Wealth+E.income coalesce into determining wether you can scrape the funds necessary, while equipped check determine your access to high-end products. Personally I think it's a good think, but it's problematic since C-Bills are a mechanic of the setting.

There is also a discrepancy in Battletech between the goods you can buy with c-bills and want to buy with c-bills.

So Shadowrun's kind of got a Nuyen progression system. You earn money to buy mods to earn more money and guns to earn more money in a progressive pricing situation.

But battletech isn't like that. You can probably get all the personal equipment you will ever use at character creation... Except....

Battletech goes from having items that are cheap, and then a fair amount and then straight into extravagantly expensive. It kind of goes, "Light Pistol" "Heavy Pistol" "Bullet Proof Vest" to "Sniper Rifle" "Combat armor" and you can afford it all at character creation... and then it goes straight to Battle Armor! Tanks! Battlemechs!

Which is improbable for you to fund without a group really. So the Wealth and Well equipped traits working after character creation really doesn't matter. Battletech is about story and skill progression. They don't have a d&d style loot progression. (Warhammer Battlemech. Warhammer Battlemech +1. Warhammer Battlemech +2. Sure you can take that basic Warhammer and eventually give it Sea Fox Battlemech armor. That'd make it a +2. But it is also blindingly expensive.)
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Iracundus

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Re: Desperately need a new edition of MWRPG: AToW is a weak link.
« Reply #242 on: 07 November 2015, 21:37:58 »
Being a Sea Fox player I think about what would make a fun trading game a lot or mechanics that might work.

The main difference between Battletech and say Traveller is the scarcity of interstellar transport.  In Traveller little tramp trader ships with ability to jump are common enough for a little group of players to have (on a mortgage).  In Battletech, you have to be fabulously wealthy to buy a Jumpship, or basically indenture yourself and your descendants to some House or corporation. 

There is also a discrepancy in Battletech between the goods you can buy with c-bills and want to buy with c-bills.

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So Shadowrun's kind of got a Nuyen progression system. You earn money to buy mods to earn more money and guns to earn more money in a progressive pricing situation.

But battletech isn't like that. You can probably get all the personal equipment you will ever use at character creation... Except....

Battletech goes from having items that are cheap, and then a fair amount and then straight into extravagantly expensive. It kind of goes, "Light Pistol" "Heavy Pistol" "Bullet Proof Vest" to "Sniper Rifle" "Combat armor" and you can afford it all at character creation... and then it goes straight to Battle Armor! Tanks! Battlemechs!

Which is improbable for you to fund without a group really. So the Wealth and Well equipped traits working after character creation really doesn't matter. Battletech is about story and skill progression. They don't have a d&d style loot progression. (Warhammer Battlemech. Warhammer Battlemech +1. Warhammer Battlemech +2. Sure you can take that basic Warhammer and eventually give it Sea Fox Battlemech armor. That'd make it a +2. But it is also blindingly expensive.)

I would say if it is a merc campaign then it is about expanding your merc unit.  If it is a House campaign, then theoretically costs do not matter since you are working for a House, meaning effectively unlimited monetary budget and it becomes more an issue of quartermaster priority. 

The reason the big jump in costs noted above exists compared to Shadowrun for example is because in Battletech, characters are dealing in military hardware.  How many private individuals today can realistically expect to purchase and maintain a Main Battle Tank on their own? 

Jewelfox

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Re: Desperately need a new edition of MWRPG: AToW is a weak link.
« Reply #243 on: 07 November 2015, 21:47:49 »
The reason the big jump in costs noted above exists compared to Shadowrun for example is because in Battletech, characters are dealing in military hardware.  How many private individuals today can realistically expect to purchase and maintain a Main Battle Tank on their own?

Yeah, I think the assumption is that you either a) work for the military, or b) can buy your own military.

Kitsune413

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Re: Desperately need a new edition of MWRPG: AToW is a weak link.
« Reply #244 on: 07 November 2015, 21:56:26 »
The main difference between Battletech and say Traveller is the scarcity of interstellar transport.  In Traveller little tramp trader ships with ability to jump are common enough for a little group of players to have (on a mortgage).  In Battletech, you have to be fabulously wealthy to buy a Jumpship, or basically indenture yourself and your descendants to some House or corporation. 

There is also a discrepancy in Battletech between the goods you can buy with c-bills and want to buy with c-bills.

