How do you deal with the loss of detail?

[-Ice]

Always loved the AC/20, ER PPC, and LRM 20s.  So much pain.  How do you deal with the loss of detail?  What's the difference now between a Large Laser boat and one that carries an AC/20?

Do mechs "lose" their weapons in combat?  ie, you lose your AC/20 due to a torso crit or the torso being blown off?  IIRC, some mechs also suffered from low ammo counts, like it can only fire LRMs maybe 4-6 times then it'll be out of ammo.  Obviously, ammo tracking is no longer done in AS, so how do players make this jump between the two concepts?

I'm really on the fence regarding AS, mainly because of the loss of detail.

[sadlerbw]

Short answer? By playing more. By that I mean either having time to play more in general because it doesn't take as much time to finish up a small battle, or more commonly by taking the same amount of time but putting way more units on the board.

So, instead of one mech with an AC/20, some medium lasers, and and an LRM rack, I've got a lance with a Juggernaut, two Strikers, and a Sniper (these are Alpha Strike unit roles). If I loose my Juggernaut (the whole mech), it feels about like getting the AC/20 crit out of a Hunchback. I can still hurt people, but my 'big gun' is gone. Loosing my strikers is sort of like loosing some leg actuators. My lance gets slower and has a harder time responding with movement. Loosing the Sniper kills my longer-range damage, just like getting a LRM rack crit.

Basically, you have to look at each lance or even company as a 'unit', instead of one mech. The Lance will slowly fall apart and loose capability as individual mechs in it are killed, and that has a very similar feel to an individual mech being taken apart in Total Warfare rules. Also, the variety of different mechs you can use to make a lance or company provide the same sort of variety as building a single mech with different weapons and equipment.

For me it's just a matter of perspective (and it did take me a while to really accept this): If you stop thinking about a single 'unit' as being one mech, and think of it as a formation instead (Lance, Star, Squadron, etc.) It starts to make sense. You get that same feel of a 'unit' with unique properties made up of a set of shared parts, and one that slowly degrades as parts of the unit are destroyed. Plus, you get to play with more of your minis more of the time!

This is one of the reasons I'm a big proponent of using the formation bonuses AS provides. It really helps cement the idea in the players head that the the whole lance of mech's is the unit in this game.

That is how I deal with it.

[Scotty]

By making it bigger! >:D

The basic unit in Alpha Strike is not the 'Mech, contrary to what the cards might make you think.  The basic unit in Alpha Strike is the Lance/Star/Level II.  Losing 'Mechs in Alpha Strike is akin to losing a location in standard BattleTech.  Critical hits to 'Mechs in Alpha Strike are akin to taking hits to weapons in standard BattleTech.

As such, the 'normal' size battles at my table are company size engagements.  We finish in roughly two hours.  This is similar to a Lance sized battle in standard (arguably even quicker).  When we want to play bigger games, we field entire battalions, and finish games in the time it would take us to play out companies in standard BattleTech.

As for the rest of your questions: if a 'Mech suffers a Weapon Hit critical hit, it can lose damage, which is the representation of losing weapons on your 'Mech.  Units that do not provide enough ammunition for their weapons have their damage contributed from those weapons modified by 0.75 to account for that lack.

[-Ice]

Interesting, I never thought of it that way.

Personally, I was thinking of playing BT at lance or sub-lance levels (3 or maybe 2 mechs) that way there's chances of flanking or rear-armor shots without cluttering the board up too much.  IIRC, there are weapons in classic BattleTech that could jam enemy systems (such as the Raven mech, IIRC) or TAGs (not sure if this is correct, it's been a while) that could help other units hit a "marked" target.  Does this also exist in AS?

[Weirdo]

Absolutely.

90% of what you can do in Battletech, you can also do in Alpha Strike. O0

[-Ice]

What 10% is missing?

[Achtung Minen!]

I play Alpha Strike as lance vs lance.

To me, it is still all about maneuvering around the hex map and fighting as a cohesive team. In Battletech, 'Mechs actually feel much more like islands unto themselves. In Alpha Strike, the formation is the key... It is how well each individual 'Mech (not just each role) combos with the others.

[nckestrel]

What 10% is missing?

Locust tossing.

[Lorcan Nagle]

Locust tossing.

That was a Thorn, not a Locust!

[ActionButler]

What 10% is missing?

Time spent rolling dice for each machine gun in my all-Piranha star.

[Weirdo]

I'd say the biggest difference between Battletech and Alpha Strike is in crit-seeking. Because all units have only one armor location and do their damage all in one chunk, you don't get the situation where something with a plethora of small weapons can lay into a unit with damaged armor and score a frabjillion critical hits, just the one. If that's something I really feel like doing, I play Total War that day.

Alpha Strike does have several advantages over Total War, though. My favorite is that in Alpha Strike, even one point of damage is very real damage. It makes those mechs and tanks that rely on an AC/5 for their ranged power into genuine threats, instead of mosquitos to be ignored. That Shadow Hawk or Sentinel working its way around your flank? If you just ignore it, it WILL chew you up. I love that Alpha Strike breathed new life into things that tended to be regarded as worthless in Total War.

[ActionButler]

I would add, too, that while Alpha Strike may lose some of the more granular details in the translation from Total Warfare, it gains in other aspects.  Let's face it, Classic Battletech is not a fast game.  You may be able to finish a 1v1 in an hour or so, but anything more than a duel is going to take a long time to complete.  Alpha Strike loses some of the finer points, yes, but it adds the ability to wage a complete battle in less time than Total Warfare can hash out combat between a pair of assault mechs. 

Also, yes, Alpha Strike does include ECM, Active Probes, and TAG.  I would argue that a Raven is a much more interesting unit to field in Alpha Strike BECAUSE of the loss of detail.  In Total Warfare, if your electronic weapons platform gets caught out in the open, you could be in serious trouble.  Because of how damage in spread out all over a unit, though, 'serious trouble' could be anything from a complete loss of the mech to just having most of your armor peeled away.  In Alpha Strike, though, if a Raven gets caught out in the open by anything other than another light mech, it is dead.  You have to be much more careful about how you maneuver all of your elements when they no longer have eleven locations to soak up damage. 

[Weirdo]

Very true. Alpha Strike has a much higher emphasis on maneuvering to make use of cover, because if the other guy does and you don't, you will be dead VERY fast. Even an Atlas storming the gates of a fortress needs to take advantage of every scrap of hills, trees, or even smoke, or there's no way it will reach those gates in any condition to do anything about them.

[-Ice]

Thanks for the insight guys!  I think since I've already played a bit of BattleTech before, I may as well give Alpha Strike a good try.

[MattK]

Thanks for the insight guys!  I think since I've already played a bit of BattleTech before, I may as well give Alpha Strike a good try.

I came back to BT because of Alpha Strike - it is the only way I will play now.

[glitterboy2098]

I would add, too, that while Alpha Strike may lose some of the more granular details in the translation from Total Warfare, it gains in other aspects.  Let's face it, Classic Battletech is not a fast game.  You may be able to finish a 1v1 in an hour or so, but anything more than a duel is going to take a long time to complete.  Alpha Strike loses some of the finer points, yes, but it adds the ability to wage a complete battle in less time than Total Warfare can hash out combat between a pair of assault mechs. 

yep.

basically, you lose the granularity of different armor locations, detailed critical hits, weapons selections, and micromanaged movement and TMM's..

but you gain the ability to easily use large forces, combined arms, aerospace, artillery, exotic unit types.. while still being able to play games fairly fast.

[Bongfu]

Add onto what has been said above.

Alpha Strike really brings home the whole "Total War" approached to 31st Century combat(or whatever earlier/later era you play). It also is a great equaliser of sorts, in that many units that performed poorly in TW scale perform well in AS scale. Conversely, units that were a bit much in TW scale are not as bad in AS scale.

You may lose individual details, but you can add a whole sub-level of details much easier via the more advanced rules. Rules, such as Battlefield Intelligence, bring a lot to the game and really give the immersion of commanding a full force as opposed to a handful of warriors. The other great thing is that the Lance SPAs can apply across all unit types. This means combined arms is much easier to use and better than TW scale. Tanks and infantry aren't complicated monsters anymore.

All in all it comes down to your local taste I suppose. Our group likes to be able to play together (normally 4 of us) and it would just take way too long for us to do a TW scale game. We also all have rather large collections. Its nice to be able to field a large chunk of those while still finishing a game.

I have my complaints about Alpha Strike, but its still a solid system. We still play on hex maps for that old nostalgic feel (plus I think the ranges are a bit off in hexless play).

[beachhead1985]

In short? Reluctantly.

[SC_Dave]

Actually, after playing Alpha Strike for awhile then returning to Total Warfare, I came across a situation where the extra detail just felt "mean". After knocking a mech down with a gyro hit it took 2-3 more turns of a couple of other mechs pounding on it to eventually finish off what was in effect a defeated opponent.

I'm happy to forego that extra detail and field a force with more units instead.

[Son of Kerenski]

Its the loss of detail that appeals.

I hate losing a pristine mech to a flukey head shot first turn in Battletech. That doesn't happen much in AS. You wanna kill a mech you gotta get through all its Armor points in 99% of cases (AP ammo not withstanding).

[Descronan]

I wrote up a campaign guide so now we can do planetary strikes with a lot more planning/detail, hit objectives, get resupplies, etc. We've played a couple times now and worked out some kinks in the rules. I think its close.

[iamfanboy]

Three years ago, I was trying to describe why Alpha Strike is better, and someone else... well, here was my response.

