Battletech: What rules would you have written differently?

[Karasu]

So, I've been playing this game for a fair few years now, and over time I've had my fair share of house rules and alternative equipment.  Many of them became obsolete as rules are changed, optional rules become more codified and additional rules are written.  However, there are a number that I still harbour a fondness for.  A couple of them are vaguely feasible, others would require re-designing hundreds of mechs.

Engine Hits / Heat Sinks
I'm not sure if anyone else has this feeling, but it has always really bugged me that a 60-rated engine with 2 single heat sinks in it and a 400-rated engine with 16 double heat sinks in it both produce the same amount of waste heat when damaged.  If I had my way, engine critical hits would effectively destroy half of the heat sinks 'hidden' in the engine.

LB-X Autocannons
I wanted something that makes LB autocannons feel different from LRMs, but not take forever.  The solution was to treat it a bit like an area effect.  Roll location once only.  That location and all locations touching it on the damage transfer diagram (except Head) are hit.  They take damage equal to 1/5 of the AC class.  LB-2s become pointless.

Ultra Autocannons
Similarly for UACs.  The solution for this one is not to roll on the cluster chart, but just roll on location twice sequentially.  If the second hit is somewhere not adjacent to the first hit, it misses.

And a couple of construction rules

Ferro-fibrous armour
Why couldn't it have been a nice straightforward 18 points per ton for basic Ferro-fibrous?  Then Clan and Heavy FF are 20, and Light FF is 17.  So much easier to calculate.
In my head, I can't understand why making more efficient armour means you can carry less of it by mass ratio.  In my alternate reality battletech, the armour limit is by mass, not points.

Alternative construction materials
Here's an interesting excercise.  What if all those things that take up critical locations without being discrete equipment had fixed distribution of slots, like Project Blue Shield?  Endo-Steel always uses 3 slots in each Arm and Side torso and 1 slot in each leg.  TSM is one in each side torso and limb. Etc.  It creates more items that are mutually exclusive, thus requiring compromises and interesting decisions at the design stage.

[Daemion]

I know I have a few things that I've done differently that we still employ often in some of my groups:

Demolition Attempts
Remember in the BMR how you simply had to roll less than or equal to the weapon's strength to see if it cleared a hex of woods by one level? Pretty elegant and didn't need a lot of record keeping. Well, I applied the same to buildings, while allowing for weight of occupants to cause early collapse.


Infantry
Some of the things about infantry in either the BMR or Total Warfare, or whichever rule set you use, has always been a little too abstract for my taste. Here are a couple of things I've contemplated, though not necessarily implemented:

Static Damage Dealt to Conventional Troops
I've always been of the opinion that all damage dealt to conventional infantry should be random. All of it.


Infantry Attacks and Modifying the Cluster Table
I never really understood the need for a to-hit roll regarding conventional infantry and making attacks, especially against each other. Something I've been playing with lately (and applying to a BattleTech/40k interface) is simply having them roll straight on the appropriate cluster chart for the squad size, and modify the result via application of to-hit mods as negative modifiers, like how the new AMS works on determining number of missiles striking a target.


Mechanized Infantry
I haven't really finalized anything on this, but it has always been in my head that the intrinsic vehicles for Mechanized Infantry should have a hit-point line and be grouped like a Battle Armor squad. They should be subject to motive hits and destruction like normal vehicles and be a target as well as the infantry squad each carries. If they're 'open-topped' then some of that damage should be able to splash into the troop compartment. Or an attacker should be able to shoot either the vehicle or the troops on its back.

[garhkal]

Quad mech's Piloting bonus cause of 4 legs, extends to things such as Kicks and charges as well. 

I like that engine issue, but i also felt that rather than each engine hit just ramps up your heat scale, you could have a lowering of power output.  So energy weapons would do less damage/range, and movement gets hampered.

[monbvol]

I have thought about instead of being a percentile increase FF should be just a point boost.  I never finalized the progression but I wouldn't mind testing out yours to see if it works well enough.

