Interstellar Operations Open Beta Test: Force Operations: Discussion

[bobthecoward]

This may be me misreading....

Lets say my merc company is 12 mech pilots who are all 2/3.  They would be elite, but the average is 5 and that makes them veteran? (page 3).

[bobthecoward]

Discussion on transportation and what is desirable to a house.

It talks about transport capacity as the mech bays. But I regularly move mechs as cargo (stratOps 43). As long as I don't have to combat drop them (like a lightning raid),  I have the time. I think this should count to transportation.

[Mostro Joe]

It would be nice to have some sort of table/system/rule to adjudicate without a GM the outcome of some sort of missions like Cadre mission or Retainer, Mole Hunting and some sort of rules to raise/train guerrillas. How much good is the training offered by your force? During a garrison or retainer mission what happens during a konth? it will be an almost boring garrison mission or you will have to face a planetary invasion? Without a GM/Rpg setting, how can you adjudicate the outcome of a mole hunting or espionnage mission? There will be new kinds of scenarios to reflect the far more sophisticate tastes and new aspects of the BT game?

Also it would be interesting to have rules covering aerospace-only commands.

[cray]

Mukaikubo, thank you for going through the rules with a fine-toothed comb. You found a lot of issues that needed clarification.

Question: "Wealth or CHA 7+" means any level of wealth at all or a Charisma of 7+, right? Not wealth of 7+ or CHA of 7+?

No, it means the latter: Wealth 7+ or Cha 7+. I'll spell that out.

Question: Does each level of a positive or negative trait count for a point, or does Connections 5 count equally to Connections 1?[/i]

For purposes of the Command Rating, they are equal. This is because traits, unlike skills, do not have sweeping effects based on their rank on the Command Rating.

Transport Rating: I have a single Union for 12 mechs and 107 non-dropship crew. Here's where things get a bit iffy. So, I have 12 mechs, and a Union has 12 mech bays and 2 vacant ASF bays.
Question: Do I have exactly enough carrying capacity (0 points) or 17% surplus capacity since I'm filling 12 of 14 slots for combat machines?

Hmm. Well, what page 4 says is "compare the number of ’Mech, fighter, infantry, small craft, and other transport bays to the number of the corresponding combatant units in the force."

You compared your number of 'Mechs to the number of 'Mech bays, and have just enough of those.

But fighters? I guess I didn't address the possibility of having spare bays with no corresponding units. I guess I'll add a clarification like, "If a force has a type of transport bays (e.g., fighter bays) with no corresponding units (e.g., the force has no fighters), then those transport bays are not counted as excess."

Now, the personnel issue. I have 12 mechwarriors, 12 techs, 72 astechs, and 11 Admin Personnel. The Union has 12 mech bays, 2 ASF bays that I suppose could be repurposed for crew quarters (especially since I'm not counting them as surplus combatant carrying capacity!) and... well, I can't actually find how many passenger bays the Union has, but I think it's "none". So... bay personnel I'm having a hard time finding defined. Is it just "Mechwarrior + Tech"?

I'll add the clarification that a bay includes some sort of quarters for both the combatants and support personnel associated with that vehicle or infantry unit. Beyond that, you'll need to add personnel quarters or hire a liner.

Support Rating: I made this with the Force Creation rules, which I think means I have exactly as many support personnel as I need since that's how those rules work. 0 points
Question: Is this right? Is a fresh force made with IntOps rules ever going to have anything but a 'zero' here?

You can always add more support personnel if you want, or try to keep salaries low by skimping on support personnel. Thus, the value might be something other than "0."

Total Starting Reputation: 19 points (Reputation Modifier of +1)
Comment: This seems depressingly small compared to the examples, but I don't really see how I could have gotten much higher with an IntOps-made force.

You could've added extra transports and extra techs. Some merc units (Battle Magic?) were noted primarily for their excess tech capacity. In the Succession Wars, having excellent techs made a merc force stand out. That's factored into the reputation system.

First Immediate Reaction: Protocol Skill Rolls for everything? May I ask what the reasoning was?

It was copied over from FM:Mercs, and a single skill kept things simple.

This just opens up the thicket, because aside from the issues already noted now we're into the gory details of specialization. I'm assuming the base TN is 9 per ATOW, but... does my commander who has Protocol(Comstar)-4 and Protocol(Lyran)-1 have to roll against a 4 everywhere? 9 everywhere but hiring halls in Lyran space or Earth, where I can roll against an 8 or a 5 respectively?[/i]

You know, I think the ATOW skill "Negotiation" is probably a better fit than Protocol. I'll change it to that. And negotiation lacks subskills, so that simplifies matters.