Thank you, Doulos! You put the perfect word to Battleforce/Quickstrike:

EPIC

It's on a grand scale, which is what Battletech feels like it should be: armies of giant robots struggling for the fate of worlds.

It just never felt right to me that a lance-sized conflict is the deciding battle each time, very time - sometimes it may be important, but by and large it simply doesn't feel like it should be the key of the Battletech universe.

The core of the Battletech rules are scaled with only a few units on a side, and it's well-suited for that, but that isn't what's described in the Battletech universe as being THE important battles.

What matters are engagements like the first battle on Trellwan, where the Clans cut the unsuspecting defenders to ribbons and they sacrificed themselves to get Prince Victor off the planet, not Prince Victor's minor battle where he used the terrain to win a brief victory.

Or the last stand of the Dragoons on Misery, where the entire warmachine of the Draconis Combine sought to defend the honor of the Coordinator against one mercenary unit, rather than take advantage of the FedSun's focus on the Capellan Confederation to invade the Draconis March.

Or the Great Refusal where the Crusader and Warden philosophies collided on Strana Mechty.

Or Halstead Station, where in a raid-in-force by Prince Hanse Davion to destroy massive supply depots the Coordinator had been building up actually discovered the lostech stash which lead to the founding of the NAIS.

Or... well, dozens of other examples. Like every planet actually invaded and lost to another force. Battalion level engagements are the de facto universe standard, and EVERY scenario book I've ever read (from the ancient Kell Hounds book to the newest Sword and Dragon book) stretches plausibility to the breaking point so the minor 3-5 element battle matter, or outright said it DOESN'T matter and that it takes place before or after an actual, important battle.

So, er. tl;dr version: Battletech the GAME doesn't accurately represent Battletech the UNIVERSE for me, whereas Quickstrike DOES.

So, how do I deal with the loss of detail?

Quite easily, because a game of Alpha Strike looks a heckuva lot more like the universe of Battletech than its own game can.

[Descronan]

We added house rules - Variable Damage = roll 1d12 per point of damage. For every die that rolled the T# or better, they take 1 damage. This increased the likelihood of the 3+ damage units doing at least 1 damage even with T# of 11-12 making it simultaneously more deadly at long range and survivable as your mech rarely takes full damage from an attack. Rolling d12's is faster than 2d6 and gives percentiles "close enough" for our comfort. Crits and other rolls still use 2d6 as normal.

One group decided that any attack that rolls a 12 gets a critical roll. This allows for those random shots that crit your center torso and hit your engine or set off an ammo explosion. I had an undamaged Warhammer take a crit in round 2 - Engine. It limped the rest of the game, much like what happened in a CBT game just a week before in a tournament.

You can add SPAs from the Companion, alternate ammo, smash buildings, swarm mechs with infantry, bring in aerospace support, etc. We routinely play games with 12+ units on the field and complete in less time than a 4v4 CBT game.

[beachhead1985]

Three years ago, I was trying to describe why Alpha Strike is better, and someone else... well, here was my response.So, how do I deal with the loss of detail?

Quite easily, because a game of Alpha Strike looks a heckuva lot more like the universe of Battletech than its own game can.

I value the granular individuality of different models of unit, personally.

Don't get me wrong; my friends love the idea of influencing events on the galactic scale with huge battles, but I enjoy the smaller battles whose outcome could be ignored, with more focus on the individual pilots and machines, in more of a role-playing context.

When I need to a do a big battle the "Small, crucial, representative skirmish as part of the overall larger operation" suits me just fine. Like running a DND battle and having it be part of a giant 10,000-guys on a side conflict over an afternoon.

I like to keep Alphastrike in my back pocket, because what I value more is being able include more environmental factors without slowing the game down; vice the more units. I've only got so much table space. It really bugs me though that crucial differences in BT that would win or loose a battle just don't matter in AS. Frankly the pigeon-holing of various units and over specificity of the unit lists mystifies me. It leads me to wonder if people who play BT aren't able to understand the varying capabilities of units and weapons and need it in coles notes format.

My first BT book was TRO: 3025R. No one needed to tell me that a jagermech lacked punch and armour, but was low heat. It was literally there in the stats and write-up. It didn't need a "Class" appended to it; it was obviously a support mech.

But I grew up reading Jane's. Maybe I'm weird.

[iamfanboy]

I value the granular individuality of different models of unit, personally.

Don't get me wrong; my friends love the idea of influencing events on the galactic scale with huge battles, but I enjoy the smaller battles whose outcome could be ignored, with more focus on the individual pilots and machines, in more of a role-playing context.

When I need to a do a big battle the "Small, crucial, representative skirmish as part of the overall larger operation" suits me just fine. Like running a DND battle and having it be part of a giant 10,000-guys on a side conflict over an afternoon.

I like to keep Alphastrike in my back pocket, because what I value more is being able include more environmental factors without slowing the game down; vice the more units. I've only got so much table space. It really bugs me though that crucial differences in BT that would win or loose a battle just don't matter in AS. Frankly the pigeon-holing of various units and over specificity of the unit lists mystifies me. It leads me to wonder if people who play BT aren't able to understand the varying capabilities of units and weapons and need it in coles notes format.

My first BT book was TRO: 3025R. No one needed to tell me that a jagermech lacked punch and armour, but was low heat. It was literally there in the stats and write-up. It didn't need a "Class" appended to it; it was obviously a support mech.

But I grew up reading Jane's. Maybe I'm weird.

I have the first printing of that TRO on my shelf, so don't go flashin' nerd plumage at me.

I have several other strikes against basic Battletech too:

1) It's overcomplicated. Anyone who's used Megamek knows that it makes the game WAY easier, but if you need a computer to run a game then it's a computer game, not a tabletop game. Yes, you can do a simplified, 'Mechs only, 4v4 match without much trouble, but going beyond that, or adding other elements like aerospace or artillery, quickly strains the game out of shape.

2) It's boring. Barring through-armor criticals (optional rule) and piloting checks, nothing happens in the game for an unacceptably large amount of time. It's a lot of dice rolling and a lot of circle marking until you get through the armor and maybe destroy one of their weapon systems or joints.

3) It's inaccurate. Go look at any of the old scenario books, and over 50% of them have some excuse as to why you're playing with a tiny force, before or after a major battle, instead of playing the ACTUAL battle. But we covered that.


In the 1980s, there was a wave of game designers who were (IMHO delusionally) obsessed with details. How many pounds of daily rations an army needed to consume to maintain good morale, poor morale, or rebellious morale. Dozens of different weapons listed where the only difference was "ammo in the clip" or "length of blade" or "10 feet of range". Vancian, shamanic, clerical, and a half-dozen other kinds of magic, each with wildly different rules, and usually with one version that's a LOT better than the others. SDC and MDC. Critical hit tables that include anus and rectum as separate entries. To-hit tables that involve rolling for each bullet and goes down to which finger gets hit. Fifty-two different tables placed in a separate appendix, each one with highly specific applications that it's all too easy to forget in a vital moment.

Battletech is a child of those years, and it shows. In my more cynical moments, I wonder if the point was to design games that were exclusionary; "If you're not smart enough, then you can't play with us, nyah hah!"

They all had too much detail, not enough game. If you want to play Accountacy: The Numbering, become an accountant. A tidy, small rules-set that moves smoothly, can scale upward well, is quickly graspable, and is flexible towards new ideas is far more important than one that has a table for EVERYTHING from rations to how many of your troops catch STDs on leave.

Good game design is about the forest, not the trees; not about the small details, but the broader picture.

The detail on this?

Just a bunch of dots.

The greater picture? A girl holding our lifegiving orb in her hands during a desert sunset.

And that's rules design to me: the sum is more important than its parts.

Alpha Strike is a tidy rules-set that is gradually adding back in granularity. The only thing that should leave me cold is the high frequency of the "Conga Line of Death" where units keep jumping behind each other to shoot the one in front in the back, but I'm still finding that name too hilarious to get mad about it.

[beachhead1985]

I have the first printing of that TRO on my shelf, so don't go flashin' nerd plumage at me.

I have several other strikes against basic Battletech too:

1) It's overcomplicated. Anyone who's used Megamek knows that it makes the game WAY easier, but if you need a computer to run a game then it's a computer game, not a tabletop game. Yes, you can do a simplified, 'Mechs only, 4v4 match without much trouble, but going beyond that, or adding other elements like aerospace or artillery, quickly strains the game out of shape.

2) It's boring. Barring through-armor criticals (optional rule) and piloting checks, nothing happens in the game for an unacceptably large amount of time. It's a lot of dice rolling and a lot of circle marking until you get through the armor and maybe destroy one of their weapon systems or joints.

3) It's inaccurate. Go look at any of the old scenario books, and over 50% of them have some excuse as to why you're playing with a tiny force, before or after a major battle, instead of playing the ACTUAL battle. But we covered that.


In the 1980s, there was a wave of game designers who were (IMHO delusionally) obsessed with details. How many pounds of daily rations an army needed to consume to maintain good morale, poor morale, or rebellious morale. Dozens of different weapons listed where the only difference was "ammo in the clip" or "length of blade" or "10 feet of range". Vancian, shamanic, clerical, and a half-dozen other kinds of magic, each with wildly different rules, and usually with one version that's a LOT better than the others. SDC and MDC. Critical hit tables that include anus and rectum as separate entries. To-hit tables that involve rolling for each bullet and goes down to which finger gets hit. Fifty-two different tables placed in a separate appendix, each one with highly specific applications that it's all too easy to forget in a vital moment.

