Is there an Alpha Strike/BattleTech damage converter program?

[rogueranger1993]

Hey all, I'm running an RPG campaign and playing out the vehicular combat with Alpha Strike to speed things up. If I remember correctly, there was a set of rules for converting Alpha Strike damage into units that applied to the standard game, and I wondered if there was any kind of program or spreadsheet out there for doing this, since it would speed up the damage conversion and allow me to give the players a greater depth of detail whan repairing their machines.

Or should I just print off a copy of those rules for each player and have them convert and apply the damage themselves so that I don't have to do it all one by one? ;D

[Descronan]

Damage is easy. Take the Battletech weapon damage and divide by 10 rounded up. Armor is divided by 30 rounded normally. If you have the Battletech stats for the unit then it should have the damage values. Alternately, the weapon damage values are listed in the Alpha Strike Companion and is very extensive.

Do you need more detail than that?

[DarkJaguar]

Damage is easy. Take the Battletech weapon damage and divide by 10 rounded up. Armor is divided by 30 rounded normally. If you have the Battletech stats for the unit then it should have the damage values. Alternately, the weapon damage values are listed in the Alpha Strike Companion and is very extensive.

Do you need more detail than that?

That's not quite correct.  The conversion process for weapons is a good deal more complex than that.  The rules for weapons conversion begin on page 99 of the Alpha Strike Companion, and there are tables on pages 104-114 of the same book that give you the individual weapons values.  Heat, Ammo Carried, and accuracy enhancing devices all affect on weapons as well.

[nckestrel]

I think he means he plays an Alpha Strike game and a Warhammer takes 5 armor damage and 1 structure damage. How to convert that damage to left arm destroyed and a critical to the SRM launcher.
Ie not converting the unit before playing AS, but converting the damage after the AS game has been played. I know Strategic Operations has such rules for BF (and would work as is for AS), but I don’t remember if that got included in AS anywhere.

[Tai Dai Cultist]

IIRC the conversion involves determining how many 5 point hits X points of AS scale A/S damage is, and then just allocating that much damage to the record sheet roll by roll on the hit location chart.

[Elmoth]

Actually damage for AS is extremely easy to calculate. It is maximum damage at each range/10. Round to the nearest whole number. All the extra features do not count at all.

But that this not what the OP was asking about, so I digress. I just assign damage as armor and internals. There is always some internals, but nothing that general description cannot take into account. If they took internal damage sometimes I turn that tonto a story,like how they need to replace a gyro and they cannot find one easily, or how the shop owner is trying to scan them with the new fusion converters that he know they need and he is the sole provider right now...

[nckestrel]

IIRC the conversion involves determining how many 5 point hits X points of AS scale A/S damage is, and then just allocating that much damage to the record sheet roll by roll on the hit location chart.

yeah SO p238, apply the following 5 point clusters.
30 BT armor points per AS/BF armor point, 20 BT structure points per AS/BF structure point.  apply locations as if an attack from the front, transferring damage as necessary (armor can only remove armor, move to next location if armor is gone from that location, these armor/structure damage applications can't cause critical hits unless the unit was destroyed). And there's a list of BF/AS critical hits and how to apply them to a record sheet. a weapon critical takes out the largest weapon, etc.

But if you're doing that just to convert back to AS again, you're going to have a headache with any partial repairs. a missing jump jet is easy, a missing heat sink or laser is going to require redoing the really messy damage value calculations.  That's a lot less fun.

[rogueranger1993]

I think he means he plays an Alpha Strike game and a Warhammer takes 5 armor damage and 1 structure damage. How to convert that damage to left arm destroyed and a critical to the SRM launcher.
Ie not converting the unit before playing AS, but converting the damage after the AS game has been played.

Yeah, this is what I was asking about, sorry if I wasn't very clear. I know that Solaris Skunkworks can do the initial Battletech-to-Alpha Strike conversion, but I only use MegaMekLab now since it's still being supported and thus much more up-to-date, has wider unit selection, etc.

yeah SO p238

Thanks for the page reference!  :thumbsup:

But if you're doing that just to convert back to AS again, you're going to have a headache with any partial repairs. a missing jump jet is easy, a missing heat sink or laser is going to require redoing the really messy damage value calculations.  That's a lot less fun.

Urk.  xp Just realized that, and boy howdy it wouldn't be fun. I may just keep it all in Alpha Strike and use GM Fiat to handwavium repairs and stuff. If I had something like SSW had in MegaMekLab, I'd just open up the unit file, make some minor edits, and print out a new card, but alas, see the above...  :'(

[Scotty]

That's probably for the best.  As it happens, SSW's conversion isn't to Alpha Strike, anyway.  It's to BattleForce, which is similar but doesn't convert the same.

There is a way to handle repairs in a campaign at the back of the Alpha Strike Companion incidentally.  I recommend throwing the costs/available points away and using whatever feels best to you, but they're in there.

[nckestrel]

BF is the same stats as AS (with the minor exception of movement being listed in hexes rather than inches).
But SSW had a few errors in its conversion still and the developer didn’t have e time to continue and then errata happens...