Author Topic: 'Non-Mech Battles  (Read 7830 times)

Kojak

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'Non-Mech Battles
« on: 19 July 2012, 18:39:11 »
How often do you, if ever, play games of BT without any 'Mechs? And for those of you who have played large games using only non-'Mech forces, how do your tactics change, if at all?


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beyond.wudge

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #1 on: 19 July 2012, 18:54:58 »
Haven't yet but I've been definitely considering it.

Nav_Alpha

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #2 on: 19 July 2012, 20:04:14 »
I have run a lot of infantry only (with occasional armored support). Mainly house to house, urban ops. Good fun

It will however take an interesting learning curve if you're coming at it straight from classic battletech.
You've got to remember that - you will take casualties. And casualties very quickly make your unit combat ineffective.

So you learn to use cover (especially buildings) to the best of your abilities.

It also taught me the value of TAG and fire support


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Dread Moores

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #3 on: 19 July 2012, 21:11:26 »
I've done mixed vees and infantry more than a few times. Pure infantry (even with supporting artillery) would be a bit of a mistake, as I don't think BT rules model infantry combat very well. It's why I'm not sure that pre-Mech Age of War products would be very wise.

Scotty

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #4 on: 19 July 2012, 21:37:13 »
I can't honestly say I've never played completely non-'Mech games, but very frequently our games will see one or two 'Mechs on each side in full company versus company games so that the 'Mech is pretty regularly not the focus of the game.  It's interesting to see some players' fixation on 'Mechs to the exclusion of actual threats, sometimes.
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willydstyle

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #5 on: 19 July 2012, 23:01:57 »
I love playing with a mix of mechs, vees, battle armor, and less frequently conventional infantry with my Hells Horses.

beyond.wudge

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #6 on: 19 July 2012, 23:17:37 »
I've done mixed vees and infantry more than a few times. Pure infantry (even with supporting artillery) would be a bit of a mistake, as I don't think BT rules model infantry combat very well. It's why I'm not sure that pre-Mech Age of War products would be very wise.

How come? What doesn't it handle well?

Fireangel

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #7 on: 20 July 2012, 08:29:41 »
Honestly, I play 'mech-less games roughly 50% of the time (not counting aero-only games).

It is very rare for me to play a game without infantry support.

BT is surprisingly good for modeling pure infantry (with APC support) actions, particularly when using squad deployment and "mixed-squad platoons" (take three or four distinct platoons, say rifle x2, MG and SRM; take them apart as squads then recombine them as four "platoons", each composed of four separately deployed squads (rifle x2, MG x1, SRM x1).

My Infantry 101 article has links to my derivative articles; the USMC one shows how to create highly detailed infantry units fully compliant with BT rules, while the USAR Striker Company article illustrates how to create a (real world definition) mechanized (BT-definition) APC/IFV mobile infantry "company".

I have actually fielded civil war era infantry in BT games (reenactors defending against an invasion - it was fun).

NoOnesShowMonkey

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #8 on: 20 July 2012, 09:08:21 »
I play the game with armored robots that kick the crap out of things.  Armor and infantry are fun, but used as OpFor or window dressing.

I'll second Dread's opinion re: poor fidelity.  If you are interested in infantry+armor gaming, there are a host of other options out there that wrap their arms around the nuance of that kind of combat (ie combat without giant fricken robots) with far more rewarding levels of detail than Battletech.

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #9 on: 20 July 2012, 09:10:53 »
I've done a Marsden II vs Merkava Mk. VIII late Age of War tank battle once. Needless to say, compared to Mech battles, there wasn't a whole lot of maneuver. In fact just about everything ended up immobilized or barely able to move, and the game devolved into two rows of pillboxes blasting away at each other.

In hindsight, I think it would have been more interesting with a mix of other vehicle types.

Demos

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #10 on: 20 July 2012, 09:13:56 »
Mixed forces - yes, mostly.

Without mechs - none.
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False Son

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #11 on: 20 July 2012, 10:12:46 »
There are some interesting prospects to a non mech.  Without jumpjets or the ability to move into water hexes, things like bridges or the overland route turn into important killboxes.  I am a huge fan of combined arms myself, but even I don't see the appeal of massed tank on tank action.  The turrets mean that things like flanking manuevers aren't really that dangerous outside of the additional chance to cause movement crits.  This thanks to BT's wonderful shoot through your buddy rules.  It cuts down on the need to actually spread out and bring guns to bear.
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Iron Mongoose

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #12 on: 20 July 2012, 10:41:50 »
I've played a few games where one side had no mechs, but never where both sides lacked mechs.

Though there are a few key difrences, tanks perform superficaly similarly to mechs, so the general tactics for coordanating your infantry with larger and smaller 'big units' don't tend to change overly much.  Hover tanks replace light mechs, heavy and assualt tanks replace heavy mechs, and so on.

