Author Topic: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?  (Read 7664 times)

abou

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Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« on: 17 March 2020, 13:25:26 »
I haven't played using a lot of infantry, but it is something I've been wanting to utilize more just to help enrich the experience. I decided to review the rules and went to my copy of TW. I... I actually groaned when I read them. I'm not one to complain about cluster hits tables and dice rolls, but this did make me do a double-take. So I just wanted to get a feeler out there for the rules sets people tend to use and what draws them to it?

After Total Warfare (ATW)?
Before Total Warfare (BTW): eg. the BattleTech Master Rules or earlier Compendiums?
BTW incorporating the optional rules from Maximum Tech?

Talen5000

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #1 on: 17 March 2020, 13:43:33 »
I haven't played using a lot of infantry, but it is something I've been wanting to utilize more just to help enrich the experience. I decided to review the rules and went to my copy of TW. I... I actually groaned when I read them. I'm not one to complain about cluster hits tables and dice rolls, but this did make me do a double-take. So I just wanted to get a feeler out there for the rules sets people tend to use and what draws them to it?

After Total Warfare (ATW)?
Before Total Warfare (BTW): eg. the BattleTech Master Rules or earlier Compendiums?
BTW incorporating the optional rules from Maximum Tech?

House

Infantry deploy in squads of 5-7, each getting 3-5 armour depending on tech and faction...the armour represents the difficulty of targeting them and the inefficiency of the weapon rather than armour.
Infantry get to fire either anti Mech or Anti Infantry
Anti Infantry does 1D6 damage to infantry and zero damage to everything else.
AntiMech fires 1 man portable LRM or SRM missile, with an ammo count of 4.
There are no motorised or mechanised units - you want an APC or IFV, you get the record sheet out. Same with field guns...you use the stats for Gun Trailers.
Jump infantry cannot carry heavy weaponry.
Rifles, lasers and MGs are AntiInfantry units. And you get one missile based anti Mech unit along side three AI units.


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Daryk

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #2 on: 17 March 2020, 14:26:46 »
ATW for me... specifically with TacOps for squad deployment in all its glory!

Colt Ward

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #3 on: 17 March 2020, 14:28:35 »
Eh, Field Guns are more like-



Which while they can be towed by light vehicles (jeeps, humvees, trucks) or even horses if the tow/harness is right.

Trailers are actually immobile armored boxes like . . .



They are sort of like the Patriot trailers, they get towed by a heavy truck or armored vehicle and are designed to be left with a crew.  Interestingly enough, I have never paid much attention to the Patriot than the raised launchers . . . and I now realize that was the model used for the MWDA A4 launcher trailer.
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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #4 on: 17 March 2020, 14:33:17 »
TW/TO all the way, no exceptions. It's hardly complex at all(the complexity is handled for you by the tables on the record sheet), and infinitely superior to anything that came before when it comes to actually making infantry relevant to the game.
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Sartris

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #5 on: 17 March 2020, 14:54:40 »
TW with TO options (field guns, digging in, hitting the deck, squad deployment, using non-infantry units as cover)


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Empyrus

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #6 on: 17 March 2020, 15:15:22 »
using non-infantry units as cover)
I managed to read that as "using infantry as cover".

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #7 on: 17 March 2020, 15:43:51 »
X-ray platoon! You have been assigned as cover for Yankee platoon! Get in position!

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Calimehter

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #8 on: 17 March 2020, 17:34:55 »
X-ray platoon! You have been assigned as cover for Yankee platoon! Get in position!

Operation Human Shield has commenced!

---------------------------

Our group is coming back after a long hiatus, and we are using BMR base rules and platoon stats . . . modified by Max Tech, house rules, and even a bit of TW thrown in.  Not sure if we will settle on that hodgepodge when all is said and done, but its working for us.

BMR infantry rules needed an overhaul, but we feel that TW swung the pendulum too far the other way.  Infantry are great under TW, but some Mech designs became nearly helpless against infantry, which is counter to their flavor text and historical accounts (and is oddly random since its an artifact of those Mechs being designed for prior rulessets).

Retry

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #9 on: 17 March 2020, 18:38:25 »
TW rules + TO options.  Lots of neat tricks available to infantry, and you have to actually plan at least a bit for them instead of smiting entire platoons with your token fire support vehicle, nice for combined arms.

Only disadvantage is that the infantry by themselves are pretty boring.  You can run just 'Mechs on the board and it's fun, and you can run just Vees on the board and it's still pretty fun, but just infantry (both conventional and BA) is a bit of a bore.  Simplifying all the primary and secondary weapons into 1 range bracket attack and range bracket is not satisfying, and ironically not that simple when playing in person.  The quirks of the conventional infantry's construction and combat system don't make for very interesting custom infantry designs, which is important for many of the people I play with (lots of "world builders" in our group).

I had an idea for a rework of that, in which case I'd answer that as the rules I use, but I live a long way away from the rest of the group, so the BT games we play are almost always via Megamek, so no way to actually use them or test them.  So in practice, I go with post-TW infantry.

abou

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #10 on: 18 March 2020, 09:16:58 »
Since the ATW rules seem to be the way to go, question: where do I get the record sheets?

