Redesigning Clix: What would you do differently?

[DarkSpade]

Sizes may not be stated explicitly in the TRO or on the file cards, but most / many of these minis were N scale ... and you can also make some rough estimates on size based on details on the minis. Add in the illustrations in the TROs and other books, as well as the stated cargo capacity in the TROs shows that none of them should be carrying 100 ton tanks (small vehicles, maybe) ... even the Savior, Garrot, and Bishop, which come closest to being able to do this job, at least out of what we got as actual minis. I always just accepted that it was a necessary evil in the MechWarrior game, a mechanic probably representing something more abstract in effectively deploying the tank. It was always worth a good laugh or nervous chuckle, if nothing else. I would rather they have released a totally new vehicle type as a dedicated assault tank transport, or even just a flatbed truck. As a game mechanic, it was less troubling by the end of AoD, thanks to assault orders and other natural counters. If I was redesigning the game from the ground up, I would probably create a new vehicle size and base and use cap 4 or 5 transports for heavy / assault vehicles ...

I remember in the forums there were often calls for transporting vehicles being limited to vehicles with a speed of 0 or even just those with "towed" in the name.

[GhostCat]

I remember in the forums there were often calls for transporting vehicles being limited to vehicles with a speed of 0 or even just those with "towed" in the name.

As I recall, the game designers found an answer to this, themselves.  Transports can not carry other transports.  This led to a few silly things like units with Single Use Infiltrate that click away to 0MV and cannot move or be carried. 

As for larger transport capacities, how do you limit that to "just one big tank"?  Might someone try to use a slightly smaller with a few infantry to fill up the truck?  Now you have an instant formation drop with just one transport.  Should we be glad that current rules do not allow five TGR or TAC infantry to jump out of one transport?  (YES! I do have infantry that can hit for 3damage at 12inches and five of them still cost less than one Behemoth tank.)  Well, I'm sure you get the point.

GC

[SpaceCowboy1701]

As I recall, the game designers found an answer to this, themselves.  Transports can not carry other transports.  This led to a few silly things like units with Single Use Infiltrate that click away to 0MV and cannot move or be carried. 

As for larger transport capacities, how do you limit that to "just one big tank"?  Might someone try to use a slightly smaller with a few infantry to fill up the truck?  Now you have an instant formation drop with just one transport.  Should we be glad that current rules do not allow five TGR or TAC infantry to jump out of one transport?  (YES! I do have infantry that can hit for 3damage at 12inches and five of them still cost less than one Behemoth tank.)  Well, I'm sure you get the point.

GC

Several possibilities, I suppose ... price the transport at 50 points or more ... make it speed 4 or 5 ... add some rules allowing passengers to take damage, especially if it's just a flatbed (how does the Garrot or Savior give more than partial cover to the carried tank or infantry?). I've been on the receiving end of a number of TAC / TGR drops ... and done my share of SRM / Sniper Team drops out of a J-37 (talk about cheap - 26 pts for a J-37, 54 pts for 2 SRM teams and a Sniper). Even if they are cheaper than a Behemoth II, they are more vulnerable once deployed ... take out the middle unit, and you've got trouble. So, don't put point defense SE on the transport, either .... Another way to do it is to make different Cap classes for light, medium, heavy, and assault vehicles, with the understanding that it is able to carry vehicles and/or X number of infantry ... just some ideas that I've never really had the time to game out ...

On a related note, I thought Wizkids might have missed a bet in not producing enclosed gun emplacements, essentially cap 1, speed 0 infantry or vehicle stands with "pillboxes" on them. They would have been stuck in the deployment zone, but maybe add another layer ... or not. I would be curious to see something like that playtested and see if it's a waste of time.

[GhostCat]

Several possibilities, I suppose ... price the transport at 50 points or more ... make it speed 4 or 5 ...

On a related note, I thought Wizkids might have missed a bet in not producing enclosed gun emplacements, essentially cap 1, speed 0 infantry or vehicle stands with "pillboxes" on them. They would have been stuck in the deployment zone, but maybe add another layer ... or not. I would be curious to see something like that playtested and see if it's a waste of time.