For employer rolls, still using my highest protocol skill, I'm again rolling against a TN of 5 with a +3 to the roll, 2 from being a great all and 1 from rep rating. Rolls are 4, 9, 10; they become 7, 12, and 13, which beat the TN by 2, 7, and 8 respectively. Independent, Capellans, Kuritas. Second roll.... question: Do the same modifiers apply to this second roll as to the first? gets a 3 which after the +3 beats the TN by 1, so that's for Astrokaszy.

Yes. I'll spell that out.

Missions! Question: Does Reputation Modifier apply here? It's not explicitly called out.

No, it doesn't apply. The mission you get doesn't really care about reputation.

Contract Details

Capellan Confederation, circa 3057; I'll call them a "Major Power" (since Sun Tzu hasn't quite gotten them back to the mountaintop yet), "Stingy", and "Controlling". My total equipment value is 110,870,000 C-bills, and my peacetime expenses are 692,235 C-bills per month; this works out to a base payment of 6,063,000 or so C-bills per month.
Comment: This seems enormous, since it's before ANY modifiers...

Yep, I'm hoping for input to fine-tune budgets. As I mentioned earlier, in-house testing identified gross problems with the original payment system. There's still plenty of room to tweak the actual formula.

However, when considering whether it's enormous, think of a scenario where your force takes a short mission that costs it half its 'Mechs or, worse, the DropShip is shot down before it can drop its 'Mechs. If you fine-tune contract profits to within a small percentage of peacetime or wartime costs, you can't absorb the sudden, heavy losses of a bad mission unless you've had LOTS of easy missions.

Operational Tempo for an Objective Raid is 1.6.
Comment: There needs to be some guidance on what "High Risk" means for Op. Tempo. Against the Clans? Who else? No hard and fast rules, but just guides for GMs.

Noted.

Reputation Factor: Oh boy. IF I TRUST THE TABLE, this is a -0.5, and I'm presuming I would add that to my final rating. IF I TRUST THE TEXT, this is (0.2*1+0.5) = 0.7, and I presume I would multiply that to my final rating. The way the formula looks, I'm ASSUMING that the text formula is proper, and further assuming that it's (0.2*1+0.5) and not (0.2*19+0.5). So, the reputation factor I'll say is 0.7.
Comment: This badly needs clarification.

Yeah, I'll take a look at that.

Transportation Payment: Repeat the "Oh Boy." I have a Union, but as we saw earlier that isn't enough. I hire an Invader jumpship and the smallest personnel transport I can, the K-1 Drop Shuttle, for my transport needs. 6 months total mission duration, and 9 jumps there. The dropship costs 3% of its total price, which comes out to ~278,000 C-bills. The Jumpship, I'm using all three collars since I doubt the Capellans would let me have civvie merchant jumpships on a raid. 9 jumps, 3 collars, 2.7 million C-bills. I also want the jumpship to stick around so I can be sure of getting out before waves of irate Fedcom reinforcements... Comment: No way to determine opposition- is that in the Campaigns section of the book?

I have no idea. I've basically seen 3 complete chapters of the book, the ones I wrote, and received assurances about the rest.

Comment: I can't do support yet! Things are a little out of order..

What do you need to calculate support rights?

Overhead Compensation: Not mentioned anywhere in the master contract table or in the text! Is this a holdover that didn't get deleted?

Correct. It'll get deleted.

When you subtract out the full transport payment and peacetime expenses, you're left with a net profit of 26,750,000 C-bills for 3 months of combat. That would cover the loss of 25% of the force, neglecting any salvage. This seems... I dunno, a BIT high? Maybe in the right ballpark, though? But absolutely if you included the Union Dropship in the equipment cost this would blow up and I strongly recommend not doing so!!! If that happened, the net profit of 26.75 million cbills above would balloon to an astonishing 70 million C-bills- meaning that if I lost half my force and got zero salvage at all, I would still make more than ten million C-bills in pure profit after replacing the mechs!

What's the replacement cost of a Union, and how often would you lose your DropShip?

If I get an idea of how often DropShips are lost, I can fine tune their contribution to the budget.

[cray]

On average, every mech will have to be rebuilt/replaced every 20 months?

That was the guess. Other values are welcome.

Disregarding the nightmare logistics of production that would require, that flies in the face of the whole "Mechs passed through families for centuries" thing.