I rather like the idea of MASC, ES, FF, and other specialty items that consume criticals have to be placed in specific manners.

Some I've thought about(to avoid arguments I won't go into specifics on some):

Engines have rating/25 round down critical slots for Heat Sinks and do not come with free heat sinks.  Main reason I haven't committed to it yet is I think it makes Inner Sphere Double Heat Sinks a little too questionable of an upgrade but I do like that it makes Compact Heat Sinks  much more useful and makes the ammunition based weapons a bit more attractive due to lower heat.  Still needs tweaking overall.

Change the AC stats.  Even with the above modification they still need to go on a diet and trim down some.  I have tested out some changes that I'm mostly happy with but I still debate that I might have to go a bit farther in my revisions.

Gauss Rifles produce more heat and need power amplifiers like energy weapons.  To help compensate Heavy Gauss Rifle now does consistent damage but has a slight range drop off and Light Gauss Rifle has a slightly increased range.

Combat Vehicles don't get a free pass on any heat generated.  In other words everything needs heat sinks.  Combat vehicles would also no longer receive a suspension factor.  To compensate shielding would no longer be required and ICE would weight the same as light fusion with fuel cell weighting the same as XLs.  Rotors would also no longer receive reduced damage but only actually take damage on an additional roll of 2d6 of 8+.

I have actually started thinking about having the lower arm and hand actuator take up specific locations on the critical chart and can only be moved for dedicated physical combat weapons.  Weapons would no longer be splitable across locations and likewise cannot be split through lower arm and hand actuators.

Dedicated physical combat weapons are now reduced to one type as far as rules are concerned but may take any appearance.    So a weapon may appear as a hammer or sword but for abstraction's sake no matter the appearance they all follow the same rules.  Dedicated physical combat weapons now do 3 points of damage per ton invested in them and occupy one critical slot per ton.  Weapons that weight less than 5% of the mech's weight round up receive a -1 to hit bonus while weapons weighting more than 5% of the mechs mass round up but no more than 10% receive no modifier.  Any weapon massing more than 10% of the mech's weight receives a +1 to hit modifier for every 5% above or fraction there of.  If a dedicated physical combat weapon receives a +1 to hit modifier and/or is located in the leg a piloting skill roll with the same modifiers applied to the target number to avoid falling.

Punching and kicking without a dedicated physical combat weapon, or instead of one if one is mounted but no longer functional or for some reason the pilot/player wishes to make use of the limb itself instead of using the weapon applies a +2 to hit modifier and like above a missed kick results in a +2 modifier to the pilot skill roll target number in addition to any other modifiers due to damaged leg actuators or damaged gyro.

Critical hits that roll on an empty slots or locations that have already been critically hit(except for shoulder and hip actuators) do nothing further.  In the case of shoulder or hip actuators roll 2d6 again, limb becomes severed on an 8+.  Critical hits that result in a specialty armor or internal structure critical location cause another 1 point of damage for every 5 points, or fraction there of, of the attack that generated the critical.  This damage is applied to the appropriate structure in question(for example ferro fibrous would apply the damage to armor in the location to the opposite facing if an opposite facing exists, if no armor remains to the opposite facing or no armor is left no further damage is to be applied).  In the case of damage applied to internal structure no further critical hits are generated.  This damage never transfers to the next location.  Only Hardened Armor and Ferro Lamelor armor provide their benefits to this damage if such armors are mounted on the location in question.

Damage transfer now requires a roll on 2d6.  12, damage transfers normally. 8-11 only 1 point for every 5 or fraction there of transfers.  All other results have the damage fail to transfer.

Ammunition criticals or weapons that explode when critically struck roll 2d6 and only explode on 8+ and carry no further risk of exploding.

CASE also allows for ammo dumping with no possibility of enemy fire triggering the ammunition.

[worktroll]

I find the infantry rules not high-level enough.

- Standard infantry weapons should not be able to damage combat armour. Low BARs, maybe, but you can empty an AK-47 against an Abrams all day and really not disable it. One-shot weapons should be provided, representing your LAWs/RPGs/etc.