Battletech is a child of those years, and it shows. In my more cynical moments, I wonder if the point was to design games that were exclusionary; "If you're not smart enough, then you can't play with us, nyah hah!"

They all had too much detail, not enough game. If you want to play Accountacy: The Numbering, become an accountant. A tidy, small rules-set that moves smoothly, can scale upward well, is quickly graspable, and is flexible towards new ideas is far more important than one that has a table for EVERYTHING from rations to how many of your troops catch STDs on leave.

Good game design is about the forest, not the trees; not about the small details, but the broader picture.

The detail on this?

Just a bunch of dots.

The greater picture? A girl holding our lifegiving orb in her hands during a desert sunset.

And that's rules design to me: the sum is more important than its parts.

Alpha Strike is a tidy rules-set that is gradually adding back in granularity. The only thing that should leave me cold is the high frequency of the "Conga Line of Death" where units keep jumping behind each other to shoot the one in front in the back, but I'm still finding that name too hilarious to get mad about it.

Huh. That's a lot of emotion for a pretty neutral response. I take it, you get a lot of AS-hate, eh?

I just said TRO:3025R was my first book, does that even count as nerd cred these days? Sheesh, how the mighty have fallen. My point was that this is a part of AS I truly don't get the point or need of. Like, seriously; new players can't handle mech stats?

I'm not going to argue with you.

If I want to run a large BT game, AS is my engine, yes? Any crazy fan homebrews out there that do the same thing better? no? Ah, then AS it is, then.

But I love BT. I love playing BT. I live a life where I have basically no time for gaming---EVER---Freaking *Attack Wing* requires pre-planning to do for me.

I have...very few issues with BT, it is, what it is and I love it for that...The infantry rules I don't like and I headcanon a 100 vs the canon 30m hex. Those are the issues I have.

You want to attack over-complicated, unplayable drek? You know what? Not going there.

So...AS? Yeah, I hate the lack of detail. Sorry. It bugs me. Hopefully it gives me other things and lives up to the hype when I can fully utilize it. But I'm a big fan of AS, personally; The Combat manuals give me a few TROs and some great background. And I apologetically LOVE the plastic minis. But I hate the loss of detail and frankly, I feel it could have been done better.

[Scotty]

Unit roles are used for Formation Building, not (necessarily) as a "this is how you use this, new person!" tool-tip.  As such, you've fantastically missed the point of why less detail is attractive to new players.  It's not because they can't figure out 'Mech stats, it's because it is more fun to pick up a card and look at six numbers to take in all of the relevant information, then start playing than it is to pick up a record sheet and pore through all of the anywhere from 1 to 16 entries on the equipment table, find the ammunition for it in the critical hit diagram to determine efficient ammunition expenditure, note how many heat sinks are in the legs for standing in water, figure out where the armor is strong or weak, determine the maximum number or combination of which you can fire weapons in order to avoid catastrophically overheating, and then figure out the ranges at which those combinations function effectively.

To wit: when I can build a company and start rolling dice in ten minutes and my opponent who has been playing for maybe three months can do the same while being able to see everything important at a quick glance, they tend to have more fun.

[iamfanboy]

Huh. That's a lot of emotion for a pretty neutral response. I take it, you get a lot of AS-hate, eh?

What? Oh, no, for frick's sake, it was supposed to have a  :P smiley after the "nerd plumage" line, and several others throughout the post. The whole tone of the post is WAY more aggressive without that one bit at the start, and I'm sorry for that.

I don't have anger about it, but I do have passion. The difference between AS and BT deeply touches on how I feel about gaming.

Gaming is a group activity, which should be accessible to as many people who want to sit at a table and sling dice as possible, and Battletech (though not as bad as other games of its generation!) has a subtle, patronizing hint of, "If you can't hack memorizing two dozen pages of rules and these ten basic tables, you can't play."

It's exclusionary, and I don't care for that any more.

Compare the X-Wing Miniatures Game rulebook to the first Battletech rulebook. Even including the FAQ, missions, and the rules for Epic ships, it doesn't even break 100 pages of a 8x6 pamphlet size, versus how many pages just in Total Warfare? 250+?

And yet X-Wing is highly intuitive, very tactical, easy to pick up, and fun right out of the box; I've seen fourth-grade kids and a 60-year-old man whose first mini-based game was X-Wing learn it within an hour and play it well within a few weeks.

Saying, "Oh, that's not possible with Battletech" is wrong, because that's Alpha Strike: intuitive, tactical, easy, and fun.

Total Warfare's scale would be much better suited to 1v1 play, and I'd definitely bring my books off the shelf if I ran a Solaris VII game. Bonus: TW and AS share so many concepts it'd be easy to scaffold upwards!

But I'll accept the sacrifice of detail for greater playability any day. If you don't want to do that, I'll understand, but I won't agree.

[cavingjan]

MW:DA was the same as X-Wing. I enjoy MW, AS, and CBT for different reasons.

[Von Ether]

Gaming is a group activity, which should be accessible to as many people who want to sit at a table and sling dice as possible, and Battletech (though not as bad as other games of its generation!) has a subtle, patronizing hint of, "If you can't hack memorizing two dozen pages of rules and these ten basic tables, you can't play."

It's exclusionary, and I don't care for that any more.

That is a danger sometimes. I've have three different groups in three different states refuse to reach me BT/TW because, "We're deep in the Advanced Rules and don't want to dumb down our game to get you up to speed."

Different folks like different things, so the more ways we can celebrate the BT universe, the better.

As a historical side note, some of this rules detail came from a need to create more product back in the '80s, which has evolved into this quirk  of "keep publishing or be a dead game," perception in our hobby.

The current designer for Car Wars admits that Car Wars: Tanks was sort of redundant and Car Wars: Boats was niche. Neither will be part of the new Car Wars.

[iamfanboy]

That is a danger sometimes. I've have three different groups in three different states refuse to reach me BT/TW because, "We're deep in the Advanced Rules and don't want to dumb down our game to get you up to speed."

A long time ago ('96? '97? I was in highschool, but don't remember what grade) I had the opposite problem. Some friends from the anime group wanted to play Battletech at lunchtime with us wargaming geeks, and two of them - no matter what I tried - simply could not handle the game.

It was one of the first things that made me really THINK about gaming and how accessible it should be, but I buried it under a blizzard of bullshit. "Oh, maybe it's not for everyone, I guess that they weren't smart enough," and so on...

But since then I've reconsidered my position. How many people can understand and enjoy playing it is a big part of a game's value, at least to me.

[beachhead1985]

Unit roles are used for Formation Building, not (necessarily) as a "this is how you use this, new person!" tool-tip.  As such, you've fantastically missed the point of why less detail is attractive to new players.  It's not because they can't figure out 'Mech stats, it's because it is more fun to pick up a card and look at six numbers to take in all of the relevant information, then start playing than it is to pick up a record sheet and pore through all of the anywhere from 1 to 16 entries on the equipment table, find the ammunition for it in the critical hit diagram to determine efficient ammunition expenditure, note how many heat sinks are in the legs for standing in water, figure out where the armor is strong or weak, determine the maximum number or combination of which you can fire weapons in order to avoid catastrophically overheating, and then figure out the ranges at which those combinations function effectively.

To wit: when I can build a company and start rolling dice in ten minutes and my opponent who has been playing for maybe three months can do the same while being able to see everything important at a quick glance, they tend to have more fun.

Ah, see I've been playing battletech wrong for 18 years then.

I just bought some minis that looked cool and played with those. Had a blast. Later I made custom designs and played with those when I wanted to win. Given I've lost almost every game I've played, but that's true of everything i've ever done with dice to roll.

I'm just more about the story than winning. My buddy...nope...however many hours it takes to find the best combination of maximum armour and maximum targetting computers is the way he plays. "yeah; bro, I'll wait."

Wouldn't be the first time I've epic-missed the point of something, but I'm also pro at learning my own lessons from what people try and teach me, rather than what they want me to learn. I'm not totally sold on AS as is, but I think the next edition of it will be much, much better.

What? Oh, no, for frick's sake, it was supposed to have a  :P smiley after the "nerd plumage" line, and several others throughout the post. The whole tone of the post is WAY more aggressive without that one bit at the start, and I'm sorry for that.

I don't have anger about it, but I do have passion. The difference between AS and BT deeply touches on how I feel about gaming.

Gaming is a group activity, which should be accessible to as many people who want to sit at a table and sling dice as possible, and Battletech (though not as bad as other games of its generation!) has a subtle, patronizing hint of, "If you can't hack memorizing two dozen pages of rules and these ten basic tables, you can't play."

It's exclusionary, and I don't care for that any more.

Compare the X-Wing Miniatures Game rulebook to the first Battletech rulebook. Even including the FAQ, missions, and the rules for Epic ships, it doesn't even break 100 pages of a 8x6 pamphlet size, versus how many pages just in Total Warfare? 250+?

And yet X-Wing is highly intuitive, very tactical, easy to pick up, and fun right out of the box; I've seen fourth-grade kids and a 60-year-old man whose first mini-based game was X-Wing learn it within an hour and play it well within a few weeks.

Saying, "Oh, that's not possible with Battletech" is wrong, because that's Alpha Strike: intuitive, tactical, easy, and fun.

Total Warfare's scale would be much better suited to 1v1 play, and I'd definitely bring my books off the shelf if I ran a Solaris VII game. Bonus: TW and AS share so many concepts it'd be easy to scaffold upwards!

But I'll accept the sacrifice of detail for greater playability any day. If you don't want to do that, I'll understand, but I won't agree.