In this respect, I'm more interested in real player experiences with unit loss than canonical fluff. If I stick to the fiction that 'Mechs last centuries when players in fact see their forces suffer 10-50% losses per battle, then I'm doing the players no favors.

So, in your experience, how often do you see units wrecked in your board games? Do you battle to the death of the whole force, or run after taking some armor damage, or something in between?

This may be me misreading....

Lets say my merc company is 12 mech pilots who are all 2/3.  They would be elite, but the average is 5 and that makes them veteran? (page 3).

I'll tweak the table to move 2/3 pilots to elite.

It would be nice to have some sort of table/system/rule to adjudicate without a GM the outcome of some sort of missions like Cadre mission or Retainer, Mole Hunting and some sort of rules to raise/train guerrillas. How much good is the training offered by your force? During a garrison or retainer mission what happens during a konth? it will be an almost boring garrison mission or you will have to face a planetary invasion? Without a GM/Rpg setting, how can you adjudicate the outcome of a mole hunting or espionnage mission? There will be new kinds of scenarios to reflect the far more sophisticate tastes and new aspects of the BT game?

I'm told that there will be a mission generation chapter, but I'm not involved in that.

[SCC]

I don't know about you cray, but against a live human opponent I would expect to lose about half the time. Using that as a base line I expect to need a new 'Mech every second fight. Now the average for the various mission and employer types from the Master Contract Terms Table for the Salvage and Support columns come out pretty close to 0 according to Clac, so they don't effect things.

So the average rolls for Salvage and Support should be 7, meaning that 40& salvage and no BLC is the norm, considering that the 'Mechs salvaged have been heavily damaged I can probably expect to get half market value for them, meaning that using the 1 'Mech salvaged or lost per fight yardstick, over a period of 10 fights I can expect to lose 5 'Mechs and scrape together enough money from salvage to buy a single new one.

So, yes units should be needing a lots of money from somewhere to buy new 'Mechs, I don't know if 20 months is frequant enough but.

As for the Protocol skill use, page 3 says to use Negotiation and gives instruction to roll for it for non-ATOW units, but doesn't do the same for Protocol, so the switch is valid.

The Support Rating section probably needs to be made more forgiving, a good portion of fluff merc companies lack tech support at 1 team per 'Mech and I can't see people hiring that many admins when they don't DO anything. Plus most 'Mechs shouldn't need 6+ hours of repairs a day

[cray]

I don't know about you cray, but against a live human opponent I would expect to lose about half the time. Using that as a base line I expect to need a new 'Mech every second fight.

I saw your comment earlier, but I'd like to toss in this thought: how many of your wrecked 'Mechs can be salvaged?

[Shin Ji]

I saw your comment earlier, but I'd like to toss in this thought: how many of your wrecked 'Mechs can be salvaged?

I'm my experience, mostly fighting against the MegaMek bot, when you lose, you lose hard.  If any of your mechs manage to leave the battle, you can count yourself lucky.  Withdrawal is rarely an option once you're in close quarters combat, and you can take nearly any mech from pristine to salvage in 3 rounds or less.

The winner will have a lot of damaged mechs, but most of them should be fixable, barring lucky shots and destroyed center torsos.  I'd say you can expect maybe 5% of your force to be gone forever in a well-fought even battle that you won.   Vehicles rarely survive any combat where they become a target, in my experience.

[SCC]

Depends on what era your playing in, but in 3025 or if for some reason SFE's are very common your probably looking at cored (no CT structure) being the greatest reason for lost 'Mechs, if XLFE predominate (more modern eras) 'Mech loss is more likely to be due to gone side torso's resulting in 3 engines hits, but either way I don't see that plus salvage putting that many 'Mechs back into action, may double my previous figure

[Scotty]

I don't know about you cray, but against a live human opponent I would expect to lose about half the time. Using that as a base line I expect to need a new 'Mech every second fight. Now the average for the various mission and employer types from the Master Contract Terms Table for the Salvage and Support columns come out pretty close to 0 according to Clac, so they don't effect things.

I don't know about you SCC, but if I'm playing as a mercenary commander, I expect the "lose" condition to happen well before I've lost half of my force.  Hell, if it's a particularly insignificant battle in the grand scheme of things, or particularly lopsided, or even if I expect to take heavier losses later in the campaign, I might cut and run before I've lost any units, and try to minimize what damage I can.

The rules assume that mercenaries aren't going to sacrifice half of their units to achieve the victory conditions of every single battle.  It's a pretty logical assumption.

[SCC]

When did I mention half of your force? I said half the TIME, as in in win 1 match in 2

[Scotty]

When did I mention half of your force? I said half the TIME, as in in win 1 match in 2

Using that as a base line I expect to need a new 'Mech every second fight.