- Squad-level light weapons allowed as exceptions to the above - one per squad - maximum 1 ton, representing HMGs/TOWs/that sort of thing. A "PBI mortar" providing something not unlike the BA artillery used by Centaur suits might be an extension.

- Heavier field weapons are their own unit, with its own crew, tow & ammo carriers abstracted under standard Mechanised rules. You can still stack a field gun unit in a hex with one infantry platoon, if you choose.

- Motorised infantry handled more like BA squads. So a Hoverbike unit might be 4-6 hoverbikes with random damage allocation, and hits per unit just like BA. Limits on size - the Savannah Master and Gabriel sit at the point where you'd have to decide whether to treat them as a squad or as single vehicles.

[A. Lurker]

I'm a tad leery of going too far on house rules -- before you know it, you're halfway to reinventing the whole game from the ground up. But a couple of things I might consider are

(a) nerfing kicks a bit because, let's face it, when they're so good that you earnestly have to ask yourself "should I actually use this here physical weapon I've invested tonnage and stuff in, or am I better off just plain kicking for free at better chances to hit for more damage and a shot at forcing a PSR after all?" something's wrong, and

(b) having infantry with primary and secondary weapons actually make two attacks (one for each) rather than try to mash them together into some weirdly-defined whole the way the official rules go at the moment.

Oh, and while we're at it, optionally

(c): get rid of "neurofeedback". Like, completely. There's no practical need for it. At best, have it be the optional rule and its absence the default (somewhat like Stackpoling), not vice versa.

[Daemion]

More infantry modifications - a way to slow them down a touch, or a whole new quick-and-easy game at a different level.

As it stands 'Standard' infantry perform in ways that make even our best trained people of today look inept. (Sorry, mil-folk.)

[Karasu]

I have thought about instead of being a percentile increase FF should be just a point boost.  I never finalized the progression but I wouldn't mind testing out yours to see if it works well enough.

The official rules are original ferro-fibrous gives +12% armour points.  That ends up being +1.92 per ton, or 17.92 points.  Clan/Heavy and Light are 24% and 6% respectively, or 3.84 and 0.86 points.  If the original had just been 12.5%, then everything would have been round numbers from then on.   ???

[monbvol]

*nod*

It is one of those things I never really understood and can only really explain as they made mechs with FF before they actually came up with construction rules for it and when trying to retrofit it they came up with that really weird number.  Which I think is why we have so many construction rules level issues that translate over to the table top rules in so many unpleasant/non-sensible ways.

[Scotty]

I find the infantry rules not high-level enough.

- Standard infantry weapons should not be able to damage combat armour. Low BARs, maybe, but you can empty an AK-47 against an Abrams all day and really not disable it. One-shot weapons should be provided, representing your LAWs/RPGs/etc.

- Squad-level light weapons allowed as exceptions to the above - one per squad - maximum 1 ton, representing HMGs/TOWs/that sort of thing. A "PBI mortar" providing something not unlike the BA artillery used by Centaur suits might be an extension.

- Heavier field weapons are their own unit, with its own crew, tow & ammo carriers abstracted under standard Mechanised rules. You can still stack a field gun unit in a hex with one infantry platoon, if you choose.

- Motorised infantry handled more like BA squads. So a Hoverbike unit might be 4-6 hoverbikes with random damage allocation, and hits per unit just like BA. Limits on size - the Savannah Master and Gabriel sit at the point where you'd have to decide whether to treat them as a squad or as single vehicles.

Exactly this (except I'd still let infantry do damage to 'Mechs without heavy weapons).  I'd go so far as to separate infantry attacks into separate weapon attacks - and also consolidate the monstrous infantry weapons table into something cleaner and slightly less ridiculously varied for such little actual variation.  Infantry weapons are the only place in the entire BattleTech ruleset where the brand name matters.  I don't think that should be the case for TW scale games.  "Assault Rifle" "Submachine Gun" "Sniper Rifle".  Hell, even the full spectrum down to "Machine Pistol" "Battle Rifle" "Scout Rifle".  The last thing I'd do is remove the silly decimals from infantry weapon damage, and instead express the damage figures as 'number of weapons required to do one damage'.  An Assault Rifle might need four or five guys to hit that mark, but you'd be able to tell that, without having to multiply and average and all that crap in order to find how much damage your platoon does.