WizKids did make infantry with transport capacity of zero called the "Gun Nest".  In Falcon's Prey, it was very slow with a move of 4" and looked like a towed gun behind a wall.  The AoD version made it look like a machinegun team, had SU Infiltrate and couldn't fight as long as it was able to move.

As for costing transports more, have you seen these?

AOD066 R10 Mechanized ICV 48 pts. (Spirit Cats) .... Speed 8, Cap 3
** has AntiPersonel SE like SC Shock Troopers and costs as much as a three unit formation

FP049 Hasek Mechanized Combat Vehicle 61 pts. (Spirit Cats) .... Speed 10, Cap 1
** fights like an Enyo tank for the same cost without Improved Targeting

AN031 Bishop Transport 39 pts. (Clan Nova Cat) .... VTOL Speed 12, Cap 3
** slow, even for a non-VTOL transport

And you want to make transports more silly and less useful than they already are.

GC

[SpaceCowboy1701]

WizKids did make infantry with transport capacity of zero called the "Gun Nest".  In Falcon's Prey, it was very slow with a move of 4" and looked like a towed gun behind a wall.  The AoD version made it look like a machinegun team, had SU Infiltrate and couldn't fight as long as it was able to move.

I wanted a cap 1 infantry, actually ... not cap 0 ... I'm familiar with the Gun Nest -- and when I saw it, I questioned why they didn't just allow it to hold another infantry unit as a pill box.

As for costing transports more, have you seen these?

AOD066 R10 Mechanized ICV 48 pts. (Spirit Cats) .... Speed 8, Cap 3
** has AntiPersonel SE like SC Shock Troopers and costs as much as a three unit formation

FP049 Hasek Mechanized Combat Vehicle 61 pts. (Spirit Cats) .... Speed 10, Cap 1
** fights like an Enyo tank for the same cost without Improved Targeting

AN031 Bishop Transport 39 pts. (Clan Nova Cat) .... VTOL Speed 12, Cap 3
** slow, even for a non-VTOL transport

And you want to make transports more silly and less useful than they already are.

Sillier than a Zahn with 8 tons of cargo capacity flopping out an 80-ton DI Schmitt or 95-ton Kelswa? I'm just spitballing to make a weird meta tactic less weird and potentially abusive. I haven't gamed these ideas out, so they may be terrible. Probably it wouldn't work as, say, an isolated change, but as part of a larger system of changes, who knows? Creating a new vehicle size (as in different base size) appealed to me on several levels ... let assault vehicles have the kind of dials that makes them stand out ... but that's more than just a tweak or minor adjustment.

I like the R10s in theory -- a transport that can provide cover fire for its cargo ... but yeah, you're not going to run most of those, especially the Hasek, unless you don't have much choice. 60 points is a lot for a tank that would have a hard time hitting anything substantial ... putting 8 attack on it is kind of insulting (my wife ran Spirit Cats for awhile, so I've got a good number of their units). So the Hasek finds its way onto my growing list of units that need their stats adjusted ...

[Papabees]

I was someone who jumped into the game initially then jumped out. The mechanics of the rules never seemed to grab me. Many units could move further than their weapons fired, you couldn't move and fire in the same turn, and a few other things. I was really bummed because I thought using a dial to speed up Btech was a great idea but I just thought they were trying to fit a square peg into the round hole of Mageknight/Heroclix. I wanted range brackets and simo movement and fire, or over watch, or something. It just always seemed like the first person to shoot won.

From a marketing standpoint I think Wizkids screwed the pooch with the traditional CBT players from the beginning. Why would the Forestry Mech be the first model you leak? why not drop a few of the classic mechs into the first release (Centurion was a good one, but what the heck were they thinking with that crappy Panther).   

[SpaceCowboy1701]

I was someone who jumped into the game initially then jumped out. The mechanics of the rules never seemed to grab me. Many units could move further than their weapons fired, you couldn't move and fire in the same turn, and a few other things. I was really bummed because I thought using a dial to speed up Btech was a great idea but I just thought they were trying to fit a square peg into the round hole of Mageknight/Heroclix. I wanted range brackets and simo movement and fire, or over watch, or something. It just always seemed like the first person to shoot won.