Right there is where you mentioned it. :P

[Vanadius]

That was the guess. Other values are welcome.

In this respect, I'm more interested in real player experiences with unit loss than canonical fluff. If I stick to the fiction that 'Mechs last centuries when players in fact see their forces suffer 10-50% losses per battle, then I'm doing the players no favors.

So, in your experience, how often do you see units wrecked in your board games? Do you battle to the death of the whole force, or run after taking some armor damage, or something in between?

So, are we assuming combat missions every month?  Then that makes sense to me.


I was just envisioning a garrison force sitting on their thumbs for 20 months and getting all that bling.


Maybe a hostile action bonus would be in order then?

Please note:  None of my discussion has been about the game realities, rather the In Universe ones. 


I DO tend to run once vital areas start getting internal damage.  If I win, I tend to keep all of my units or maybe lose 1-2;  a loss is 75% saved, because I try to play as if my units were valuable instead of fodder.

[kato]

Probably not the right way to adress this, but you may really want to have a look over the BattleBlog Entry again. Both the title and the link text (not the link) for the pdf are for Creating a Force, not Force Operations.

[Shin Ji]

The rules assume that mercenaries aren't going to sacrifice half of their units to achieve the victory conditions of every single battle.  It's a pretty logical assumption.

Yea, but how do you get away once you've engaged?  If you're in close enough for real fighting, as opposed to careful sniping, odds are you're quite a ways from the map edge.  And BT battles shift dramatically very quickly.  By the time you realize you're at a disadvantage, it's already too late to run.

[Scotty]

Real mercenaries don't deal with things like "map edges" and instead just move to disengage.  The commander that doesn't allow a unit to disengage is either bold or stupid, depending on the severity of existing damage to his units and the damage of the withdrawing units.

Add to that, you don't have to actually be at a disadvantage to begin withdrawing.  If you have only a "minor" advantage, or one that's likely to still result in the destruction of a large portion of your force, even if it ends in the complete destruction of the other, it's time to break off.

In a slightly less universal sense, I'd really like to see you try and stop a Locust or other light from disengaging from just about everything else on the field in 3025.  Unit composition is important in deciding how mired in combat and what range the commander is willing to close to.

tl;dr There's a very different way of thinking between a merc CO and a BT player.

[SCC]

Got a problem here, in Force Creation Arnold's Force is Government, but in the text here it seems to be mercenary, which is correct?

[Mukaikubo]

Mukaikubo, thank you for going through the rules with a fine-toothed comb. You found a lot of issues that needed clarification.

No problem! I tossed together a merc-with-Fedcom-background combined arms BATTALION in 3025-era that I hadn't posted, and I think I'll take them through the same process to see if any special horrors jump out.

Hmm. Well, what page 4 says is "compare the number of ’Mech, fighter, infantry, small craft, and other transport bays to the number of the corresponding combatant units in the force."

You compared your number of 'Mechs to the number of 'Mech bays, and have just enough of those.

But fighters? I guess I didn't address the possibility of having spare bays with no corresponding units. I guess I'll add a clarification like, "If a force has a type of transport bays (e.g., fighter bays) with no corresponding units (e.g., the force has no fighters), then those transport bays are not counted as excess."

I'll add the clarification that a bay includes some sort of quarters for both the combatants and support personnel associated with that vehicle or infantry unit. Beyond that, you'll need to add personnel quarters or hire a liner.

The two of these combined make me a little nervous because canonically, the Union is basically "A Mech Company Transport" but unless I'm missing something it's really hard to cram everyone you need for a mech company per RAW onto a single Union with its lack of passenger accommodations. I mean for this one I had to hire one of those goofy Drop Shuttles just to carry my admin personnel, and I'm kind of dreading the full battalion with its hundreds of personnel that I need to drag along...

Yep, I'm hoping for input to fine-tune budgets. As I mentioned earlier, in-house testing identified gross problems with the original payment system. There's still plenty of room to tweak the actual formula.

However, when considering whether it's enormous, think of a scenario where your force takes a short mission that costs it half its 'Mechs or, worse, the DropShip is shot down before it can drop its 'Mechs. If you fine-tune contract profits to within a small percentage of peacetime or wartime costs, you can't absorb the sudden, heavy losses of a bad mission unless you've had LOTS of easy missions.