I thought I had a copy TechManual, but I don't. Supposedly the sheets are available online, but that was still when the website was Classic BattleTech. I cannot currently find the record sheets on the bg.battletech site or in the Catalyst Store. I do have TacOps, but would like to see the TW version to compare.

Weirdo

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #11 on: 18 March 2020, 09:40:22 »
Unfortunately at this point, I think it's only available in Tech Manual. Maybe if you post in Ask the Developers, they'll put the sheets back up on the site.
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abou

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #12 on: 18 March 2020, 09:55:50 »
I'm glad I'm just not missing the obvious then. I'll ask.

Weirdo

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #13 on: 18 March 2020, 11:17:37 »
Um.. I suggested Ask the Developers, not the Writers. Writers have no authority to make this happen unless they are also Developers.
My wife writes books
"Thanks to Megamek, I can finally play BattleTech the way it was meant to be played--pantsless!"   -Neko Bijin
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abou

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #14 on: 18 March 2020, 11:23:22 »
That's my bad. Don't know if you have the permission to fix that as a mod or if that requires higher power like a yellow or white BLR.

Empyrus

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #15 on: 18 March 2020, 12:49:52 »
I'll note that "Ask the..." sub-forum descriptions are weird. Developers' description seems to be about BT universe, while writers' seems to be about products in general.

massey

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #16 on: 18 March 2020, 13:15:39 »
I prefer the BMR rules.  Unfortunately the only way I get to play is with MegaMek, and that program uses the TW rules.

abou

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #17 on: 18 March 2020, 14:18:29 »
Thank you, Weirdo. I wasn't sure if the mods had permissions on that section of the forum. Fingers crossed for a quick answer.

Mohammed As`Zaman Bey

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #18 on: 18 March 2020, 18:25:19 »
My group has always had an affinity for BattleTroops (which was a variant of Shadowrun DMZ) and used the Ral Partha infantry sets and mech models to play out scenarios.

We needed to tweak the BattleTroops rules and came up with a variant we called BT3K.




Vehicles:
« Last Edit: 18 March 2020, 21:52:38 by Mohammed As`Zaman Bey »

Sartris

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #19 on: 18 March 2020, 18:47:53 »
I’ve never gotten the chance to play battletroops more than messing around by myself but it seems promising

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abou

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #20 on: 18 March 2020, 19:22:57 »
Mohammed, you are too hardcore for me. I do have a copy of BattleTroops though. I might even have ClanTroops somewhere.

Daryk

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #21 on: 18 March 2020, 19:47:39 »
Mohammed, your pictures are both blurred and watermarked into unreadability...  :-\

Mohammed As`Zaman Bey

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #22 on: 18 March 2020, 20:15:48 »
Mohammed, your pictures are both blurred and watermarked into unreadability...  :-\
Yeah...gonna have to use another site that isn't trying to squeeze me for a subscription...

Mohammed As`Zaman Bey

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #23 on: 18 March 2020, 22:09:14 »
Mohammed, you are too hardcore for me. I do have a copy of BattleTroops though. I might even have ClanTroops somewhere.
  AToW shows its derivation from Battletroops, using the Incidental/Simple/Complex Actions in place of the Movement Point/Action Point system. Our in-house BT3K variant combined the two and added modifications for troop quality (Less actions for Green Troops, more Actions for Elites). In addition, we designed simple sheets for squads and platoons to keep track of bullets and grenades, health, etc. What helped a lot was interviewing active duty infantry and armor soldiers to help develop the feel of a gritty infantry-level combat simulator.
« Last Edit: 21 March 2020, 15:48:01 by Mohammed As`Zaman Bey »

truetanker

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #24 on: 19 March 2020, 02:11:41 »
Gonna throw in the monkey at the wrench...

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Jim1701

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #25 on: 19 March 2020, 17:47:08 »
Since the ATW rules seem to be the way to go, question: where do I get the record sheets?

I thought I had a copy TechManual, but I don't. Supposedly the sheets are available online, but that was still when the website was Classic BattleTech. I cannot currently find the record sheets on the bg.battletech site or in the Catalyst Store. I do have TacOps, but would like to see the TW version to compare.

You can get blank record sheets from the download section on the Battletech website here.  Infantry platoons and BA squads are included.  Just have to fill them out using the stats in TW. 

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #26 on: 19 March 2020, 17:51:23 »
Currently not there. The only place to get them currently is the back of techmanual

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abou

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #27 on: 19 March 2020, 18:35:37 »
Oh, they are! Ray had answered my query and looks as though they just went up.

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #28 on: 19 March 2020, 18:39:56 »
Word

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Re: Infantry rules: After TW or Before TW?
« Reply #29 on: 21 March 2020, 14:35:21 »
There are things I like from both the old and the new. I prefer the simplicity of the old, and would rather have that with the durability of the new. The new stuff just tried to integrate the rules from A Time of War and it made only a handful of weapons worth using. It's like, in order to create good infantry platoons, you HAVE to power game. So you get weird cases like the Bearhunter being awesome in AToW, but a waste of time in TW.

Then the abstraction of Alpha Strike on top of that... hoooooo boy.
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