There is one other option and its an option that is also used by mechwarriors to have a mech and that's hereditary. There are Roma in the Free Worlds League that have these ancient jumpships that they keep going. Dropships are the same way. A lot of the hardware has been around since the Star League.

So it's kind of, "Start your own mortage.", "Be part of a giant Corporation", "Be a spacer family." or, "Your uncle with no relatives died. His Dropship/Jumpship is yours now."

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I would say if it is a merc campaign then it is about expanding your merc unit.  If it is a House campaign, then theoretically costs do not matter since you are working for a House, meaning effectively unlimited monetary budget and it becomes more an issue of quartermaster priority. 

The reason the big jump in costs noted above exists compared to Shadowrun for example is because in Battletech, characters are dealing in military hardware.  How many private individuals today can realistically expect to purchase and maintain a Main Battle Tank on their own?

Yes. The jumps are because you are buying military equipment. But it leads to two different income scales. Either you have no income and you're struggling to get the equipment that is cheap to start out with. Or you had an income and you are struggling to be able to pay for the military hardware.

Shadowrun uses things like Tech Levels to keep the scale up. You start with enough money to get level Blah Wired Reflexes.
Dungeons and Dragons use magical levels to keep the scale up. You start with a long sword. You end up with a longsword +5.

Technically Battletech has a sort of military scaling. You Start with a Commando. You end with a Hellstar.

But there is no kind of scaling for the lower parts of the game.

If you are a solo MechWarrior you're hoping to get enough money for replacement parts with a little extra. When you're a Mercenary outfit you're hoping for enough money to replace your losses with a little extra.

Clan or House units are outside of the "Need Money" scale, except for scale one. Maybe you want enough money to buy a sniper rifle. Maybe.

But Clan or House unit games are by nature more Space Opera games where Mercenary games go back to Military Scale oriented. But that's outside of character progression. It's a unit progression.

Solaris VII supports a single MechWarrior scale of progression. You should eventually be able to either swap out your Warhammer for a Mad Cat. OR. Make it into a Warhammer +5 with ferrolamellar. etc.
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Iracundus

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Re: Desperately need a new edition of MWRPG: AToW is a weak link.
« Reply #245 on: 07 November 2015, 21:58:23 »
Yeah, I think the assumption is that you either a) work for the military, or b) can buy your own military.

Although I suppose a differentiation could be made between the mercenary unit's accounts and the individual character's accounts.  Otherwise if the player character is also the leader of the unit and could tap the unit finances, personal expenses and equipment rapidly start to become meaningless. 

Of course another way is to make the AToW part less gear and military equipment dependent, to encourage other thinking or non-combat solutions.  There are a lot of players out there that might otherwise be tempted to solve every problem by a PPC. 

Actually that bit about the mercenary accounts made me think...do mercenary units pay taxes on their contract earnings?  And if so, to which entities?  What about individuals within the merc unit, and what is their citizenship?  I could see the potential case of say a Mechwarrior from the Lyran Commonwealth filing income tax for income paid by the FWL for missions against the Lyran Commonwealth.  Would that count as treason? 

There is one other option and its an option that is also used by mechwarriors to have a mech and that's hereditary. There are Roma in the Free Worlds League that have these ancient jumpships that they keep going. Dropships are the same way. A lot of the hardware has been around since the Star League.

So it's kind of, "Start your own mortage.", "Be part of a giant Corporation", "Be a spacer family." or, "Your uncle with no relatives died. His Dropship/Jumpship is yours now."

That is why I want to at some point calculate out the operating overhead such a character would need to make in order to make ends meet.  A standard individual level type adventure paying out in fistfuls of cash would be totally insufficient if one of the characters had to pay the bills on maintenance for a ship. 
« Last Edit: 07 November 2015, 22:04:07 by Iracundus »

Daryk

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Re: Desperately need a new edition of MWRPG: AToW is a weak link.
« Reply #246 on: 07 November 2015, 22:19:14 »
Speaking of Shadowrun... military hardware exists there too, and is also appropriately priced.  The main difference is that the characters aren't expected to be able to buy it, but that's more a function of genre.  Shadowrun characters that encounter military hardware usually end up as examples of the "chunky salsa" rule.