I'm warming up to the rules as written, just not including the dropships. As calculated out there, with not-great rolls you're looking at around (25% of total equipment cost + any salvage you get) as profit, and I think that's a pretty fair benchmark to hit; it shouldn't be too hard to build up a decent sized kitty. Besides, mercenary running should be "hard", just not the FM:Mercs "Okay, how do any actual mercenary units function, this is impossible" in my opinion- a major event like having your dropship shot down SHOULD mark the end of the unit as you know it and force the players, the ones that survive, to do some serious fundraising and retrenchment.

What do you need to calculate support rights?

Sorry- just referring to the fact that things were out of order slightly in the book- there hadn't, unless I missed it, been an explicit reference to calculating support rights yet.

What's the replacement cost of a Union, and how often would you lose your DropShip?

If I get an idea of how often DropShips are lost, I can fine tune their contribution to the budget.

Well, that's where it gets tricky, isn't it? I mean, in Force Construction, you don't "pay" for Dropships at all, which is why including them in the basic payment as equipment costs seems a bit iffy to me. If we were purchasing it it would be 160 million C-bills, which is probably going to outright cripple any company-sized mercenary unit no matter how much you tweak the payment because you could literally buy a new upgraded-tech company for that much and have money to spare. As for frequency, in all my time playing Battletech I can honestly say I've only ever lost a dropship once and had one damaged past armor chunks once- in my games it's been an exceptionally rare occurrence to put a dropship in the line of fire, let alone have one seriously threatened. I'm interested to hear what others have to say, though.

[doulos05]

I too am on the fence about the dropship thing. I imagine that players playing with the "full stack" (from jump to jump) will lose dropships on a far more regular basis than someone who only plays on MegaMek against the bot and therefore can only include dropships as stationary, grounded targets (meaning they probably won't even hit the table once in twenty battles, let alone be destroyed once in twenty battles).

If you let players like me (who never game out Aero battles) include aero assets in the equipment value calculations, then we'll have far too much money. But if you don't let players playing the full stack include them, then they'll get cleaned out in the first contested landing.

Perhaps some text should be included to the effect of:
"If you and your group do not game out Aerospace battles, then do not include the value of aerospace assets when calculating equipment value. If you do, then include all aerospace assets when calculating equipment value."

That puts the decision where it belongs, with the play group.

As to the replacement rate, a 5% loss rate/month during combat operations is pretty low. If we assume 1 battle per week is an average operational tempo for BT (leaving you about 40 productive hours between battles for repairs), then that means only 1.25% losses per battle, and 1 battle per week is actually an incredibly low operational tempo. SO seems to assume 7 battles a week, which drops the loss rate/battle to an astounding 0.17%.

Honestly, none of the 3 numbers up there match my experience on the table top. My experience is only suffering 5% loss or less in a battle means you won by a landslide. In the average battle which I win, I would expect to have at least 15% of my force (2 mechs out of 12) mission ineffective for the next battle. What that means depends on era. For 3025, that's a lost main weapon (if I'm really lucky), a lost leg or head (if I'm kinda lucky) or a destroyed mech to CT-coring or ammo explosion (if I'm unlucky). For 3050+, that's more likely to be destroyed XL engines and CASE blow-outs.

Having said that, I think the numbers are fine where they are for a few reasons. 1) The whole idea is that it's hard to make money as a merc. These numbers bear that out. 2) The BT universe clearly indicates that while it may be hard, it's still possible. These numbers also bear that out. 3) These numbers will encourage those who do play to adapt their play style to more accurately reflect the style we see described in the fiction ("Life if cheap, Mechs are expensive.", etc, etc).

[SCC]

Actually the way I would handle the transport thing is this way, DropShips can have their internal-space re-configured at will so you total up the amount of space your DropShips devote to bays and the total space your force would consume in bays, then divide the former by the later. Remember each bay has room for the crew of whatever is in it and a full tech team for whatever it carry's, beyond that you're going to need extra infantry bays, admins will need to be carried in that space (if you have some free) or infantry (I guess)

[doulos05]

Actually the way I would handle the transport thing is this way, DropShips can have their internal-space re-configured at will so you total up the amount of space your DropShips devote to bays and the total space your force would consume in bays, then divide the former by the later. Remember each bay has room for the crew of whatever is in it and a full tech team for whatever it carry's, beyond that you're going to need extra infantry bays, admins will need to be carried in that space (if you have some free) or infantry (I guess)

But wait, does a Mech bay have room for
1) Mechwarrior
2) Mechwarrior and Tech
3) Mechwarrior, Tech, and 7 asTechs
?

[wellspring]

But wait, does a Mech bay have room for
1) Mechwarrior
2) Mechwarrior and Tech
3) Mechwarrior, Tech, and 7 asTechs
?