[Khymerion]

I guess I would have written field gun and infantry rules a bit different.

Motorized and Mechanized infantry would most likely weigh more for transport costs...  if we can not replicate the vehicle in rules that is able to actually transport a motorized or mechanized infantry unit, they don't get a free ride.

Mostly this comes from the fact that if I want to salvage a downed Vedette or wrecked Dragon, I need to haul forward a cargo vehicle of sufficient cargo capacity (either internal or external) to be able to carry the immobilized vehicle.   Yet if I am using mechanized infantry, I am pretty much free to... for 5 tons... pack 25 men AND a sufficiently powerful enough vehicle that can carry all of them in fighting condition, enough heavy weapons to give them a respectable damage score, AND pull several field guns with little to no noticeable slow down.   8 tons if I want to ship them on an interstellar flight.   That...  is just wrong.

I do not mind having a vehicle being rolled into and made invisible for purposes of game rules but I would rewrite it to be a good deal heavier for purposes of transport.   If a mechanized infantry unit can pull 24+ tons of field guns, it needs to have a vehicle (or vehicles) that can pull that much tonnage at a respectable speed and thus have a cargo weight sufficiently high enough to actually justify it.   Yes, the field guns can be stored in cargo on a long trip but the infantry and their ride need to be sufficiently accounted for.

That and if I am able to provide a sufficiently powerful enough prime mover, like an APC, the rules should allow for the attachment of field guns to conventional infantry.   Yes, it means an extra layer of paperwork and god knows we can't have that (*cough* BS *cough*).   Yes, it means allowing the creation of just really complex mechanized/motorized infantry (Ooops, seems I actually took the APC into account) because I am actually tracking the prime mover AND the gun crews... but having the option there should not be completely excluded for simplicity sake.

So yes, I would seriously rework non-foot infantry transport weights to make them better conform to what they are capable of and are not riding around in magic super light cardboard boxes that are infinitely more efficient than any other vehicle in existence.

[skiltao]

I don't think there's a rule I haven't considered rewriting. Here's one I'm particularly fond of:

Centerline Weapons
When applicable (like the Marauder's AC/5 or the Goliath's PPC), results of "nearest torso (critical hit)" on the Hit Location Table strike the nearest armor location as normal but any resulting critical hits are redirected to the centerline weapon.

(If I wanted centerline weapons and floating TACs... maybe TAC happens if the weapon's To-Hit roll is the same as its location roll? I dunno. Not perfect, obviously.)

Ultra Autocannons
Similarly for UACs.  The solution for this one is not to roll on the cluster chart, but just roll on location twice sequentially.  If the second hit is somewhere not adjacent to the first hit, it misses.

This is really clever.

[idea weenie]

LRMs/LB-X/other cluster weapons - For every full 2 pts that you beat the target number by, you get a +1 on the Cluster table. (So if the to-hit was 7, and you rolled a 9 or a 10, you get a +1)

Agree on the armor being fixed points per ton.

Station-keeping is .01 G, not .1G.

Space Stations can transit from a Jump point to/from a planet (and around the inner system), but this process takes 10* as long as a conventional 1G transit.  Due to the slower transit times, this can cause different travel times, as the .01G acceleration would be slow enough to have the destination body to move appreciable.

Conventional fighters get a max of 10% their mass in armor (so there is a reason for equipping them with better armor).

Infantry SRMs have less range than Battlearmor SRMs, which have less range than Protomech SRMs, which have less range than Battlemech SRMs.

Pulse lasers don't get a bonus to-hit, they just do extra damage.