I play Attack wing, it's similar to x-Wing; I get the draw, even while the poor detail and ship design annoys me. Were I a real ST fan, I couldn't stand it.

BT just gives me things I can't get elsewhere. Had I the time to game in my life, I'd be playing BT exclusively.

I have my own views on the rule books and I empathize. I own em all now that CC is finally out, but unless a special case comes up last time we played we found the basic rules from the stater set adequate.

I probably shouldn't talk about it too much on here, but owning the PDFs, I copied the relevant sections from TW-IO into a compact aide de memoir.  I haven't had the chance to edit it or add the tables, but basically what I need from what? 1000pgs of rulebook? is right there.

I find the core mechanic behind BT is actually the second fastest wargame I've ever taught anyone after attack wing. Say what you will; it's intuitive. I say this as a guy who struggles over most new boardgames that get forced on me.

Like if epic battle is your battletech, yeah; AS is for you, but for me, frankly my battletech is more like MW characters getting into the cockpit and there the detail matters. Having a PPC or an ERPPC on your scorpion is going to matter a lot.

If I was to identify the core issue at the heart of the game, it isn't that BT is too complex, or that it's a wargame masquerading as a board game for reasons that still baffle me. It's that basically BT is an RPG trying to be a wargame.

[Scotty]

Ah, see I've been playing battletech wrong for 18 years then.

When did I say that? ???  I said it was more attractive for a new player to be able to put together a force and play in minutes with a collection of easily visible and understandable information.

BattleTech record sheets don't really qualify, or I wouldn't have to spend the first ten minutes of every Boot Camp session at Origins/GenCon working through the different parts of a record sheet and what they all mean.

[iamfanboy]

The only way to play a game wrong is to break the rules - and since we're comparing two different rules-sets, you're definitely not playing the game wrong.

But... I don't think that the core mechanic counts as simple.

Even in Total Warfare, there are 30+ possible conditions that could apply to a single attack roll. If it is a cluster weapon, you have to make another roll to see how many clusters hit. If that weapon hits,  it has to make another roll to see WHERE they hit. If it pierces armor, that's another roll to see if you inflict critical damage, then another roll to see what you damage with said critical.

That's between two and four rolls for one non-cluster weapon system, with potentially lots more than that. Even 'lightly' armed units can have 2-5 individual weapon systems, each of which may have a different target number thanks to their unique ranges. That's a lot of die rolling and calculation for a single unit.

People who've played the game for 10+ years don't notice it unless something unusual comes up, but there's a LOT that goes into just attacking.

And the cherry on top is that most of those shots over the course of a game will do nothing but mark some circles off of an enemy's armor box. Yes, we all remember the lucky Gauss headshots, but that's because something - despite all the odds of Battletech being against it! - actually happened. 

If I were to do a Solaris 7 RPG session, I'd use the Total Warfare system - provided I didn't just recreate the setting with Savage Worlds - but for actual, on the tabletop, against a live person? I'll take the simplest.

[Descronan]

But... I don't think that the core mechanic counts as simple.

Simple, yes, but very cumbersome. Roll to hit, roll location, roll for clusters, etc. etc. etc.

That's the main reason I went to AS. One roll, one target number, one chance for a crit. What Battletech was missing was the "Battle". It was "Squadtech" until Battleforce and Alpha Strike. Now it actually feels like a battle. We're doing 12 v 12 with infantry, aerospace fighters, support vehicles, artillery, etc. All of that stuff was unfathomable in Btech rules due to the slowness of play. Now it feels like a true war game.

[jglass]

CBT is a marvelous game.  I don't think any other rules set so perfectly captures the technical, gearhead detail of what's happening in the game.  It can really make you feel the game which is an incredible experience.  But, like iamfanboy said, it's a product of its time.  We think of rule design as a craft now, but back in the 70s and 80s, rules were very much an ends-justify-the-means thing.  Detail was seen as important, because that's where the value was perceived. This resulted in games being built around a web of multiple, complex rules systems that had no relation to each other, and CBT certainly has that in spades.  The designers weren't trying to be jerks, that's just where we were with game design at the time.

Now we live under a new aesthetic, where terms like 'elegant' and 'streamlined' are used to describe ideal games. That doesn't mean all games should be one way of course, but it does help to describe the expectations that are often placed on games.  CBT is a great game, but if left alone it would wither and die just as many great old games have done before it. It's too long.  Even old-school, hardcore gamers have trouble getting it to the table, because of that.  It's rules are too labyrinthine, and even games among old hands can come to a halt as rules are studied and debated. And of course, the rich, detailed BT background can intimidate or confuse people new to the game.  There are just too many barriers to entry, and too many reasons for CBT to sit on the shelf.  It's no mystery why Catalyst made Alpha Strike on the heels of Quick Strike.  It needed to happen.

The need for change is really apparent at convention tournaments.  Walk by any other game tables, and you'll see and hear players laughing or bemoaning their fates as the tides turn against them.  Armies clash, heroes are born in surprising moments, and an entire narrative happens in the course of two hours.  On the CBT tables?  A game ends after two hours, with one player's Vindicator sporting some lost paint.  It happens a lot.

We can still love CBT, bring it out every now and then (it's still best for duels or a little larger), but AS is the game we need to keep BT alive.  It brings in new blood, keeps old hands playing it, and ensures more books and minis get made. And it's a hell of a lot of fun too.

[Son of Kerenski]

Great first post jglass  O0

The need for change is really apparent at convention tournaments.  Walk by any other game tables, and you'll see and hear players laughing or bemoaning their fates as the tides turn against them.  Armies clash, heroes are born in surprising moments, and an entire narrative happens in the course of two hours.  On the CBT tables?  A game ends after two hours, with one player's Vindicator sporting some lost paint.  It happens a lot.

Also arguments over rules and/or the lack of knowledge regarding them. Witnessed first hand. Im often asked whilst playing my own tournament match what a rule is in someone elses game. One of the reasons I haven't played in any the last couple of years.

[wantec]

What 10% is missing?

For me the thing that's missing is the chance for through-armor criticals and one-shot decapitations of enemy 'Mechs.

[NeonKnight]

For me the thing that's missing is the chance for through-armor criticals and one-shot decapitations of enemy 'Mechs.

to be honest I'm of mixed emothions on that.

On the one hand, they are awesome when they happen, like One Shot PPC hitting an annoying Spider then rolling double-6's for the crit to blow the leg off...TAKE THAT!

On the flip side, they can ruin a learning game or even a campaign storyline:

OK Guys, you need to Escort Pilot So-n-so off the field, Enemy needs a 12, double-6, enemy rolls for hit location, Double-6: HEAD SHOT! BOOM!....and there goes the mission objective, in one second.

[Son of Kerenski]

For me the thing that's missing is the chance for through-armor criticals and one-shot decapitations of enemy 'Mechs.

And Im exactly the opposite.

Thats what annoys the hell out of me in BT. Keep it there. Dont bring it into AS.

[theagent]

Always loved the AC/20, ER PPC, and LRM 20s.  So much pain.  How do you deal with the loss of detail?  What's the difference now between a Large Laser boat and one that carries an AC/20?

Do mechs "lose" their weapons in combat?  ie, you lose your AC/20 due to a torso crit or the torso being blown off?  IIRC, some mechs also suffered from low ammo counts, like it can only fire LRMs maybe 4-6 times then it'll be out of ammo.  Obviously, ammo tracking is no longer done in AS, so how do players make this jump between the two concepts?

I'm really on the fence regarding AS, mainly because of the loss of detail.

Fine details are somewhat lost.  But you have those special abilities.  Remember, it's about more than just "Mechs Alpha, Beta & Gamma both do X/Y/Z damage at Short/Medium/Long ranges & have the same armor/structure points".  Mech Alpha might be the Large Laser boat, so its ENE special ability means it ignores any ammo explosion criticals.  Mech Beta had that AC/20, so it has the AC special ability that lets it use special ammo like precision ammo.  And maybe Mech Gamma had dual LRM-20s, so it has both the LRM special ability (also for specialty ammo) & the IF special ability that lets it make indirect fire attacks with the help of a spotter.  Small things that aren't as detailed as Total Warfare gameplay, but enough to differentiate them even if all other stats are identical.

As for losing weapons, IIRC there's a critical result that reduces a Mech's attack values (1 per hit, I believe), which takes the place of losing weapons.  And those units that don't have the "legal" amount of ammo in Total Warfare gameplay reduce their normal damage value for conversion purposes to 75% if they don't have enough ammo (i.e. the Hunchback IIC, with its dual Clan UAC/20s but only 10 rounds total of ammo is a prime example), to approximate the pilots having to be careful with their limited ammo.

To my mind, however, the biggest change you'll notice is how much more lethal it can be for light units, & even some mediums or heavies.  Take, for example, the beloved WSP-1A Wasp, with 2 armor & 2 structure points.  Now, in TW gameplay, it fears the mighty AC/20, but even a single hit from one doesn't guarantee the death of the Wasp; unless you hit the Left Torso to explode the SRM-2 ammo, hit the Head to vaporize the pilot, or core it through the Center Torso from the front, it'll be severely hurt/crippled but still usable if hit anywhere else.  And even, say, a VTR-9B Victor could theoretically have everything hit, only to see the AC/20 "only" take out the Right Leg & Right Torso (with the Right Arm flying over the hill), while the MLs & SRM-4 are 'wasted' on the other parts of the Wasp. In Alpha Strike, however, if the Victor hits the Wasp, the Wasp is 100% dead:  4 points from the Victor takes out the Wasp's armor & structure simultaneously, insta-gibbing it.  So unless you have a light vs. light battle on your hands, your lights & mediums will mostly blow up, with the heavies & assaults actually suffering criticals before erupting into flames.