As False Son notes, a key difrence is terrain limitations, so your options for manuvering tanks are more limited, and not just water but some types of units are more vulnerable to heavy woods or rough terrain or other things, which limits their tactical options and expands tactical options for their mech using opponents.  But, most of my mechless battles were fought in terrain that favored the mechless side (cities, say) so there was a competitively small disadvantage.
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Col.Hengist

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #13 on: 20 July 2012, 11:01:22 »
I'm planning a series of 12 interconnected games in a weekend and one of them is a tank battle. Company on company including infantry,vtols and aerospace.
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Dread Moores

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #14 on: 20 July 2012, 13:40:35 »
I'll second Dread's opinion re: poor fidelity.  If you are interested in infantry+armor gaming, there are a host of other options out there that wrap their arms around the nuance of that kind of combat (ie combat without giant fricken robots) with far more rewarding levels of detail than Battletech.

I actually think armor + infantry works pretty well, though I'm sure there is room for improvement (and I also use a number of TacOps rules). When you get to very little armor (or no armor) + infantry, that's where I think it begins to break down. For example, Stalwart Support in FM: Mercs. Fantastic unit, very interesting...but I'd never want to attempt using them on tabletop.

False Son

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #15 on: 20 July 2012, 13:57:41 »
I dunno, it would be a challenge.  They are noted for their skill in calling in artillery, but even that doesn't give you true mobility in the way of tanks and even moreso with mechs.  You'd end up playing defense most of the time, which is a bore.

Where I see it going bad is when you have alot of infantry and a good portion of it is the modern long ranged infantry.  Tanks don't stand a chance against that kind of massed ping power.  Best bring in your flamer BA.


All this being said.  I used to run tank and BA stars with clan Hell's Horses all the time.  It works really well against mech centric forces, but I never ran it against another tank-centric force, IS or clan.  I've also toyed with light armor companies with LA, and that's worked out thanks to the "stay away" power or Fortunes and the "you may want to move in and inferno me" power of Glaives and Hunters.  Backed by Rottweilers and Fenrirs, nasty.
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Paint it Pink

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #16 on: 21 July 2012, 05:22:14 »
For me, big games with only mechs are like playing Kursk, a WW2 tank battle that holds the record I think for the number of tanks involved (over 5000). Still had loads of infantry and supporting artillery in the battle, but the tanks were seen as the key is all I'm saying.

Now days I prefer combined arms games, where we might see a lance of mechs and an infantry company with some battle armour and artillery versus a similar formation that is larger due to inferior technology. See here for one of my games AARs:

http://panther6actual.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/mummerset-071811-battle-of-south-boring.html

The above link will take you to the report and all the pictures I took on the day.
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Matti

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #17 on: 21 July 2012, 10:17:59 »
I'll second Dread's opinion re: poor fidelity.  If you are interested in infantry+armor gaming, there are a host of other options out there that wrap their arms around the nuance of that kind of combat (ie combat without giant fricken robots) with far more rewarding levels of detail than Battletech.
I third that. If I want play exclusively with conventional ground forces, I play SPWAW, WinSPMBT, Jagged Alliance, or other computer wargame along those lines... For table I have Warhammer 40,000
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Railan Sradac

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #18 on: 22 July 2012, 02:41:40 »
I've been playing vehicle-only with my Hell's Horses whenever my brother and I can squeeze a game in. Works well.

Martius

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #19 on: 22 July 2012, 03:01:28 »
Combined arms: almost always.

Infantry only Battles: Done and some planned.

Tank Battles with infantry support: Done and more planned.



Fat Guy

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #20 on: 23 July 2012, 17:55:22 »
Proto only battles are always fun.  O0
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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #21 on: 23 July 2012, 22:47:18 »
How often do you, if ever, play games of BT without any 'Mechs? And for those of you who have played large games using only non-'Mech forces, how do your tactics change, if at all? 

In the last year there have been maybe 2-3 games where I didn't field mechs.
Just combinations of firesupport tanks & vtol spotters for large #'s of Arrow & SG-LRM rounds.

Doesn't happen often but every once in a while I do it.

It has weaknesses for sure.

1.  Tanks die a lot faster via mobility crits & much much smaller amounts of IS.
2.  Limited site by only having Hieght 1 units intead of Height 2.

But in turn the smaller BV allows me to fit in an Extra Heavy Tank where I would normally have something light or nothing at all if it was a mech force.
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Kovax

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #22 on: 25 July 2012, 08:19:09 »
I've run a couple of MegaMek/MekHQ campaigns where I use a lance of 'Mechs and two lances of vehicles.  Each combat used either one or two lances, chosen at random, so I frequently ended up with either vehicle only, or combined arms, battles.

I find it easy to immobilize vehicles, but finishing them off can be costly.  Ideally, for taking out such "impromptu turrets", I like to use a mix of direct-fire and LRM units, so I can either use spotted indirect fire against them without taking return fire, or else concentrate aimed shots at weaker locations, depending on the target.  In a mercenary campaign, destroying the turret gives you a salvagable and repairable hull, and punching through the side or rear armor of a similar second unit gives you a salvagable turret to fix the first.