Kitsune413

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Re: Desperately need a new edition of MWRPG: AToW is a weak link.
« Reply #247 on: 07 November 2015, 22:28:42 »
Military hardware for hackers also degrades really really fast. With the 4th edition War! Supplement you could pretty effectively play mercenaries. But the hardware was still part of shadow runner pricing structure. Just the top tier.
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Jewelfox

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Re: Desperately need a new edition of MWRPG: AToW is a weak link.
« Reply #248 on: 08 November 2015, 05:04:44 »
Although I suppose a differentiation could be made between the mercenary unit's accounts and the individual character's accounts.  Otherwise if the player character is also the leader of the unit and could tap the unit finances, personal expenses and equipment rapidly start to become meaningless. 

Of course another way is to make the AToW part less gear and military equipment dependent, to encourage other thinking or non-combat solutions.  There are a lot of players out there that might otherwise be tempted to solve every problem by a PPC. 

Well, once you have enough money to buy all the personal equipment you want you're still limited by what you can carry. Whether the limit's your STR score or your mech's tonnage.

I don't know how AToW handles it (probably with pages of charts), but in Fate they just assume you have whatever gear you need to use your skills. And then if you want something noteworthy you either take it as one of your stunts (traits) or try to obtain it during play. Like by rolling Contacts to find someone selling it, Resources to purchase it, or Fight to punch someone and take it. :P

Either way, availability seems like it'd be more of a limit than C-Bills, especially in the Mad Max age of the late Succession Wars. Just because something has a price tag doesn't mean that you can find anyone who is selling it.
« Last Edit: 08 November 2015, 05:09:29 by Jewelfox »

Maelwys

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Re: Desperately need a new edition of MWRPG: AToW is a weak link.
« Reply #249 on: 08 November 2015, 13:45:42 »
Isn't that what Availability is for (though i must admit, I'm not sure if Availability actually factors in under the basic rules other than as a guideline for the GM)?

guardiandashi

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Re: Desperately need a new edition of MWRPG: AToW is a weak link.
« Reply #250 on: 08 November 2015, 20:12:56 »
Isn't that what Availability is for (though i must admit, I'm not sure if Availability actually factors in under the basic rules other than as a guideline for the GM)?
as I understand it ... not really

the companion actually gives "rules" or guidelines with dice checks to see if you can actually FIND the limited availability items to attempt to purchase them.

In some ways the companion includes a lot of "optional" things that IMO should have been in ATOW as "core" options but fitting them in would require a serious re-editing and what would get cut to squeeze in ~50+ pages of additional material.

Jewelfox

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Re: Desperately need a new edition of MWRPG: AToW is a weak link.
« Reply #251 on: 09 November 2015, 03:04:06 »
In some ways the companion includes a lot of "optional" things that IMO should have been in ATOW as "core" options but fitting them in would require a serious re-editing and what would get cut to squeeze in ~50+ pages of additional material.

Yeah, sort of like how you can't really build an Alpha Strike company / lance unless you buy the ASC. >_<

Mohammed As`Zaman Bey

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Re: Desperately need a new edition of MWRPG: AToW is a weak link.
« Reply #252 on: 09 November 2015, 05:13:11 »
Actually that bit about the mercenary accounts made me think...do mercenary units pay taxes on their contract earnings?
  Yes. ATOW Page 336, Monthly Expenses Table: 30% taxes.

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And if so, to which entities?
  it is not specific, although I would say taxes would go to the jurisdiction that the mercenary HQ was located. I GMed a campaign where one character owned the city where the merc unit was located and declared it tax-exempt.

 
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What about individuals within the merc unit, and what is their citizenship?
 
  Individuals may keep their original citizenship and papers. It has no bearing on employment.

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I could see the potential case of say a Mechwarrior from the Lyran Commonwealth filing income tax for income paid by the FWL for missions against the Lyran Commonwealth.  Would that count as treason?

  No. Taxes are paid to the ruling jurisdiction. Mercenaries are, by nature of their work, exempt from loyalty oaths as their profession makes them neutral. That being said, nobles hold their social rank at the discretion of their sovereign and that rank (and holdings) may be pulled for actions against the interests of that sovereign.

  In one campaign, one Lyran player committed atrocities against rebelling Lyran citizens. The Archon stripped him of all rank and holdings; he was lucky his boss had great lawyers or he'd be in prison.

Kitsune413

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Re: Desperately need a new edition of MWRPG: AToW is a weak link.
« Reply #253 on: 09 November 2015, 20:26:25 »
Real private military company members pay taxes ironically enough.

It is more likely that the mrbc takes care of that being the middle man or mr. Johnson for Mercenaries anyways.

Obviously the more rogue you are the higher the chance you will be payed under the table.
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