From a marketing standpoint I think Wizkids screwed the pooch with the traditional CBT players from the beginning. Why would the Forestry Mech be the first model you leak? why not drop a few of the classic mechs into the first release (Centurion was a good one, but what the heck were they thinking with that crappy Panther).

Yeah, it really was a weird transition from the Battletech system with the simultaneous shooting -- I remember having a hard time with that early on, as well as the damage from pushing. The "assault order" for 'mechs helps some ... I had some friends who bailed on the game sometime before Falcon's Prey, I believe, due to aggravation with certain rules. I guess I just managed to adapt. As far as the marketing goes, I really question how much they were trying to reach hard core CBT players ... there was actually a ton of attention to detail in many elements of the background information, but in other ways, it seems like they managed to push just about every possible button to honk people off. Maybe the assumption was that the CBT fans would stick with the new Fanpro Jihad material anyway ... since a lot of the devotees of a hyper-detailed wargame are by definition not going to like a super-abstracted version of the same game. As far as the preview choices ... the urban legend is that Jordan Weisman was in love with the "Mad Max" look and feel of the ICE / ICE MOD 'mechs, and that was actually to be the selling point of the game, rather than "this is your new Battletech" (which is apparently what some players were told). The sculpt redesigns ... I think I remember hearing that some of those may have been due to limitations on the durability of the plastic used -- but I could be misremembering there. Since I wasn't as wedded to the classic designs, I wasn't as offended by some of the ... alterations. But I certainly understand why players would be mad.

[DarkSpade]

I really don't think they were after CBT players.  After all, CBT players already had a game, CBT.   I think they were after players that wanted a mech combat game but didn't want the complexity CBT has.  I know that's what I was actively looking for at the time it came out.  Only other thing I could find was Ronin and nobody was playing that.

I think the scuplts had just as many hits as misses.  In some cases the issue was the pose more than anything.  For example, see the squatting warhammer.

[Atlas3060]

Going back to the blind buy option, yes I would have removed it in part but kept sort of what they did with AoD.
Bear with me on this ramble.
Make the minis themselves non blind buy.
If I want a Warhammer, I get the Warhammer.
Vehicles come in two packs, and infantry would come in sets of 4-5 but randomized in packaging.

However there will be a package available to purchase called something like "Supply requisition".
These Supply Requisition packages are a blind buy, but they also have various things to enhance the Mechs such as:
*Pilot cards
*Weapon cards
*Weather cards
*Situation alliance/Merc Contract cards
*Special ability cards
*Mission cards

Basically the same types of cards that we got in Dark Age, but some may be tweaked for specific chassis weights.
So that way the lower end buyer (first timers, maybe just a occasional fan) wouldn't get upset at a blind buy, because it is optional.
If they want to plunk down cold hard cash on one Atlas, a Marksman tank, and a squad of infantry let them.
They could play all sorts of basic scenarios with just the minis.

Now if he/she wants to spice up the game, get hardened armor, supply the tank with inferno rounds, or upgrade that artillery to have direct fire capability then the Supply requisition purchase will fit the bill.
I can't say how this would help in a tournament front.
I've only seen one, and that was because I came to the store to buy Battletech stuff.

As for game mechanics I think that infantry should move or shoot, vehicles could do both but with some limitations like push damage, and Mechs needed that Assault option where they can run and gun with little problems.
I guess that's why I liked AoD, things were starting to come together a little better, but that's how games develop sometimes.

[DarkSpade]

I love the idea, but I think you'd have to get rid of factions on the units for that to work.  Otherwise you're going to see issues where stores see the highlander atlas isn't selling well and neither is the highlander jupiter so they just stop ordering the highlander units.   Or, even worse, wizkids would have probably sent stores a case that included two of each unit per faction.  Like two HL centurions, two DF, and SW in a case.   Store sells out of the DF centurions and customers want more, but to do get them, they have to order the other two factions that are still sitting on the shelf(heroscape made a similar mistake through 10+ releases all the way to the end).    Now, if you do remove factions from the units, I could totally see it working.