Infantry, on the other hand, really doesn't work all that well by itself in BT.  In an urban scenario, both sides will want to use buildings for cover, and you don't shoot at the troops, you can only shoot at the building they're in, with its immobile target modifier.  In essence, you can't miss, and neither can they, and it all boils down to the CF of your building versus the CF of the opponent's, and knowing when to bail out and find another building before the one you're in collapses.  Not a lot of tactics behind it, and certainly not very realistic.  In the open, either all of your weapons hit, or they all miss, and the first one to get a lucky die roll has a massive advantage for the rest of the combat.  Again, not so much tactics as the luck of the dice, and again very unrealistic.

Fireangel

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #23 on: 25 July 2012, 10:29:08 »
Infantry, on the other hand, really doesn't work all that well by itself in BT.  In an urban scenario, both sides will want to use buildings for cover, and you don't shoot at the troops, you can only shoot at the building they're in, with its immobile target modifier.  In essence, you can't miss, and neither can they, and it all boils down to the CF of your building versus the CF of the opponent's, and knowing when to bail out and find another building before the one you're in collapses.  Not a lot of tactics behind it, and certainly not very realistic.  In the open, either all of your weapons hit, or they all miss, and the first one to get a lucky die roll has a massive advantage for the rest of the combat.  Again, not so much tactics as the luck of the dice, and again very unrealistic.

Infantry v. infantry urban combat calls for grabbing the best buildings for defense, but the way to deal with that is putting your own infantry in the building and flushing the enemy out.

That's why urban combat is described as "house-to-house and door-to-door". It's also why squad deployment is pretty much mandatory; it's easy to pin down a single-unit platoon, but much harder to pin down a platoon split into four independently-maneuvering squads.

Nav_Alpha

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #24 on: 25 July 2012, 22:36:25 »
Infantry, on the other hand, really doesn't work all that well by itself in BT.  In an urban scenario, both sides will want to use buildings for cover, and you don't shoot at the troops, you can only shoot at the building they're in, with its immobile target modifier.  In essence, you can't miss, and neither can they, and it all boils down to the CF of your building versus the CF of the opponent's, and knowing when to bail out and find another building before the one you're in collapses.  Not a lot of tactics behind it, and certainly not very realistic.  In the open, either all of your weapons hit, or they all miss, and the first one to get a lucky die roll has a massive advantage for the rest of the combat.  Again, not so much tactics as the luck of the dice, and again very unrealistic.

I've had some really messy MegaMek scenarios recently involving urban ops. Rooting infantry out of buildings means the buildings are going to get wrecked.
I was playing a game (my augmented lance of heavy 'mechs backed by a pair of Regulators and a couple of squads worth of BA riding in VTOLs versus a demi-company of light medium mechs, some assorted vehicles and an infantry company) where I had to dig the enemy out of a series of skyscrapers and large buildings.

We ended up shooting the hell out of a couple buildings the infantry was dug into using direct dire and arty. One collapsed completely and the other was totally gutted - sadly the surviving two platoons of foot sloggers just fell back across the road into the next set of buildings and I had to do the whole thing AGAIN.
We won - but it was bloody with at least six buildings ruined and I eventually had to send my BA into the buildings which degenerated into a series of running gun battles through a shopping mall.
I ended up losing a Thunder to a mix of inferno SRMs and fire from opposing mechs and both vehicles.

The worst part was dropping my Victor onto a building which I thought would support its weight... nope, punched straight through and destroyed the entire hex worth of building as well and shattering my legs.
The arty strike took care of the rest of the building - as well as further ripping up my face down, immobile Victor.


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Jacob01

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #25 on: 26 July 2012, 10:59:27 »
I always enjoyed the challenge of  running tanks. Terrain, mechs... it's tough out there. Send out the hovers as scouts and roll in the heavies. Long Toms help too.

Sartris

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #26 on: 26 July 2012, 11:32:31 »
The one time I came in with an all tank force, we rolled random maps.  River delta. Large lake #2  :-\

I often field vehicles and battle armor, but very rarely without mechs

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A. Lurker

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #27 on: 26 July 2012, 12:51:23 »
The one time I came in with an all tank force, we rolled random maps.  River delta. Large lake #2  :-\

Yeah, that's why I basically never leave the map selection in MegaMek simply on the "Surprise" default anymore. Going in blind only to get <censored> over by a random map selection mechanic is neither fun nor usually particularly "realistic".

False Son

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #28 on: 30 July 2012, 14:59:25 »
I'd even say that all tanks vs mechs is a bit entertaining.  Tanks vs tanks... meh.  However, if there are enough woods or elevation changes to dictate the movement of the tank formations it puts a very special emphasis on placing predetermined artillery spots in just the right places.  Because tanks can double stack, when that Long Tom hits, it hits alot.
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Blackhorse 6

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Re: 'Non-Mech Battles
« Reply #29 on: 31 July 2012, 21:22:20 »
I always enjoyed the challenge of  running tanks. Terrain, mechs... it's tough out there. Send out the hovers as scouts and roll in the heavies. Long Toms help too.

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