[wantec]

to be honest I'm of mixed emothions on that.

On the one hand, they are awesome when they happen, like One Shot PPC hitting an annoying Spider then rolling double-6's for the crit to blow the leg off...TAKE THAT!

On the flip side, they can ruin a learning game or even a campaign storyline:

OK Guys, you need to Escort Pilot So-n-so off the field, Enemy needs a 12, double-6, enemy rolls for hit location, Double-6: HEAD SHOT! BOOM!....and there goes the mission objective, in one second.

And Im exactly the opposite.

Thats what annoys the hell out of me in BT. Keep it there. Dont bring it into AS.

While it can be annoying to be on the bad end of one of those hits, that change does impact the value of certain units. Something like a Hunchback, a Hetzer, a Pack Hunter are less of a battlefield threat in Alpha Strike than in TW. My big frustration with Alpha Strike has been how some of the lack of detail has changed the value of units. Ideally, a game played at AS scale would play like one played at TW scale.

[ActionButler]

While it can be annoying to be on the bad end of one of those hits, that change does impact the value of certain units. Something like a Hunchback, a Hetzer, a Pack Hunter are less of a battlefield threat in Alpha Strike than in TW.

I think that I understand this perspective, but those big gun units still pack a lot of umph in Alpha Strike.  A Hunchback will no longer headshot an assault mech to death, true, but what it loses in OSK potential, it gains in taking off chunks of armor that cannot be hidden or ignored.  The damage that an Alpha Strike Hunchback does goes to the same location that every other Alpha Strike weapon already has shot up, or will shoot up.  In effect, it gives up its ability to deliver a rare coup de grace in favor of always throwing tons of damage at the same spot that every other attack also deals damage to.

Now... that being said... I would not be opposed to certain large weapons (AC20s, Gauss Rifles, etc) being allowed an automatic crit roll in Alpha Strike to simulate the potential catastrophic damage. 

[Atlas3060]

The loss in detail is something I'm willing to sacrifice if what I gain back is the usefulness of "bad" designs using "less than optimal" weapons.
As said earlier, designs I would scoff and ignore in Total Warfare I now have to honestly see as a deadly force.
The "trooper" 'Mechs actually are that, well rounded units that can provide good cover for any army.

Meanwhile the big Juggernauts might not have the OSK ability, but that's why there's special pilot abilities in my opinion.
There's a lot more focus on team play rather than dueling and the occasional support from a nearby 'Mech.

That isn't to say I don't like Total Warfare. I do, but if I'm playing a bigger battle outside of a personal duel, I might lean towards Alpha Strike more. Both are useful tools for my tool box. No different than the more abstract game modes fulfilling my desires to go higher up the rank chain.

[Son of Kerenski]

While it can be annoying to be on the bad end of one of those hits, that change does impact the value of certain units. Something like a Hunchback, a Hetzer, a Pack Hunter are less of a battlefield threat in Alpha Strike than in TW. My big frustration with Alpha Strike has been how some of the lack of detail has changed the value of units. Ideally, a game played at AS scale would play like one played at TW scale.

So play with Armor Piercing ammo and get your chance to kill a mech thru armor back.

Armor piercing ammunition applies a +1 to-hit modifier to the attack, whether it is made using only the AC special ability, or as part of the unit’s standard weapon attack. When an attacker using armor piercing ammunition delivers a successful attack, reduce the damage value for the AC attack by 1, to a minimum of 1 damage point. the attacker then rolls 2D6. If the result is 10 or better, the attacker rolls once on the target’s Critical Hit table, even if it still has armor points remaining. this effect occurs whether or not the unit delivers a standard weapon attack or an attack using only its AC special ability. If the target is an aerospace or infantry unit (including battle armor), armor piercing ammunition is treated as standard autocannon fire, neither suffering a damage loss nor delivering the extra chance for a critical hit.

[mike19k]

...

Gaming is a group activity, which should be accessible to as many people who want to sit at a table and sling dice as possible, and Battletech (though not as bad as other games of its generation!) has a subtle, patronizing hint of, "If you can't hack memorizing two dozen pages of rules and these ten basic tables, you can't play."

It's exclusionary, and I don't care for that any more.

I am sorry for your experiences that made you feel that it's exclusionary. What I have found is that Alpha Strike comes across as super patronizing, as it feels like we have to dumb down the game or people will not play it. My local group's only has two games that we play regularly Battletech two weekends a month, and Shadow of Brimstone one weekend a month. My local game store tried (and keeps trying) to get AS off the ground but almost all of our (about a dozen regular players) battletech group can not stand it.

CBT is a marvelous game.  I don't think any other rules set so perfectly captures the technical, gearhead detail of what's happening in the game.  It can really make you feel the game which is an incredible experience.  But, like iamfanboy said, it's a product of its time.  We think of rule design as a craft now, but back in the 70s and 80s, rules were very much an ends-justify-the-means thing.  Detail was seen as important, because that's where the value was perceived. This resulted in games being built around a web of multiple, complex rules systems that had no relation to each other, and CBT certainly has that in spades.  The designers weren't trying to be jerks, that's just where we were with game design at the time.

Now we live under a new aesthetic, where terms like 'elegant' and 'streamlined' are used to describe ideal games. That doesn't mean all games should be one way of course, but it does help to describe the expectations that are often placed on games.  CBT is a great game, but if left alone it would wither and die just as many great old games have done before it. It's too long.  Even old-school, hardcore gamers have trouble getting it to the table, because of that.  It's rules are too labyrinthine, and even games among old hands can come to a halt as rules are studied and debated. And of course, the rich, detailed BT background can intimidate or confuse people new to the game.  There are just too many barriers to entry, and too many reasons for CBT to sit on the shelf.  It's no mystery why Catalyst made Alpha Strike on the heels of Quick Strike.  It needed to happen.

It is a mystery to me why they needed to make it, from what I have read here most people find that AS is much faster playing, but the few times that I have played it took just as long with the same number of units but fewer players and less detail. So from what I have seen I do not understand the draw to it.

...

Saying, "Oh, that's not possible with Battletech" is wrong, because that's Alpha Strike: intuitive, tactical, easy, and fun.

Total Warfare's scale would be much better suited to 1v1 play, and I'd definitely bring my books off the shelf if I ran a Solaris VII game. Bonus: TW and AS share so many concepts it'd be easy to scaffold upwards!

But I'll accept the sacrifice of detail for greater playability any day. If you don't want to do that, I'll understand, but I won't agree.

To me the lack of detail, and what looks like random pick and choose of what rules they do or do not bring into AS from BT makes it unplayable to me. I do kind of agree with you but reversed I do not understand but am willing to agree that to each their own. And in the end it does not matter if I like the game or not, but if others do good for them. I do get the feeling that the powers that be do not care about battletech and only care about AS. The more that the AS fans tell me that it will never happen does nothing to reduce my fears. And the way that most hardcore AS fans "point" this out to me comes across as very demeaning, and if anything turns me off even more.

...

We can still love CBT, bring it out every now and then (it's still best for duels or a little larger), but AS is the game we need to keep BT alive.  It brings in new blood, keeps old hands playing it, and ensures more books and minis get made. And it's a hell of a lot of fun too.

I find it interesting how much I hear that BT is only good for "duels or a little larger" and that AS is for company on company or larger. Now maybe my local group is not normal (I do not know but every group I have played in has been more or less the same) but we normally do full company (10 to 12 mech and 2 fighters) on two WOB Level II's in about four to five hours. Several of our players know almost no rules, they are just there to roll dice (we have to figure out their to hit numbers and all). We had one new player join our group coming from AS but did not stick around long.

While it can be annoying to be on the bad end of one of those hits, that change does impact the value of certain units. Something like a Hunchback, a Hetzer, a Pack Hunter are less of a battlefield threat in Alpha Strike than in TW. My big frustration with Alpha Strike has been how some of the lack of detail has changed the value of units. Ideally, a game played at AS scale would play like one played at TW scale.

I agree that I want it to play like BT, and like I said above the rules that they pick to include and exclude drive me nuts.

So play with Armor Piercing ammo and get your chance to kill a mech thru armor back.

    Armor piercing ammunition applies a +1 to-hit modifier to the attack, whether it is made using only the AC special ability, or as part of the unit’s standard weapon attack. When an attacker using armor piercing ammunition delivers a successful attack, reduce the damage value for the AC attack by 1, to a minimum of 1 damage point. the attacker then rolls 2D6. If the result is 10 or better, the attacker rolls once on the target’s Critical Hit table, even if it still has armor points remaining. this effect occurs whether or not the unit delivers a standard weapon attack or an attack using only its AC special ability. If the target is an aerospace or infantry unit (including battle armor), armor piercing ammunition is treated as standard autocannon fire, neither suffering a damage loss nor delivering the extra chance for a critical hit.

This is a case in point they add a +1 to hit if you are using armor piercing ammo, but if you have a targeting computer they do not add a -1 to hit but instead have it do more damage (but only if you hit). And then they have it do less damage, why? In BT it does have the +1 to hit, but does not do less damage, so I do not understand, why they picked what part of the rules to use and what part to ignore.

Always loved the AC/20, ER PPC, and LRM 20s.  So much pain.  How do you deal with the loss of detail?  What's the difference now between a Large Laser boat and one that carries an AC/20?

