Wanting to do regimental sized BattleTech engagements without setting up lots of maps and having piles of record sheets to work through? Tired of winging some battles outside a campaign hero game with something as nebulous as risk style dice-offs, leaving you wondering what each side has left functioning or what's available for salvage?
Well, so do I! And, I came up with something.
Attached is the first version - the most KISS version I could come up with. (Aside: Yes, I did get to pitch this to Brent. He wasn't as impressed with it as I was hoping. Without any connections, I can't publish this as its own thing. And, I had specifically brainstormed this for BT. So, here it is. Free for use.)
Synopsis:
Visualization - This was designed as a supplemental aid for campaign style BattleTech linked-scenarios. Meant to be a quick and easy means of setting up larger company, battalion, and even regimental level games on a map at a larger scale. The focus would be on formations - lances, platoons, stars, demi-companies or Level IIs. Each combat unit in a formation would bring its own stats to the general whole.
Each turn would be a larger time-frame, a snap-shot of a larger battle. At this scale whole BattleTech games will have been played out when formations commit to battle. Others would be spending time maneuvering into position. You want asymmetric warfare? Well, now you can set those battles up. You want mobile scouts to be able to get behind the front lines and wreak havoc? There's a means to make that happen.
Combat is going to flip assumptions on their head. No longer are you worried about if a Mech causes damage. Instead, it's assumed to happen and the dice rolling is all about determining when it happens inside a turn.
While each part of a formation will have some small number of hit points, it's not about armor and internal structure. Rather, each time a unit is damaged, it's really about taking a significant hit that would render it a 'Mission Kill' in a standard BattleTech game. This could be anything from losing a leg, to all its guns, to being cored or exploding to an ammo breach. Which it is, is up to the players or the GM. The extra hit points for larger units simply represents their capacity to take more damage before such a hit occurs, requiring more concentrated firepower from the other side.
The map - each hex is on the BT low-altitude map. That means each hex is half a kilometer across, or one standard BattleTech: Game of Armored Combat map.
The Snapshot - each turn is approximately a minute in length - which equates to 6 standard BattleTech turns.
The Game Pieces - The most basic combat unit is a formation. Generally, we're talking lances and platoons. Each formation will be comprised of individual combat units that come in the form of a card. (See attached Mech Sheets in the next posts.) Thus, each formation is ultimately customizable.
Each unit (Mech, tank, infantry squad, etc) has a set of stats which effect how fast a formation moves and how soon, whether it gets bonuses for certain terrain types, how much damage it can do and when in combat, and so on.
The Game - In this version, each formation can do one of two things:
- It can maneuver, spending the whole minute to traverse one or more hexes. Such units have dedicated their time to moving, and are generally hard to pin down, and won't be able to commit to combat. (I plan on changing this. I'll explain later.)
- It can engage in combat. Declaring that it's engaging another formation, a lance can initiate combat against an enemy lance that hasn't moved yet. This will commit the other lance to the fight, as it will want to defend itself. And, of course, more than one unit can pile in. This can only be done against adjacent formations, of course, since they're on two separate maps.
Combat - Is about dice pools and manipulating their results with unit stats. Each formation gets dice equal to the number of remaining units it has left at the start of combat. Each side rolls their pool, and then takes turns assigning dice to their individual units in the formation. Then they take turns fixing a die's result attached to a Mech based on abilities, like Range and Mobility. Once the dice have been finalized, combat resolves.
Starting with the lowest results, each unit activates, and assigns its damage to the other side. Units with 1 activate first. Units with two activate next, and so on and so forth all the way to six. If a unit takes lethal damage before it activates, that's too bad. When it's turn to activate comes, it's not there to do so.
Once the battle is resolved, any formations with units left will consolidate into a single hex (to show the whirling dance most BT games degenerate into). Which hex will be determined by the round's winner, for that combat. There may be more than one going on across the map. Each one is its own battle, and has no effect on something that's a ways away.
The battle can continue on the next turn, or formations can leave.
The Goal - is that a GM can use something like this to set up objectives, like a line engagement, and quickly resolve it with some detail (unit composition) and let both sides work out their own tactics and strategies, hopefully coming up with an advantage that we don't normally get in a stand-up, stock BattleTech game. Then, a hero group can have encounters established in a more fluid, intuitive fashion with a better big-picture view, while the GM gets a better picture of how the battle is going outside of the hero unit's game, setting them up for future games far more readily.
Planned Changes and Additions -
- One of the things I want to add is a means of 'forced luck'. With the dice rolls, you already have the randomized 'when' of damage, and with Mech abilities, you can fine tune that a bit. But, I want to throw in an 'Edge' like factor that a side can use to really force a moment, giving each side a little more control over its luck, and affecting changes that it might normally get to do, otherwise.
- Refining the unit stats. I plan on reviewing the vision, allowing for some units to engage with their really long range weapons outside of combat.
- I plan on adding phases. A movement phase will allow a unit to spend MP on moving and/or certain actions, like committing to battle, or taking up an overwatch stance and allowing them to attack at range outside of combat, or chasing another formation and taking potshots at it. Then, those actions get resolved in the combat step.
- A ranged mechanic. Originally, I was envisioning that combat between two formations on adjacent hexes (maps) would be the beginning of a Game of Armored Combat, with both sides on starting edges. However, in actuality, a lance inside a hex could be anywhere. Assuming a generally center-of-hex deployment, that means that two adjacent lances initiating combat with one another are actually past the first two or three turns of an opening BT game. They're past the opening long range exchanges. As such, there's room for two lances in adjacent hexes to simply shoot at range at one another, and units with LRMs or other very long range weapons can reach out just a little further.
Hence, the pot-shot. This will function similarly to combat resolution in that sides will roll off and assign dice. However, one side is doing the shooting, and the other is trying to avoid being hit. The goal of the shooter is to match dice (belonging to the units that can reach the target) with dice on the target. The defender has to manipulate dice first, using mobility stats. The shooter can then manipulate dice by spending any unspent 'range points' and/or mobility. Any matches cause a single point of damage to the unit that matched.
- Reversing the line-up. Right now, dice are assigned to the units of the lance that rolled them. I'm looking at turning this around, and having sides assign dice to target units in an enemy formation instead. Since this mini-game is based around the lance as a unit, it makes sense that the dice assignment is a sign of the lance focusing its fire, choosing which enemy they want to take down first.
I'm still up in the air as to how to 'pool' the damage. I'm looking at leaving it nebulous, as a points pool, and as units are eliminated, unspent damage points are removed from the overall pool. The other option is to have each unit in a lance receive matching assignment tokens which also get dropped on both the assigning and the target unit when a die is put down.
My first version rulebook has been attached as a PDF.
I have other things I'll be adding in posts below, like scenarios, optional rules, and some cards.