Was anyone else disappointed with the "intentionally left blank" dossiers?   Seemed like a wasted opportunity to me.   Would have loved to have seen them used as TROs for non unique units.


Another idea my group had was using the plastic cards for off board artillery.  So instead of using your last few points on a peasant company that'll never leave your deployment zone, you get a one shot "pog" to put on the board.  Maybe another card you pop out two pieces, put them together and set on the board to represent a fly by from an aerospace unit. 

[JadeHellbringer]

Heh, tank drop... if there's anything funnier than the mental image of some little Anat APC rushing out into the middle of the field and disgorging a Kelswa assault tank out of itself in violation of the laws of physics, I'd love to see it.  ;D

[darkminstrel]

When I first started playing I read the rules and then tossed a few out. The small group I had playing with me used a movement phase, followed by combat phase followed by damage phase(we used d6 behind the unit to represent damage taken. Turns were done simultaneously with effects being applied left to right. It worked well with heat/pushing damage being applied as normal.

We also never played with factions, it seemed too much of a crutch/crippling effect to the collections we had.

[JPArbiter]

this is probably the mother of all hindsights being 20/20, but in light of the seeming popularity of the Pre Star Leauge "Primitive" mechs, I would have set the game in the Age of War, where everybody was fighting no body knew about what and the wars themselves were pretty inconsequential.

[LordNth]

Atlas3060
That was what I was hoping for with the release of the Action packs.
Take it one step further once Topps was involved.
-Action packs for Big Block Mass Stores (Targets and Wally Worlds)
-Blind Reinforcement Boosters for powerful vehicles and Mechs for FLGS and Big Block Stores
-Booster packs (pilots, gear enchantments etc) for only FLGS
-Prize Support for tournaments at FLGS.

Dial length and stat drop off is needed for the game to run in under 50 minutes.  I know I don't have the time for a single match to run 4 hours like full games of CBT anymore.  That's one of the reasons I liked MW

Oh and the blank dossiers was a way to prevent cherry picking.  As in the beginning you could grab a unique by simply squeezing the box and hear the paper dossier in it.  The blank ones were a simple, cheap and quick way to prevent this from happening.

And on the blind booster format.  I like it for 1 reason.  It promotes trading.  It encourages two or more players to be social and trade with each other.   O0
The down side is the purchasing on secondary market where all rare pieces get priced on popularity (and turning the game into an investment -different topic) and then every one wants to buy and not trade  >:(

[tbrminsanity]

Things I loved (and still love) about Mechwarrior Clix:

• All the stats for my character are on my character, no need for sheets
• Pre Painted.  I can't stress this enough, I'm not an artist and I don't have the time, skill, and patience to paint my own minis.
• Age of Destruction.  This fixed many of the minor issues I had with Dark Age and added the modularity that was welcome to the game

Things I hate about Mechwarrior Clix

• "Mini" factions.  I think the story behind all the mini factions (All the RofTS IS break away factions) was due to legal and not story, but I still wanted to play House Kurita and Clan Nova Cat on day one, not several years later.
• The fluff not matching tournament results (case in point Spirit Cats/Clan Nova Cats dominating in tournaments, but getting screwed by the writers, while Steel Wolves/Clan Wolf/Wolf Hunters doing poorly in tournaments, but end up being a major winner because of the writers).
• Lack of terrain.  This is touched on above, but other Clix games have terrain (even destroyable terrain), they could have done the same for Mechwarrior Clix.