Infantry platoons get a fixed number of shots for their anti-Mech weapons.  An infantryman can be assigned to either anti-infantry fire, anti-armor Support weapon, or Field gun support.  If assigned to regular anti-infantry, they can take any of the one-person infantry weapons.  If assigned to Support weapon, they can only carry a pistol as their anti-infantry weapon, the rest of their combat gear is devoted to carrying the support weapon and its ammo (Support weapons can be single person, or multiple person).  If an infantryman is assigned to Field Gun support, they can only carry a pistol, and the rest of their gear should be body armor, protective equipment, and maintenance items for a Field gun.

Infantry platoons use the Support weapon range for anti-armor only.  Infantry platoons use anti-infantry weapon ranges for anti-infantry duty only (so no taking a very long range AI weapon, and applying that to a high damage Support weapon, or vice versa).

Infantry platoons in combat should be highly abstracted.  Just mark down how many anti-armor shots they have, and after those shots are expended they can only use their antiinfantry damage.

In Aerotech combat, there would be three categories: Boss, mains, and minions.  If there is a Warship on the field, it is the Boss (for whichever side), the Dropships are the main combatants, and the ASF would be the minions.  In any Aerotech game, minions would be given a fixed rating at the start of the game, and no change to those stats would be done (except for damage and usage of anti-Capital shots).  If the largest unit is a Dropship, the Dropship is the Boss level, the ASF are the mains, and missiles would be considered minions.  (In other words, if the main combatant is the ~20kton Dropships vs a 300 kton Warship, the 80-ton ASF aren't that big of a deal)

Flamers ignore terrain modifiers.

Battle cannons, where the lightest is a BC/2 with a range of up to 9 hexes, while the BC/20 is a 30-hex range weapon only mounted on the heaviest of mechs.

LRMs are reconfigurable (1 control system, and up to 4 launchers, each with up to 5 missiles).  A critical hit takes out the launcher, but the other critical slots are unharmed (unless they take critical hits too).  So an LRM-15 is 2 critical slots, the first being the control system and a 5-shot missile launcher, and the second being a pair of 5-shot launchers.  If the second critical slot gets hit the whole system goes down, but the control system and the first 5-launcher are still intact and can be reset between battles (aka turned into an LRM-5).  (This rule would only be used between battles and during construction, not during a tactical battle)

Gauss would do more heat per shot, reflecting the higher power demand.  Similarly the ammo would be described as a metal dart rather than a sphere.

(Various ideas for Aerospace construction rules)

[PurpleDragon]

weapons ranges:

  reverse the weapons ranges of the ACs to more accurately reflect "larger caliber" weapons.  For gameplay, the weapon tonnages/crit slots/heat generated/ammo reloads(or rather the limited number of per ton) is the balancer.  So the AC 2 would have a long range of 9 and the 20 would have a long range of 24. 

Soft target vs hardened:

   Have units classed as either a Soft target or a hardened target.  Then allow weapons to damage them at greater ranges if they are a soft target.  A soft target may then allow an attack against it with something like a range times so many or plus so many hexes.  Maybe make the range multiplier more for each range bracket?  or make the addition amount go up for each range bracket.  Something like +5 hexes at short range/ +10 at medium range/ +20 at long...  Apply this only for ballistic and laser weapons as the missiles would still run out of fuel at their set ranges.  Make infantry harder to hit, but easier to kill at longer ranges for example.  As I understand it, the 'Mech mounted MG is supposed to be .50 cal or bigger.  When I was in Basic at Fort Benning, they told us they were not allowed to fire the .50 on base because they were afraid a round might stray off into town (3 miles plus away) and kill someone. 

Also, some vehicles (cars and such) should be listed as soft targets.  Any unit that has 1 point of armor or at most 2 in every location should be listed as a soft target.  Yes, I'm also looking at the LCT-1M (the most armor it has in one location is 3 points on the head). 