No. Check the errata to TechManual. Each bay has rudimentary quarters for the combat crew and one tech. Assistant techs are not included. So a Mech bay can house the MechWarrior and one Tech. A five-man BA Point bay houses five infantry and one tech. A light vehicle bay has 5 bunks: four for vehicle crew (the max crew that a standard 50ton Vee will have), plus a tech. Etc.

No asTechs or other support personnel. They have to be carried as passengers.

[SCC]

wellspring is right, up to a point. Prior to these rules asTechs were hired as needed and you didn't need to provide transport for them, now they are a permanent part of your force. So before there was no need for bays to provide accommodation for asTechs but now there is

Edit: Missing word

[cray]

Got a problem here, in Force Creation Arnold's Force is Government, but in the text here it seems to be mercenary, which is correct?

I wouldn't be surprised if I slipped a few times. On what pages do you see Arnold's force referred in a merc-type fashion?

If you let players like me (who never game out Aero battles) include aero assets in the equipment value calculations, then we'll have far too much money. But if you don't let players playing the full stack include them, then they'll get cleaned out in the first contested landing.

Perhaps some text should be included to the effect of:
"If you and your group do not game out Aerospace battles, then do not include the value of aerospace assets when calculating equipment value. If you do, then include all aerospace assets when calculating equipment value."

I was coming to a conclusion like that, too.

No. Check the errata to TechManual. Each bay has rudimentary quarters for the combat crew and one tech. Assistant techs are not included. So a Mech bay can house the MechWarrior and one Tech.

A meta-gaming point is that TechManual was written before StratOps or, really, writers noted that tech requirements were more than "one per 'Mech." However, a search of canon says that the rule was actually quite old:

MW 1st ed. 1 tech + 5 Astechs. Each astech less then 5 gives you a
time multiplier increase of .2 (so 1.2 times normal repair time for
one missing astech), reducing the amount of repairs that can be done.

MW 2nd Ed same as 1st ed.

Field manual Mercs: 1 astech per 2 techs. (really?) missing astech cut
effective man hours in half for that tech, reducing the amount of
repairs that can be done.

StratOps: 1 tech + 6 astechs.

I've been at the forefront of encouraging installation of passenger quarters in BT spacecraft (you can find my words on the topic in StratOps), but I have to admit that BT spacecraft are not short of volume. A Union is actually less dense than an EMPTY space shuttle external tank. There are corridors for 'Mechs to march to their drop doors. You can easily put hundreds, if not thousands of people in there if you rig bunks and concede that your BattleMechs won't be able to hold their pre-drop soccer matches. (I also have an issue with how much volume BT DropShips have for their mass.)

So Tech Manual could easily be errata'd to include full tech teams, noting mistakes by writers who overlooked by prior canon. It's not a ideal solution (I'd prefer to give everyone quarters...), but it fits the old rules for tech team sizes.

wellspring is right, up to a point. Prior to these rules asTechs were hired as needed and you didn't need to provide transport for them, now they are a permanent part of your force.

No, as far back as MW1, large teams of astechs were required. It seems to be an overlooked issue.

[SCC]

Page 5 is very obvious that they are a merc command in this instance, while the tone of page 11 suggests it as well

While asTechs have been required I think this is the first time you have to transport them

[doulos05]

Page 5 is very obvious that they are a merc command in this instance, while the tone of page 11 suggests it as well

While asTechs have been required I think this is the first time you have to transport them

Well, you still don't technically have to transport them. You can hire them on each planet you go to and the techs and mechwarriors on the transport can team up for daily maintenance while in transit. On a Union, between the 12 techs and 12 mechwarriors, you can piece together 3 tech teams for daily maintenance, more than enough to service every machine. Transport for asTechs is only important during raids. Because when you're just there to smash and grab stuff, you probably don't have the time to put up a "Help Wanted" poster.

As far as concerns about techs or mechwarriors objecting to pulling double-duty while in transit, has anyone here in the military (or any job for that matter) actually worked their exact MOS description for a year consecutively without any additional duty?