Recommendations:

• While some factions like the Republic of the Sphere, Bannson's Raiders, and Northwind Highlanders should exist, Dragon's Fury, Swordsworn, Stormhammers, Spirit Cats, and Steel Wolves should never have existed.  WizKids should have pushed forward with getting licensing in place prior to game launch so that all the IS factions would be available day one.
• Some Merc factions (Wolf's Dragoons being the biggest example) should have been a faction, or some factions (Bannson's Raiders, Northwind Highlanders, and Wolf Hunters) should have been Mercs.
• In the first year of MW:DA the tournament results directly effected the story of the Mechwarrior Clix game.  They even had which planets were being controlled by which factions.  They should have continued this.  The method of lifting up or destroying a faction through writing is handwavium and leads to disenfranchised players.
• The other option would be to follow the Battletech root and have pre scripted scenarios with expected results.  The tournaments would then be about personal victories and not faction victories.  This would be similar to Gladiator (the movie) where Maximus plays Hannibal (who was suppose to lose), and when he won the battle in the arena, people thought he fought well, but history was not changed.
• While I'm not a fan of the Free Worlds Republic.  I would have liked to see their units in the game.

[wantec]

Heh, tank drop... if there's anything funnier than the mental image of some little Anat APC rushing out into the middle of the field and disgorging a Kelswa assault tank out of itself in violation of the laws of physics, I'd love to see it.  ;D

It's like the reverse of watching a snake eat some larger animal. Rolling down the battlefield it looks like an Anat APC, but it's all bloated and fat looking. Then when it stops, out pops a tank and the Anat goes back to it's regular size.

[Atlas3060]

And on the blind booster format.  I like it for 1 reason.  It promotes trading.  It encourages two or more players to be social and trade with each other.   O0
The down side is the purchasing on secondary market where all rare pieces get priced on popularity (and turning the game into an investment -different topic) and then every one wants to buy and not trade  >:(

Consequently for me those were reasons why I hated the blind booster idea.
I plunked down 10 dollars, I got either designs I have six of already or a faction I care nothing for.
Yes I could trade, but that's assuming what I have is of worth to another player and what they have is of worth to me.
Now if they had a visible product which costed a little more, I would have happily bought those packages instead.

The Battleforce and Action Packs would have been snatched up in an instant from me if they were released in Wave 1.
By then it was 2006 and I've got scores of Highlander cheap stuff, Dragon's Fury junk, and only a handful of Swordsworn or RasDom stuff I wanted to play with.
The game lost interest with me by then, the amount of money I put in there could have supplied a battalion of minis from IWM.  ;D

So I guess if they had to redo it, give us a small collection of visible sets with scores of boosters for "reinforcements".
Yeah you might pay a bit extra for the visible purchases, but you get exactly what you see.
Folks that like the random stuff can just buy the blind reinforcements more.

As I type this out I wonder if maybe I shouldn't have been such an early adopter.
I might have not lost interest so quickly if my first purchase was the House Davion Action Pack.  :-\

[tbrminsanity]

And on the blind booster format.  I like it for 1 reason.  It promotes trading.  It encourages two or more players to be social and trade with each other.   O0
The down side is the purchasing on secondary market where all rare pieces get priced on popularity (and turning the game into an investment -different topic) and then every one wants to buy and not trade  >:(

I agree.  Once I got fully into collecting MW:DA it became an addition.  "I bet I'm going to get something cool in the next pack!"
The only thing I would have liked to seen was specialized boosters that were faction specific.  After Age of Destruction, I was exclusively playing House Kurita and Clan Nova Cat.  Most times I opened a booster and said, "ah nothing I want."

[DarkSpade]

Mini" factions.  I think the story behind all the mini factions (All the RofTS IS break away factions) was due to legal and not story, ...SNIP.... WizKids should have pushed forward with getting licensing in place prior to game launch so that all the IS factions would be available day one.

Wizkids didn't have to license anything.  They owned the rights.

[tbrminsanity]

Wizkids didn't have to license anything.  They owned the rights.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that when MW:DA first started in development they didn't have the Battletech license.  The RofTS factions were meant to be standins for the IS factions.

[DarkSpade]

As I understood it, Jordan Weisman owned the rights to battletech when he founded wizkids.  Wizkids licensed the rights to FanPro and when he sold Wizkids to Topps, Topps got(and still holds) the rights.  All that excludes electronic rights of course.