Do mechs "lose" their weapons in combat?  ie, you lose your AC/20 due to a torso crit or the torso being blown off?  IIRC, some mechs also suffered from low ammo counts, like it can only fire LRMs maybe 4-6 times then it'll be out of ammo.  Obviously, ammo tracking is no longer done in AS, so how do players make this jump between the two concepts?

I'm really on the fence regarding AS, mainly because of the loss of detail.

So I guess getting back to the original question. I have tried the game half a dozen times and every time did not enjoy it, the lack of detail ruins it for me. I think that the game is just fine, but it is not battletech in the slightest to me, if it was released as its own game (not affiliated at all with battletech) I would have probably liked it , but without any of the feel (to me at least) of the game it is supposed to represent makes it unplayable.

[wantec]

This is a case in point they add a +1 to hit if you are using armor piercing ammo, but if you have a targeting computer they do not add a -1 to hit but instead have it do more damage (but only if you hit). And then they have it do less damage, why? In BT it does have the +1 to hit, but does not do less damage, so I do not understand, why they picked what part of the rules to use and what part to ignore.

I think the damage reduction was because the specialty AC ammo bins only have half as many rounds as standard ammo bins. In the conversion rules to get from TW stats to AS ones, if you have less than a certain number of shots per weapon the damage value of that weapon is reduced. The damage reduction must have been the best way to account for specialty AC ammo having less shots per ton.

[jglass]

I am sorry for your experiences that made you feel that it's exclusionary. What I have found is that Alpha Strike comes across as super patronizing, as it feels like we have to dumb down the game or people will not play it. My local group's only has two games that we play regularly Battletech two weekends a month, and Shadow of Brimstone one weekend a month. My local game store tried (and keeps trying) to get AS off the ground but almost all of our (about a dozen regular players) battletech group can not stand it.

The meta and gameplay can be quite robust when fully explored (in fact one of the things that has impressed me so much, is just how great the meta can be despite losing the detail of TW). I have noticed that some new AS players come to it from TW, and still play, or rather try to play, as if it was TW.  That will usually let you down.

I do get the feeling that the powers that be do not care about battletech and only care about AS. The more that the AS fans tell me that it will never happen does nothing to reduce my fears. And the way that most hardcore AS fans "point" this out to me comes across as very demeaning, and if anything turns me off even more.

I get that, and think you might be right.  I'd guess the classic game will always stick around, but I suspect the degree to which it does will be significantly reduced over time. The devs will naturally follow the money, and based on their publishing choices it looks like AS has been very successful.

I agree that I want it to play like BT, and like I said above the rules that they pick to include and exclude drive me nuts.

I couldn't agree more.  Some parts of AS are brilliantly boiled down, but there still areas where I wonder why the devs felt the need for so much detail. It breaks the intuitiveness of the overall system rules. It's still far easier to digest than TW (at least for me).

[Lboydmsw]

Classic Battletech is simply too rules heavy for a lot of people.  This is especially true for younger gamers (See also, not all younger gamers).  Granted that the full introductory rules are not as complicated as things can get but it is still very rules heavy and has a considerable amount of charts and tables to review.  It is very discouraging for people.  I have a regular table top gaming group who pretty much just straight up refuses to play Battletech.  I tried to get some of them to play the "quick start" intro rules that came in the intro box and they felt that even that was too complex to be enjoyable. (Mind you this group plays some really complicated and long drawn out games)

I like Classic Battletech and play it semi regularly but with a completely different group of people.  I have played all different sized games, from mech on mech all the way up to around company on company. I even once did a Battalion on Battalion game but basically, three to four players on a team were going simultaneously. 

I find Battletch most enjoyable under 2 conditions 1) everyone knows the rules well enough that the game can keep moving.  2) idol side chatter that is not related to the game in progress is kept to a minimum as to not slow game play or interfere.  Battletech can be a slow game and anything that makes it go slower can be damaging.  In fact if I have a really slow and grinding game, it will result in me not touching the game for a few months afterwards.  When everyone is focused and knows what is going on, it can be a ton of fun with a lot of memorable moments. However, I refuse to play a game that is above lance on lance if the other player is not very familiar with the rules because it is just going to take too long. 

I enjoy Alpha Strike but have found that some of the local players who are a bit older and started when it was still Battledriods or freshly retitled Battletech tend to be less favorable towards Alpha Strike, which is purely from nostalgia interference.  I think Alpha Strike does a great job at streamline the game while still keeping a "Battletech feel". It is certainly different but I have really enjoyed it every time I played.  It scratched that itch while not sinking my whole day.  The only exception to this was the first time all of the older local guys tried it out at our game store and there was so much chatter about how it wasn't as good, or didn't make sense, or didn't feel like Battletech that the game went on forever.

I say it is nostalgia interference or "nostalgia butt hurt" because a lot of the local players in my area also play warhammer, warmachine, flames of war, or bolt action because it is "easier" (or at least less complex) to play then Battletech and games tend to take less time (or you can have a really big battle in an equivalent amount of time) but they then say that Alpha Strike is "wrong" for some reason.  However, newer and younger players who do not have experience with the Classic game tend to really enjoy Alpha Strike from what little I have seen.

I like both games but for different reasons. I love that Alpha Strike has a "Battletech" feel to it even if it isn't a direct sliming down of the rules. Alpha Strike is a good move for the company, it has a nice Battletech flavor while being not too far off from modern miniature wargames. It appeals to younger players while being similar in style to wargames which a lot of veteran Battletech players are also involved in or have moved on to. The next move is to do a Kickstarter for Iron Wind to transition it's Battletech line to plastic the way Reaper has done with their Bones line at this point. That would drop the price point of getting into Alpha Strike (and by extension Battletech) considerably which would be a good incentive for people to get involved.  It would also make it easier for people to span different eras.  I understand that most people have their preferred era to play in but I honestly belief that one of the major reasons people won't play outside of their "favorite era" is because they don't have the minis and it is too expensive to justify the expense when Battletech isn't that wide spread like say warhammer or warmachine is.

With all of that in mind, I still see younger players interested in learning about Classic Battletech when they see it being played.  However, because of the complexity and pace of the typical game most don't stick around. (Also outdated aesthetics on some Minis adds insult to injury)

[Son of Kerenski]

This is a case in point they add a +1 to hit if you are using armor piercing ammo, but if you have a targeting computer they do not add a -1 to hit but instead have it do more damage (but only if you hit). And then they have it do less damage, why? In BT it does have the +1 to hit, but does not do less damage, so I do not understand, why they picked what part of the rules to use and what part to ignore.

You also have to consider that not every weapon on a mech is tied into a TC. Some have Missiles so its not accurate to give a blanket -1 to all AS mechs with a TC.

Otherwise you are just further convoluting the rules.

[mike19k]

You also have to consider that not every weapon on a mech is tied into a TC. Some have Missiles so its not accurate to give a blanket -1 to all AS mechs with a TC.

Otherwise you are just further convoluting the rules.

I understand that not every weapon is tied into the targeting computer, also not all can use armor piercing ammo so it looks like you do not have a point. But if you are going to make rules that let some of your weapons have a +1, why not let some have a -1? So it is not "convoluting the rules" it is saying that they are picking and choosing what rules that they incorporate.

[iamfanboy]

I am sorry for your experiences that made you feel that it's exclusionary. What I have found is that Alpha Strike comes across as super patronizing, as it feels like we have to dumb down the game or people will not play it.

If I was firing an LRM-20 and rolled a 7, how many missiles would I hit with?

Did you know the answer without looking at the table?

Then you've internalized the rules, memorized them to the same degree I have - I haven't played an actual game of Battletech since 2008, and yet I still knew without looking that it was 12.

THAT'S what speeds up Battletech and makes it playable: rote memorization. Now, it speeds up pretty much every game, but no other modern wargame has multiple tables with a dozen or more modifiers or results to memorize - Warmachine DOES have its Attack modifier table, but even that is just one table with 15 entries.

And lots of people can't memorize those tables, and get tired of looking back and forth from the cheatsheet to the table to consult the to-hit modifier table, then the cluster table, then the location table, then maybe the crit table... all with no real effect on the game for at least the half of the game.

Those players are excluded.

It is a mystery to me why they needed to make it, from what I have read here most people find that AS is much faster playing, but the few times that I have played it took just as long with the same number of units but fewer players and less detail.

Seriously, you don't want to admit why they made it? Then let me spell it out for you: Evolve or die.

Alpha Strike isn't competing with Battletech, it's competing with Malifaux. And Warmachine. And Infinity. And Warhammer 40k. And X-Wing. All of which offer a smooth gameplay experience without needing to memorize 4-9 different tables for a fun time, and which have readily visible causes and effects - when I aim Misaki at Pandora and trigger Assassinate, I KNOW he has to discard two cards or let Pandora die. When I trigger Maddox1's feat, I KNOW the schwerpunkt moment has come.

Battletech... is boring. It's boring. It's boring to learn, it's boring to play, and who would want to waste time on it when they could be flying Darth Vader at Han Solo and making pew-pew noises as they reveal dials?

Alpha Strike is not boring. There's clear consequence and reward for every move and every failed roll, and it doesn't require a lot of special rules like TACs and PSRs to make things happen while you wait for armor to gradually get sanded down.

I do get the feeling that the powers that be do not care about battletech and only care about AS.

I'm not going to bullshit you: I think they care more about Alpha Strike. They may care about Battletech, but AS is more important, because it's the future of their company at stake.