[Daemion]

Soft target vs hardened:

   Have units classed as either a Soft target or a hardened target.  Then allow weapons to damage them at greater ranges if they are a soft target.  A soft target may then allow an attack against it with something like a range times so many or plus so many hexes.  Maybe make the range multiplier more for each range bracket?  or make the addition amount go up for each range bracket.  Something like +5 hexes at short range/ +10 at medium range/ +20 at long...  Apply this only for ballistic and laser weapons as the missiles would still run out of fuel at their set ranges.  Make infantry harder to hit, but easier to kill at longer ranges for example.  As I understand it, the 'Mech mounted MG is supposed to be .50 cal or bigger.  When I was in Basic at Fort Benning, they told us they were not allowed to fire the .50 on base because they were afraid a round might stray off into town (3 miles plus away) and kill someone. 

I've considered something like this, as well. You might want to take a look at Aerospace ranges for your upper end. Even LRMs and SRMs can go for a couple kilometers in atmo or even further in vacuum. They do a standardized set of damage in the Space rules, though, which suggests what few were destroyed or disabled by ECM will have fallen away from the group, leaving the rest to strike. What is it for long range, again? 20 hexes? That's 10 kilometers on ground.

[Sockmonkey]

The range limits were needed to keep the board small enough to fit in the house. Only way to make the ranges realistic under that constraint would be to have each hex be 100 meters. Otherwise I'd bring in the extreme range rule where you can shoot past long range but with increasing targeting penalties.

One thing that kind of bugs me about engines is that a 400 weighs SIX TIMES more than a 200. It would be far far more efficient to use a pair 200s than a 400 even taking into account the crit space used.

If anything, it should be the internal structure weight that goes up exponentially, not the engine's.

[monbvol]

I actually have a theory about why engines are that way.  That weight also includes structural reinforcements, beefed up actuators, and other components needed to actually make the mech withstand the stresses of going that fast in addition to actually making the mech go that fast in the first place.  So while two 200 engines could provide sufficient power to make a mech go that fast the mech would tear itself apart trying to do so.

[A. Lurker]

I actually have a theory about why engines are that way.  That weight also includes structural reinforcements, beefed up actuators, and other components needed to actually make the mech withstand the stresses of going that fast in addition to actually making the mech go that fast in the first place.  So while two 200 engines could provide sufficient power to make a mech go that fast the mech would tear itself apart trying to do so.

Makes sense to me. Explains why "internal structure" tonnage is purely a function of weight rather than weight and speed and why actuators cost basically no tonnage at all -- that stuff's all subsumed into the "engine weight" already. Heck, for all we know the actual reactor at the core of it all isn't all that much bigger in a 400-rated engine than in a 10...

[garhkal]

weapons ranges:

  reverse the weapons ranges of the ACs to more accurately reflect "larger caliber" weapons.  For gameplay, the weapon tonnages/crit slots/heat generated/ammo reloads(or rather the limited number of per ton) is the balancer.  So the AC 2 would have a long range of 9 and the 20 would have a long range of 24. 

IMO the reason they made the Lower Acs have the greater range is so there was actually a reason to take them over the 10 and 20 class.
Switching it around so the 20 class not only does the most damage but has the most range, would pretty much render the 2 class and 5 class AC's obsolete and no one would take them.

[monbvol]

Unless you also made them light enough that you could take them in place of say SRMs or even Medium Lasers.  Though I probably would up the heat a bit on the 10 and 20 as well if I were to do that.

[Khymerion]

One thing that kind of bugs me about engines is that a 400 weighs SIX TIMES more than a 200. It would be far far more efficient to use a pair 200s than a 400 even taking into account the crit space used.

If anything, it should be the internal structure weight that goes up exponentially, not the engine's.

I would not mind having an ability to create multi-bank engines really.   It has a precedent.

[A. Lurker]

If you want "realistic" ballistic weapons, do keep in mind that as range and punch per shot tend to indeed go up with gun size (a function of both caliber and barrel length, as I understand it -- 'Mechs could run into some practical issues with the latter), their rate of fire drops. You just can't load increasingly heavy shells as quickly as lighter ones. So you might have to settle for, I don't know, AC/20s that only fire a single shot every other turn...