[Captain of C-21]

Yep, Wizkids owned the whole kit and kaboodle for Battletech when FASA folded.  Then they even licensed out the Battletech IP so Fanpro (?)  could keep running the original game as Classic BT.

The splinter factions were there because the Dark Age clix game was originally supposed to focus on just the Republic space, at least at first.  So you had the descendants of settlers in ROTS space forming up splinter factions based on their former nationalities.  Of course, House Liao was planned on coming into the game almost as soon as Dark Age was released (It took Wizkids about a year to plan and design sets, and Liao Incursion came out a year after Dark Age pretty much), so the splinter factions were always meant to be a temporary thing.

All in all, the clix game was very closely designed to follow the story Wizkids was writing, and I always liked that effort.

[cavingjan]

Following further, the desire was to introduce factions that didn't have the "baggage" of all of the cbt history. A small microcosm approach was selected rather than a reboot of the history. This allowed an expansion out into the bigger cbt world.
New players were the target audience and not necessarily cbt existing players.

[tbrminsanity]

Yep, Wizkids owned the whole kit and kaboodle for Battletech when FASA folded.  Then they even licensed out the Battletech IP so Fanpro (?)  could keep running the original game as Classic BT.

The splinter factions were there because the Dark Age clix game was originally supposed to focus on just the Republic space, at least at first.  So you had the descendants of settlers in ROTS space forming up splinter factions based on their former nationalities.  Of course, House Liao was planned on coming into the game almost as soon as Dark Age was released (It took Wizkids about a year to plan and design sets, and Liao Incursion came out a year after Dark Age pretty much), so the splinter factions were always meant to be a temporary thing.

All in all, the clix game was very closely designed to follow the story Wizkids was writing, and I always liked that effort.

In that case, they should have gone down two routes, first make the factions part of their parent organization if possible (Dragon's Fury = House Kurita) and give them colour schemes that differ to give flavour, or had rules for rebel factions (two icons, a rebel icon + the Republic/IS faction icon) to denote their loyalties.  The two clan factions really should have been full clans.  Personally when I first saw Steel Wolves I thought they were Clan Wolf (in Exile) and they just changed their name to Clan Steel Wolf when they moved to the Republic.  I was expecting to see Clan Steel Wolf in the Lyran Commonwealth as well.  Clan Nova Cat was so small to start off with, and the story of the Spirit Cats made me feel they should have been called Clan Nova Cat from day one.
I also wish there was more of a presence for ComStar in the game.  Even if they were just a Merc faction.

[AsburyGrad]

As part of a playing group that still meets monthly - six years after the end of WizKids version 1 - I see very little need to change anything in the rules.  AoD seemed to get almost everything right; it's a shame that these rules were not released in 2002 instead of 2005.

Most of the "fixes" people want to bring up are just personal pet peeves, like "how does a tank fit into a hovercraft?" and "how does a 50-point artillery unit scare my 300-point Mech?"  Trying to fix one thing leads to other problems that need to be fixed, etc.  The game is pretty well balanced, IMHO.

[DarkSpade]

In that case, they should have gone down two routes, first make the factions part of their parent organization if possible (Dragon's Fury = House Kurita) and give them colour schemes that differ to give flavour, or had rules for rebel factions (two icons, a rebel icon + the Republic/IS faction icon) to denote their loyalties.

When the story made sense for it, many did merge into their parent factions.  At the beginning most of the splinter factions saw no support at all from their parent faction.

 

The two clan factions really should have been full clans.  Personally when I first saw Steel Wolves I thought they were Clan Wolf (in Exile) and they just changed their name to Clan Steel Wolf when they moved to the Republic.  I was expecting to see Clan Steel Wolf in the Lyran Commonwealth as well.  Clan Nova Cat was so small to start off with, and the story of the Spirit Cats made me feel they should have been called Clan Nova Cat from day one.

The Steel Wolves weren't originally Clan Wolf.  Kal Raddiack(spelt?) called for all disgruntled former clanners to follow him and then called the group the Steel Wolves.   The Spirit Cats and Clan Nova Cat never gave a crap about each other and now The Spirit Cats are still around and Clan Nova Cat is nothing more than a debris cloud.