I find it interesting how much I hear that BT is only good for "duels or a little larger" and that AS is for company on company or larger. Now maybe my local group is not normal (I do not know but every group I have played in has been more or less the same) but we normally do full company (10 to 12 mech and 2 fighters) on two WOB Level II's in about four to five hours. Several of our players know almost no rules, they are just there to roll dice (we have to figure out their to hit numbers and all). We had one new player join our group coming from AS but did not stick around long.

Kinda thought you were BS'ing me above, now I know. I've done a BATTALION on BATTALION Alpha Strike game, with two new players (each with a company or so of 'Mechs), in 4~ hours. Company v. Company takes maybe two hours.

And I didn't have to mollycoddle any of my players to do it. They quickly grasped what was a good and bad idea, understood the capabilities of each of their units at a single glance, and was enjoying the game within 15 minutes of explanation.

So I guess getting back to the original question. I have tried the game half a dozen times and every time did not enjoy it, the lack of detail ruins it for me. I think that the game is just fine, but it is not battletech in the slightest to me, if it was released as its own game (not affiliated at all with battletech) I would have probably liked it , but without any of the feel (to me at least) of the game it is supposed to represent makes it unplayable.

Alpha Strike is Battletech, just distilled. It gets you the same thing (giant stompy robots versus other giant stompy robots), but does it a helluva lot faster. It has all the same mechanics as Battletech, just taken to their logical simplification point instead of letting them remain complicated for no reason other than "this is the way we've always done it."

After all, what is "Heat" but the idea of gaining a short-term advantage in firepower for a handicap later on? Why have two different skill numbers when one can do the job? Why have a bunch of different weapons with weapon ranges that can wildly vary or come so close it's easy to confuse when the point is "This weapon is short-range, this weapon is medium-range, this weapon is long-range?"

I do understand where you're coming from, but I disagree. Your words remind me of an old, OLD review of D&D 3rd: "This isn't the game I know and love." He was mostly complaining about the removal of THAC0 and how it made the game 'too easy' for players. Why should a game's rules be hard for players to understand? 

[Son of Kerenski]

I understand that not every weapon is tied into the targeting computer, also not all can use armor piercing ammo so it looks like you do not have a point. But if you are going to make rules that let some of your weapons have a +1, why not let some have a -1? So it is not "convoluting the rules" it is saying that they are picking and choosing what rules that they incorporate.

I do have a point but youve obviously missed it.

The damage an AS mech does if for all its weapons. Missiles included. So again it doesnt make sense to give it a -1 to hit.

AP ammo as originally written in TW is only usable by standard and light ACs.

Only mechs with Standard and Light ACs in Alpha Strike have a AC special ability... therefore are the only ones capable of using AP ammo. Its a special ability for that reason.

Pretty simple stuff really.

[Lboydmsw]

Battletech... is boring. It's boring. It's boring to learn, it's boring to play, and who would want to waste time on it when they could be flying Darth Vader at Han Solo and making pew-pew noises as they reveal dials?

This is the only statement that I would disagree with but that's personal opinion.  I k now a lot of people who find it boring because of how detailed and complicated it is.  Rules heavy does not always equal fun and the amount of charts is super intimidating for people but I personally find it fun to play.  I really, really like Alpha Strike though.....as again I agree with everything else you said.

I do understand where you're coming from, but I disagree. Your words remind me of an old, OLD review of D&D 3rd: "This isn't the game I know and love." He was mostly complaining about the removal of THAC0 and how it made the game 'too easy' for players. Why should a game's rules be hard for players to understand?

  This, so much this.  I think that there is nothing wrong with having a game that is easy to understand and easy to get into, the easier a game is to grasp the easier it is to get people into.  The amount of rules that battletech has is a huge barrier for most people. Just as 3rd edition was a natural evolution, alpha strike is the natural evolution of Battletech.

[NeonKnight]

I do understand where you're coming from, but I disagree. Your words remind me of an old, OLD review of D&D 3rd: "This isn't the game I know and love." He was mostly complaining about the removal of THAC0 and how it made the game 'too easy' for players. Why should a game's rules be hard for players to understand?

Oh God! That's the one thing I remember trying to explain to people why it was a good thing.

IT WAS THE SAME DURN NUMBER THAT NEEDED TO BE ROLLED!

Instead of going from AC 10 was the worst and then GOING DOWN to 0 and ultimately into the negatives, the chart simply said, OK, AC 10 is still the worst but now goes UP instead, so No Armor + Shield was now AC 11 instead of AC 9. And for a 1st level character, to hit this with no bonuses would require a d20 roll of....11 EITHER WAY!

But personally, I find it funny how much people cry about how AS is killing BATTLETECH and yet, D&D minis survived as an offshoot of D&D for years and never replaced D&D  8)

[Lorcan Nagle]

Oh God! That's the one thing I remember trying to explain to people why it was a good thing.

IT WAS THE SAME DURN NUMBER THAT NEEDED TO BE ROLLED!

That'd be like someone complaining when BattleTech went from base to-hit number based on range, + or - 1 per number above or below 4 of your gunnery skill, to gunnery skill with a range modifier.

The to-hit number didn't change, but it became so much easier to work out and explain.

[NeonKnight]

That'd be like someone complaining when BattleTech went from base to-hit number based on range, + or - 1 per number above or below 4 of your gunnery skill, to gunnery skill with a range modifier.

The to-hit number didn't change, but it became so much easier to work out and explain.

Oh, I know.

I remember one pretty much needed the tables for 1st and 2nd edition to figure out out what die result on needed.

Now:

Me: What's your AC
You: 32
Me: Hmmm, I have a 14 to hit, so....*rolls dice*  17! 17 + 14 = 31...Miss :(

[iamfanboy]

Grognards of all stripes can be summed up in a single sentence:

People don't like change.

We want things to be familiar, the way we "remember" it, not knowing that our own memories are false; our brains delete or edit the difficulties we faced, making them seem smaller and easily overcome in retrospect and amping up the current problems to truly epic proportions.

The only problem is that this collides with the stone-cold, immutable fact that change is inevitable. It is going to happen. There is sometimes a regressive backlash when change occurs and the people who were made comfortable by the new way don't pay enough attention to the grievances of those who were made uncomfortable, but that doesn't stop the tides of change for long.

Hm? Alpha Strike? D&D? Oh, sorry, was thinking about something else. Events of the... last few days... have forced me to be somewhat philosophical.


Yes, Alpha Strike loses a lot of detail compared to Battletech. On the other hand, it starts on a simple basement level where we can gradually add more detail as time goes by - pilot abilities, formations, variable damage, REARx/y, Quirks, and so on.

Comparing it to the shift from D&D 2 to 3 is okay, but a better comparison would be going from the 3d6 attribute system to one that is ONLY the +/-; let's say a system where you have a limit of +5 and you can add up to -3 to make your positive Attribute total +8. So a Paladin might have STR+2/DEX-1/CON+3/WIS+1/INT-2/CHA+2.

That cuts the confusing cruft down even further, but would it still be D&D without a 3d6 system? To some, yes; D&D is more about the setting than the mechanics. To others, no; that 3d6 roll is a part of the tradition of D&D and losing it would mean losing that connection back to Gygax's first xeroxed book.

[Von Ether]

That'd be like someone complaining when BattleTech went from base to-hit number based on range, + or - 1 per number above or below 4 of your gunnery skill, to gunnery skill with a range modifier.

The to-hit number didn't change, but it became so much easier to work out and explain.

My god, I forgot that happened. Yet how many TW players use base numbers now?

The attraction of detail, beyond the pride of mastery and rote memorization, is that a player falls in love with a shtick.

Some love OSK, some love LAMs, some love ignoring tiny Lights as they "chessmaster" an Atlas' movement and arcs of fire, and - I kid you not - some love how boats do a ballet of death on a hex board lake.

This is their CBT. It maybe different than their friend's BT, but that's how headcanon goes.

When AS streamlines out their pet trick, it "fails" to be Battletech-y enough for them.

It makes me curious how many of those players would sigh and pack up their figs if TW was retooled to cut out their shtick?

I know at least three guys who already did so over LAMs. And Lord help a gamer who brought up the words "Battletech" with ear shot of them. I heard the same LAM complaints at least five times a year for years.

[glitterboy2098]

Alpha strike is a LAM paradise, to be honest. the rules in the AS companion make them so easy to play.. but keep them from being all-powerful uber-units. you still have to be clever and use your different modes to maximize the advantages of each. try to fight in airmech mode and your turn into Skeet very quickly.

[Daemion]

Now... that being said... I would not be opposed to certain large weapons (AC20s, Gauss Rifles, etc) being allowed an automatic crit roll in Alpha Strike to simulate the potential catastrophic damage.

I really like this. Though, I wonder if there would be a way for more heavily armored units to withstand that kind of hit once or twice. Maybe have a 'heavy armor' box next to the relevant crits, and it can survive that kind of hit as long as the box isn't knocked off?

This would make for a minor secondary weapon class - devastating.

I was always thinking that if people wanted to, they could have each standard attack make a crit chance roll similar to AeroTech when doing damage on Armor, versus the automatic status effect to open internals. This, to me would simulate damage piling onto a particular location by chance.

I think that the game is just fine, but it is not battletech in the slightest to me, if it was released as its own game (not affiliated at all with battletech) I would have probably liked it , but without any of the feel (to me at least) of the game it is supposed to represent makes it unplayable.

I had this same problem with MechWarrior Dark Age (of Destruction). On it's own, it was just fine. But, tied with BattleTech, and having been a dedicated BattleTech Player, there were aspects of the dial system that just didn't catch the true random nature of BT damage. The two were not the same.

For me, Alpha Strike is very much like that. It looks to be a nifty little game, but it still doesn't capture what I grew up understanding Armored Combat in the 31st century to be.