Of course, just as in real life, no matter how quick-firing your weapons are, if the slower-working but longer-ranged guns have ripped you to pieces already while you were still trying to get close enough to use them that's not going to do you much good anymore anyway. That was pretty much the whole point of giving battleships and -cruisers the biggest guns possible back in their WWI heyday. (The comparison breaks down a bit in that they of course had to worry a little less about intervening terrain than our units...though given factors like inclement weather, nighttime action, smoke screens and so on, it wasn't always clear shooting at an enemy made out and identified as such from a dozen miles away with no way to hide either.)

[Col Toda]

Way too many house rules . I think that any of them that does not make any unit transportable to a standard game to be of less value as it is hard enough to get any players with the existing published rules people can hav on hand .

[idea weenie]

For lighter engines, just go with the continuing XXL increases.
XXXL engines (TL G)
4XL engines (TL H)
5XL engines (TL I)
aso.

You divide the weight by (1+ number of 'X'es), and the number of extra crits is equal to 6 (split 3 and 3) if you are building at the TL, but lose 2 extra crits for each TL above).  This is why the XL engine takes up 6 crits for TL E (Star League), but only 4 crits for TL F.  At TL G it would only take up 2 extra crits, and TL H it would be standard.  If you try to build an engine from a higher TL, double the number of crits needed in a side torso per higher TL.  So trying to build a TL F XXL engine with a TL E base would need 6 crits in each side torso, trying to build a TL G XXXL engine with a TL E base would need 12 crits in each side torso.

Unless you also made them light enough that you could take them in place of say SRMs or even Medium Lasers.  Though I probably would up the heat a bit on the 10 and 20 as well if I were to do that.

Already tried that with Battle Cannons:

Name	Heat	Damage	Range	Tons	Crits	Shots/ton
BC-2	1	2	3/6/9	1.5	1	45
BC-5	1	5	5/10/15	8	4	20
BC-10	3	10	6/12/18	15	8	10
BC-20	7	20	8/16/24	35	12	5

(I have a munchfactor spreadsheet that I used to create these, so they had the same values as the source weapon (or close to it.  It incorporates range, cluster effect, damage, heat, and tonnage to make a rough number of their effectiveness.  From tat chart, AC and SRM-2 rank ~3.2, while Medium Lasers rank ~5.)

So to fix the Medium Laser I'd want to decrease the damage, and/or increase the tonnage, heat, and/or crits to bring it in line.  Easy fix would be dropping the damage to 4 and raising the mass to 2 tons, aka:

Name	Heat	Damage	Range	Tons	Crits	Shots/ton
ModMedium Laser	3	4	3/6/9	2	1	N/A

[Daemion]

Way too many house rules . I think that any of them that does not make any unit transportable to a standard game to be of less value as it is hard enough to get any players with the existing published rules people can hav on hand .

And, thank you for your constructive participation.  :P


Now. Back to the topic at hand.

What other rules would I have rewritten? I would have taken a solid look at scale of damage and maybe found a way to reduce the number of pips that a player has to mark off. Pip marking is a big time sink.

In the same vein, a friend and I even looked at treating individual locations like dropship bays in damage performance based on range, and looked at a simplified heat exchange system.

We tried everything to see what we could do to make something faster than the standard BattleTech, but keep the randomized damage feel. For the most part, it worked, more or less. And it seemed far more like BattleTech than what Alpha Strike is now, or even with linear stat reductions on your health meter like with ClickTech.

As for realistic ranges: That's why you change the scale of the maps you're on. The Atmo level is quite fine for tracking long range ground movement and extreme ranges. Heck, I've played around with the notion and would love to see an official version of something on that level. BattleForce and BF 2 didn't quite cut it in my opinion. The only drawback is that you'd probably have to take the turn lengths up to a minute to allow for decent ground coverage, instead of the 10 second flight times that ASFs get. Sad thing is, you'd still have movement rates in turns per hex for a lot of ground units, instead of hexes per turn.


When I first tried it, we kept it as a means of devising uneven pair-ups in forces as they maneuvered on the macro, and then set up the standard games. But, if you really want to do LoS ranged games, that is the way to go.