[SCC]

This came up before, the text of the document seems to imply that the asTechs are a permanent part of the Force and thus need to be transported

Cray, a few suggestions, on page 9, Master Contract Terms Table, add a footnote to High Risk, in cases were the contract is both High Risk and Covert Operation multiply High Risk terms by -1.
This is to reflect the fact that that the employer REALLY wouldn't want to be associated with what you do

I would bump the support for Cadre Duty contracts due to their nature

Add a High Profile mission type to represent things like the creation of the Ryuken

[doulos05]

This came up before, the text of the document seems to imply that the asTechs are a permanent part of the Force and thus need to be transported

It does strongly imply that, but it doesn't say that. If there was a low (but non-trivial) roll required to hire asTechs on-world, and units without full asTech support got dinged on their support rating (perhaps Techs without full asTech teams only count as half a tech?), then there would be some sort of decision to be made there.

Cray, a few suggestions, on page 9, Master Contract Terms Table, add a footnote to High Risk, in cases were the contract is both High Risk and Covert Operation multiply High Risk terms by -1.
This is to reflect the fact that that the employer REALLY wouldn't want to be associated with what you do

Agreed, no matter how High Risk the mission is, I doubt the House is integrating disposable merc hired to do a Covert Op with high deniability directly into their command structure...

I would bump the support for Cadre Duty contracts due to their nature

Seconded, Cadre Duty and Garrison duty should be prime chances for units to make money, especially on support.

Add a High Profile mission type to represent things like the creation of the Ryuken

That sounds kind of interesting, what exactly are you thinking that would entail?

[boilerman]

MW 1st ed. 1 tech + 5 Astechs. Each astech less then 5 gives you a
time multiplier increase of .2 (so 1.2 times normal repair time for
one missing astech), reducing the amount of repairs that can be done.
 

You learn something new everyday, I don't recall ever reading that line in MW 1ed, in over 25 years of playing this game.  Wellspring, I stand corrected.  And to everyone else, I withdrawal who knows how many complaints about the StratOps requirement for a 7-man tech squad.  However Mike I hope you keep the line in the creating a force chapter about astechs hauling ammo and such, and give them vehicles.

I apologize to all for making such a fuss about this for so long.  I will shut up about it now.

[Mukaikubo]

So! As mentioned earlier, I also back in the force creation days made a 3025-era merc combined arms battalion with some Fedcom background. Two mech companies, 1 vee company, 2 platoons of infantry and three long tom field guns. The gory details:

Code: [Select]

Company 1: Battle Company
Lance 1: AWS-8Q, THG-10E, FLS-7K, ON1-K
Lance 2: MAD-3R, WHM-6R, HBK-4G, TDR-5SE
Lance 3: HBK-4G, HBK-4G, CN9-AL, CN9-AL

Company 2: Raider Company
Lance 1: OTL-4D, WVR-6M, DV-6M, PXH-1D
Lance 2: WVR-6M, DV-6M, PXH-1D, WLF-1
Lance 3: WVR-6M, TBT-5N, PXH-1D, WLF-1

Company 3: Vehicle Company
Lance 1: Brutus-PPC, Brutus-PPC, Von Luckner, Von Luckner
Lance 2: Condor, Condor, Drillson, Drillson
Lance 3: Pegasus, Pegasus, Saracen, Saracen

Company 4: Infantry/Artillery Company
Mechanized Rifle Platoon
Foot Laser Platoon
Towed Long Tom x3
Total value of equipment is 142.8 million C-bills (note: the 1-company 3057 era unit was 111!), and peacetime operating costs came out to 1,318,000 Cbills/month; I got badly unlucky on my rolls and only got a single Gazelle dropship, so I am a landbound whale. I have plenty of cash though, 28 million C-bills in the bank at the end so I can wait for an Interesting contract. So let's go through the process. As always, comments/questions for cray in italics as I go.

Reputation

Experience Rating: All infantry/arty is regular, 13/11 veteran/regular mechs, 6/6 veteran/regular vees; that comes out to 8.07 average skill and a Regular rating, though if I didn't have infantry I'd be comfortably veteran. C'est la vie. 10 points

Command Rating: This one wasn't done with a ATOW character, so I used the 1d6+1 for all four attributes of a veteran commander. I got Leadership 5, Tactics 3, Strategy 5, Negotiation 5; no traits, so 18 points
Comment: Either I make really poor ATOW characters, or these skill levels are calibrated a bit high; 1d6+1 on average gives you 4-5 in every skill, where for my characters if I'm also points dumping to get good piloting/gunnery I usually can't raise all of them past 3 and have to prioritize one or two.

Combat, Support, and Financial are all 0 points since I did this strictly per Force Creation rules without modification and it's a new unit.

Transportation rating; let's see, I have 24 mechs, 12 vehicles, 2 platoons and effectively 1 artillery platoon and my dropship assets have room for 15 vehicles. Well, it's not nothing, so I only lose 5 points for insufficient transport of machines and 3 points for insufficient transport of personnel, since somehow I doubt I'm cramming all of my 500+ people into a Gazelle. -8 points.