I also wish there was more of a presence for ComStar in the game.  Even if they were just a Merc faction.

A large presence of ComStar wouldn't have made sense.  Their military was outlawed by the Republic and after the Jihad, I'm sure the rest of the inner sphere was completely on board with that.  The only time they showed any kind of military presence was when they thought they had a chance to secure someone who could fix the HPG.  That little bit of exposure ultimately led to them being hunted and destroyed after the fortress went up.

[tbrminsanity]

@DarkSpade
You make many good points, and I understand why they did what they did from a fluff point of view.  I just don't like it.  As AsburyGrad's signature like states, MW:DA was run by businessmen with a business agenda, and it feels like the writers were forced to use handwavium to make all the pieces fit properly.  I think I would feel better with the fluff, if the writers made a overall story, and then marketing figured out how to mass produce it instead. 

[AsburyGrad]

I wanted to add an additional comment to my earlier post.  In April 2013, my playing group "released" a new set of stats for Falcon's Prey figures.  When we made this fan-created "set", we also added a few rules updates.  Here are the things we changed:

1. NC/HK grand alliance ended
2. Hell's Horses / Jade Falcon grand alliance begins (for the Mongol Doctrine storyline)
3. Spirit Cats / Sea Fox grand alliance beings (for the Clan Protectorate)
4. Bannson's Raiders units are now recruitable like Wolf Hunters, but do not get Merc Faction Pride for lower cost
5. SalvageMech MODs (the only IndustrialMech in the Falcon's Prey set) may be equipped with a light-class P-card or a light-class gear card, but not both, and suffer a -1 penalty on heat effect rolls if equipped with a gear
6. Merc Pride (F-022) cannot be used for capture attempts
7. P-A28 (Wolf Spiders Major) costs 45 points instead of 30

We also created a "Battle Armor" ability, which certain pilot cards have as their pilot ability.

That's all that we have changed so far (besides new stats for every unit in Falcon's Prey of course).  After our large annual tournament in June, I think we're going to consider more changes to take effect for the year until the next June tournament.

[Captain of C-21]

In that case, they should have gone down two routes, first make the factions part of their parent organization if possible (Dragon's Fury = House Kurita) and give them colour schemes that differ to give flavour, or had rules for rebel factions (two icons, a rebel icon + the Republic/IS faction icon) to denote their loyalties.  The two clan factions really should have been full clans.  Personally when I first saw Steel Wolves I thought they were Clan Wolf (in Exile) and they just changed their name to Clan Steel Wolf when they moved to the Republic.  I was expecting to see Clan Steel Wolf in the Lyran Commonwealth as well.  Clan Nova Cat was so small to start off with, and the story of the Spirit Cats made me feel they should have been called Clan Nova Cat from day one.
I also wish there was more of a presence for ComStar in the game.  Even if they were just a Merc faction.

Splinter factions could be used interchangeably with their parent factions with the use of House Alliances in AoD.  There is no need for mucking the game up with lots of tokens.

And your other complaints are all about things clix did due to what was going on in the storyline.  The Steel Wolves and Spirit Cats technically were full Clans in the sense that they had their own leadership and did their own things, but they were still different from the old Clans and thus the different names.

Comstar got one piece because as of 3135 the only Comstar military out there was a secret division that shouldn't have existed (And got whomped on in 3140).  Comstar otherwise in the Dark Age era has zilch for military.

[SpaceCowboy1701]

Comstar got one piece because as of 3135 the only Comstar military out there was a secret division that shouldn't have existed (And got whomped on in 3140).  Comstar otherwise in the Dark Age era has zilch for military.

My assumption was that Comstar would have shown up as a playable faction (at least briefly) because of the events on Wyatt. I don't know if Wizkids would have used the same endgame for Comstar, but I bet we would have seen them ... perhaps after the FWL was introduced, since they were apparently coming in. Would love to know how far ahead they had planned.