[Khymerion]

Way too many house rules . I think that any of them that does not make any unit transportable to a standard game to be of less value as it is hard enough to get any players with the existing published rules people can hav on hand .

I did not think that mine was that bad off.   Redressing some of the grossly over-simplified infantry rules in light of making them comparable to other units (speed, transport capability, field gun towing and operation) did not seem to make something less of value.

Then again, some rules may be more in the attempt to draw in a more traditionalist wargamer set who might be drawn into more grounded details and assumptions...  an hard uphill battle to be sure but one that could be chipped at slowly.

[TigerShark]

I put this elsewhere, but as I'm actively using this rules in a campaign and they work:

Production MASC / Prototype MASC
Production MASC (SL era and 3050+) gets a free turn of success on its first use, requiring a roll of zero to succeed. On the 2nd turn, a 2D6 roll of a 3+ is needed to avoid failure. Each successive turn increases the difficulty of this roll by 2. (The rest of the rule is written as it is in TW).

Current rules for MASC get moved down to "Prototype" level, i.e.: early Star League / 4th Succession War. These need the 3+ on Turn 1 of use, giving it an instant chance of failure.

Production UAC / Prototype UAC
As above, production removes the failure rate. Only this time it's permanent. Production Ultra ACs cannot jam. Current UACs are moved to "Prototype" status.

[Sockmonkey]

Makes sense to me. Explains why "internal structure" tonnage is purely a function of weight rather than weight and speed and why actuators cost basically no tonnage at all -- that stuff's all subsumed into the "engine weight" already. Heck, for all we know the actual reactor at the core of it all isn't all that much bigger in a 400-rated engine than in a 10...

That makes sense in terms of getting the overall mass correct, but it begs the question of why we should have any of the chassis mass listed separately at all. I'll grant that it has a use in figuring out how much you save going to endo, but most of us use something like SWW or know the stats by heart anyhow. It's not as big a deal for mechs aside from wanting to use multiple smaller engines, but it would make a big difference to vehicles and aircraft that have a much simpler frame and drivetrain setup.

For other stuff instead of having all the different types of laser I'd just have standard and ER versions and have standard tarcomps and improved tarcomps for when you want those targeting bonuses. It would really unclutter the energy weapon list. Maybe even allow them to make one full power shot or two half-power shots.

[monbvol]

I tend to think of the base IS weight as the feed mechanisms(ammo, coolant, electrical), and the basic mounting points for all additional gear to be installed.  This also provides sufficient strength to support the mech at a standstill with a basic skeleton.

[Orion]

Reverse AC range would be my first change.  So this makes the AC20 even better, and the AC2 even worse.  So what?  No all weapons should be equal.  There are times you want a 20mm autocannon, and times you want a 200mm howitzer.  We don't put 120mm tank guns on every single vehicle in real life, and so why would we in a game?  I just don't see the problem.

PPC would be the short range, high damage weapon.  Lasers ignore target movement modifiers since they are speed of light.  They aren't freaking heat beams, even if some bad writers describe them that way.

FF and ES would not have critical space penalties - it would be based on cost, availability, or some other sensible reason.  If there absolutely, positively had to be crit penalties, I'd accept something like the previous suggestions as to making the locations static.

Don't track heat, track energy usage.  Speed isn't determined by the size of the engine, but by how much power (up to the max the actuators can handle) you have available.  Don't shoot any energy weapons, and you have more power to run.

The default hex size would be smaller on paper, yet represent the same area as it does now.  This would allow the feel of a bigger game board, without needing the extra large tables to put the maps on.

If bumping a building and falling down can damage a mech, then kicking or punching something will also damage it.  Maybe not a lot, but there would be some damage.

Jump jets lift a set amount of mass 1 hex.   Buy as many as is needed to get the jump you need for the mech.  No more buying them mech size class.  And personally, I'd have jump jets in 95% of the mechs - the increased mobility would be a prime in-setting reason to take them over vehicles.