Although, anymore, I will agree that Classic BattleTech really is a Roleplaying combat system. Heck, the RPG defaults to that when people are 'augmented' for combat.

[Daemion]

We want things to be familiar, the way we "remember" it, not knowing that our own memories are false; our brains delete or edit the difficulties we faced, making them seem smaller and easily overcome in retrospect and amping up the current problems to truly epic proportions.

The only problem is that this collides with the stone-cold, immutable fact that change is inevitable. It is going to happen. There is sometimes a regressive backlash when change occurs and the people who were made comfortable by the new way don't pay enough attention to the grievances of those who were made uncomfortable, but that doesn't stop the tides of change for long.

It's not how I 'remember' it. For me it's all about how the combat plays out in my mind. I like BT because I don't have to do as much imaginary hurdles to effectively write a small paragraph about how an AC shot took out my PPC on the right arm that turn. It's easy to visualize.

Then, when you break down the numbers and think about what that means in real life, you start working backwards from 'why are lasers missing so much? Aren't they like insta-hits?' to 'So, the mech jinks, and combined with the magic armor, the shot landed on the left arm instead of going for the obvious center of mass, and didn't do any lasting damage - just burnt the paint'.

(Can you tell I'm a story-teller by nature?)

You read the novels and even the writers break down how shots went and obviously pull from the combat system. You get to see the game played out to some degree in the story!

This defines combat in the BattleTech Universe. It's not just robots fighting robots. You can go Adeptus Titanicus, or maybe MonsterPocalypse, or RoboRally, and get robots fighting robots. Heck, RoboTech is an alternative, or HeavyGear/Jovian Chronicles. How about Warmachine? Or Star Wars minis during the Clone Wars. Droids are robots, too.  :( ^-^

OOOH! And, who couldn't forget CAV? ClickTech on a sheet! Great looking minis.

You change any of the mechanics, then you change the nature of image generated in the mind's eye. That's why I have the hardest time accepting anything that doesn't mimic the system which defines the universe as far as I'm concerned. The story is not the same once you completely remove something. Locations is a something. Variable armor across a body is a something. Partial cover dealing damage on the PUNCH table is a something.

MW:DA, the dial was the same every time. You didn't get health reduction without losing weapons, though in BT it's possible to donut a Mech without touching any of the other systems.

Alpha Strike - if you move so fast, you always get x movement mod. No crits until all (technically most of?) the armor is gone! It's not possible to torso twist (since all the weapons are combined into one stat). 3 stander BT turns means you hit all three times or you don't hit at all, with a single attack roll in an AS turn.

What kind of narrative can I write off a standard AS engagement without taking the time to brainstorm? How can I get it to match up with what a typical Classic BattleTech engagement would give out? Sure, I don't mind a challenge, but how many liberties would I have to take to get a Centurion's AC and LRMs all connecting over three volleys in 30 seconds when most of the rest of the time they're not 'connecting'?

Both games suffer from a dichotomy or schizophrenia of scale. Whereas Classic BT is rather consistent. For someone who obsesses over scale because of the 'all the toys in my toy box on the same table (1)' attitude I have, this is a something.

I had a campaign I was running with a hero unit under the BMR rules structure, and I tried transitioning to Total Warfare for the Dark Age portion of that timeline. Because of how things had changed regarding infantry and other things, it didn't mesh with how I saw things working for the original campaign and how things might have pro- or regressed from that point. So, that campaign went back to the BMR. But, things about the Total Warfare changes I liked got ported over to another campaign, and got some modifications after a play over with my friends. (Random motive table is really neat, but the spread of damage over 4 locations instead of 2? Had to go. Hovers needed tweaked, so that they weren't gimped on speed and quickly rendered into turrets - One or the other, not both. A hefty revision to how infantry deal and take damage. Stuff like that.)

So, it's not a matter of 'It's not the same'. For me, it doesn't tell the same story. Big difference.

Like MW:DA, it would be really neat if AS were a game with giant anime Mecha, each only sporting a single big gun, like is typical with Japanese style Mecha. The single hit to the armor and structure make me think of them.

There are things that could have been done to Make Alpha Strike emulate the story aspect of BT combat and still make it simple enough for a quick game. I'm absolutely sure of this. Part of the problem isn't the style, it's the aspect of game design. Would relegating crits or location seeking to a deck of cards still be BattleTech? Or, is it only BattleTech as long as there are only multiples of chance cubes involved in every aspect of chance resolution?

[greasyspoon]

This has been a very interesting thread.  Bit of History I started with BattleTech right when it switched from Battle Droids.  I was never a heavy player but always had either a board game, video game or megamek game every few months for many years.  Now my Son is getting into games and I get to play more often now.  We started classic BattleTech but to a 10 to 13 year old it was a bit slow and could not hold his interest. This year we switched to alpha strike and he really likes it.  I was just ok with it.  The loss of detail did bug me but getting to play BattleTech again was great.

After a few games, it bugged me that medium mechs could be knocked out with 2-3 hits and light mechs even faster.  But after the reading the aerospace rule it got me to thinking of alpha strike in a more abstract way.  This really help me over my issues coming from classic BattleTech. I think of the armor point and structure points as the “good” hits.  Even on the turns where you roll and “miss” there are still hits that don’t do major damage.  Just like the hits in Classic that 5 point of damage to leg armor when the center torso is exposed. You hit but in the big picture it does nothing to the mech.  And the opposite is true as well.  When my Dashi did 9 damage to his locust (with 7 armor and structure).  I see an alpha strike doing great rolls and all hitting center torso.  “All” the weapon system hit just right.  Because if you think about half the hits in classic BattleTech are just to burn though the armor and 4 or 5 good hits are what killed the mechs.

Once this clicked for me I have enjoyed my games quite a bit more and even started buying new mechs for bigger battles.  Where before most games were lance vs lance at most.  Now we can do 2 company vs company battles in the same amount of time.  But to be honest we don’t get the dramatic moments like classic where someone gets head capped or the one legged mech running around with a PPC and machine gun.  They are different games but the feel is very close for me.

Just my two cents.

[Daemion]

For someone who obsesses over scale because of the 'all the toys in my toy box on the same table (1)' attitude I have, this is a something.

Oh, yeah. I ran out of time, so I didn't put in my little footnote:

(1) = I grew up with very few of any given single toy out of the 80s and 90s. Never a complete collection. So, when I played, I played with what I had, and mixed and matched. Being a fan of Sci-fi and fantasy in general, I look at these franchises the same way. There will be times I want Mechs to face off against AT-AT's or LAMs against Valkyries, or Chippewas against X-Wings and Tie Fighters.

One of the reason's I'm big into cross-overs. But, the engineer in me wants to be relatively faithful to the capacities that each element portrays from its parent tapestry, or box. Thus, having something that defines, even roughly, how something works that can be identifiable with something in another, or in, say, real life, is important.

That's another reason why the depiction of combat in the mind's eye for one thing will be drastically different once you change the mechanics under which it operates.

[mcjomar]

I have yet to test out the game, but I've grabbed a PDF (I'll grab a DTF at a later date) and it seems interesting.
Based on the responses from this thread, here's my take:

I started in Battletech via the medium of MechCommander Gold.
I later got the chance to play MechCommander 2, and then MechWarrior 4, and the expansions.
I eventually played most of MW3, and half of MW2 Mercs, as well as all of MW2 on PS1.

Somewhere along the way I stumbled over IWM and bought a bunch of minis, plus some rulebooks, and eventually an intro box (later a couple of the 25th anniversary ones).

It seems to me that the comparison of AS vs CBT is this - CBT is the Mechwarrior games, but with World of Tanks accuracy for shooting. Meanwhile, AS as described in this thread and elsewhere strikes me as being more akin to Mechcommander 2 - maybe MCG depending on how the campaign system (?) shakes out.

As such, it seems like they're each worth enjoying on their own merits if treated that way - in my head in CBT I'm one of the guys on the board, issuing orders to the others, and trying to get my lance through the mission, and if "I" get taken out, I'm left hoping the AI can finish the job and rescue my ejection seat from the battlefield (I wish the MW games had tried this method, rather than just doing mission over if the player died, even when the AI was still alive). By the sound of it in AS I gotta pretend I'm an Operation Bulldog Mech Commander of the Fed Suns (or whatever your headcanon wants I guess), and that I need to manage my forces across each battle of company vs whatever to ensure I make it out the other side. Preferably with my unit intact (or at least repairable). Does this sound right?

I've got a local gamer in my FLGS who has been heavily burned by MechWarrior: Tactics AND the Dark Ages clicky game, and I'm not sure that CBT would be enough (even if I described it as being the equivalent of Necromunda from 40k, and honestly not as bad as MW:T), while it sounds as if maybe I could get a game of AS with him, and he might enjoy it from a 40k perspective?

[Tai Dai Cultist]

I agree with the opinions expressed upthread about there is not so much a loss of detail in AS as there is a change in granularity.  Yes, you lose the impact of headcapping & getting a gyro-smashing TAC. But you gain the entire world of lance level tactics (and up..).  Honestly, I feel CBT has a niche that is dubious at best. Want detailed mech on mech battle? Use Solaris VII rules.  Want lance on lance or bigger scale? Use alpha strike.

Also, as mentioned upthread, the lance should be considered the common denominator in AS rather than the individual mech.  A mech losing a limb or major weapon in CBT is analgous to a lance losing a mech in AS.

And absolutely I agree with the sentiment of AS games being a better representation of the prosecution of battle as described by canon than CBT games.