Author Topic: When will we finally get another solid Battletech video game?  (Read 24468 times)

Apocal

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Re: When will we finally get another solid Battletech video game?
« Reply #90 on: 11 December 2023, 03:15:34 »
I can understand the OP's reservations about non-simultaneous turn resolution, but they are being short-sighted in assuming that just importing the CBT simultaneous turn resolution rules would fix everything.

CBT has the problem that it does not scale well beyond a certain point.  Even if you have a computer taking care of the housekeeping ala Megamek, you will quickly run into the problem that the initiative system is clunky for very large battles.  "Initiative sinks" are barely worth using in the typical small-scale games most people run.  But they become increasingly worthwhile as the scale goes up to the point where each player is juggling a very long list of units and moving them is just tiresome, but an enormous amount of the strategy is in gaming the movement and firing order rules.

CBT isn't the worst game in this regard; for an example of a wargame that completely falls apart with large-scale battles look at second edition WH40K, where the melee rules are written so ambiguously that there is actually not a correct way to resolve very large scrums because the rules writers literally just didn't think of that.

Scale wouldn't be an issue since OP wanted it for HBStech, which rarely went above two lances for enemies and never went above a lance (except via modding) for the player, or similar.

I agree with you though. At the point you're putting complete companies against each other, init tricks increasingly become the game. It is relatively easy to make yourself unhittable on most maps with a modest movement, assuming you're moving after the other guy.

 

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