Total Reputation Rating: 20 points (modifier of +2)

Now for finding offers. With cray's change to negotiation, and the rolled negotiation stat above, I'm working against a TN 3 before any bonii.
Comment: Negotiation is a TN 8, Protocol is a TN 9, unless I'm badly wrong; may need to recalibrate the tables with that skill change, since players are effectively getting a +1 bonus! Galatea in 3025 era is a Great Hall. So, the roll for offers is a TN 3 with a bonus of (3 hall, 2 rep) +5, or effectively TN (-2); I roll a 6 to beat it by 8, 3 offers.

Employer rolls are against TN 3 with a +4 (2 hall, 2 rep); rolls are 2, 2, 5. I hate you, dice. The first two are independent, and rerolls give me the Magistracy of Canopus on a 7, Corporation an an 11; the third roll's Marik.

Contract rolls are against a TN3 with a +2 bonus only (2 hall, no rep bonus per cray);' rolls of 5 7 9 respectively give:

Mission 1: Magistracy of Canopus, Planetary Assault
Mission 2: Corporation, Extraction Raid
Mission 3: Free Worlds League, Extraction Raid.

Let's stat out the Canopian Planetary Assault this time. It makes a bit of fluff sense; they're attacking the Capellans around now, and having a full merc battalion that's almost veteran but without any reputation gets them a lot of combat power quickly for relatively cheap. The Canopians in 3025; let's say major power since they're one of the big periphery states, stingy since periphery states are often resource strapped, and neither controlling nor lenient.


Contract Details!

Base Payment: 1,317,610 Cbills a month, 142,862,000 Cbill equipment without dropship; base payment is 8,131,300 C-bills per month

Mission Length: Assaults are 9 months. For the trip out, eehhhh, let's say it's 25 jumps from Galatea to a Capellan frontier planet if we have to go through the FWL and hook over across the Canopian frontier. That makes it 8 months. 17 months; 9 mission, 8 transport.

Operational Tempo: 1.5 planetary assault, not especially high risk... 1.5

Employer Tempo: A major stingy power is 1.2-0.2 = 1.0

Reputation Factor: 20% of 2 is .4, +0.5 is 0.9

Transportation Factor: After thinking about what I need, 24 mechs and personnel, I decide on an Overlord Class dropship and Invader jumpship; I figure the Overlord's vacant bays can be converted quickly and temporarily to quarters for all my spare personnel and still have room to spare. Also, given that I'm fighting on the side of the Periphery against the IS, I'd like to keep the Jumpship around for a hasty escape. So! All 3 invader collars for 25 jumps and then 9 months playing pinochle waiting for disaster, and then the Overlord for 17 months is 8.5% of its 430 million price tag. Throwing it all in the pot, the total transport costs are 54,850,000 C-bills. Woof.

Command Modifier; -2 aassault, -1 rep, -3 total modifier and roll is 6. House Command
Salvage rights; -2 employer, -2 total modifier, roll is 5 (exchange) and then 7 (20%). 20% Exchange Rights, woof.
Support rights; +2 assault, -1 employer, +1 net; roll is a 10. 60% Battle Loss Compensation. HELLO.
Transport terms: +3 assault, -2 rep, net of +1 and roll is 7. 55%

Final Payment: (8131300[base] * 9 [mission months] * 1.5 [Op tempo] * 1 [Employer] * 0.9 [Rep]) + (8131300 [base] * 8 (transport months) * 1 [employer] * 0.9 [reputation] + 0 [support payment] + (0.55 [transport terms] * 54850000 [transport]) == 187, 508,000 C-bills

Subtract out 17 months of peacetime expenses and the transport payment and you're left with a profit of 110 million C-bills. Add to that 60% BLC and a small amount of salvage, and compare to the total equipment cost of the battalion of 143 million C-bills and this is more than fair. If you added in the Gazelle to the equip cost, the profit is 150 million C-bills; I still think including the dropships is going to massively inflate contract compensation unreasonably.

As it is, this contract is a very tempting 'all in' option; if the merc battalion can take and hold their target for 9 months, the huge profits, salvage they'll accrue, and the generous battle loss compensation means that even if the battalion is reduced to a tattered lance of light mechs they'll be able to rebuild at least as strong as they were before; any decent victory will put them at the top of the mercenary heap and able to begin thinking about expansion to two battalions, or acquire their own big dropship. Of course, if they fail... but that's Battletech, right?