Autocannons
Overweight and Undercompetitive. This was basically my starting point for the "BT Second Edition" thought experiment, in no small part because the idea originated in the Autocannon thread.
What would I do with Autocannons?
As you said, today they are seen as overweight and undercompetitive. Personally, I'd be tempted to reduce the size and mass by half, but reduce the ammo count per ton...by a LOT. As in , an AC 20 fire 1.25 tons of ammo per burst. Light guns, heavy ammo. That might be a little too far, but it depends on how much tweaking you want to do. A simpler tweak? -1 To Hit, Autocannons can mimic any lower class AC and they can fire flak, flechette and standard ammo. Really, the ammo needs to be adjusted way down for realism, but this is a game. Other changes? ACs deal triple damage vs buildings
Gauss?
The only change I'd make would be to double the ammo for the Clan version, or double the ammo for the IS version, triple it for the Clans and, as you suggest, insist on Power AMPs for ICE units. Low heat but high power. And give them a ceramic or ceramet coating to deal with the heat of being used. Yeah - they need a heat shield.
Machine Guns?
No damage to mechs or Conventional vehicles. 3D6 ammo use vs support vehicles.
Missiles?
Again, Artemis IV could probably be built in for the Clan version, 0.5 tons for the IS. There isn't really a lot to do unless you want to try and rejig them into something more akin to current missiles. The only major change would be to get rid of the Apollo FCS for MRMs and change how ATMs work - no more multiple loads and while you still roll five missile clusters, each missile does 1 damage at long range, 2 at medium and 3 at short. Deadly, so it'd need a little more balancing somewhere.
Energy Weapons?
Again, depends on how much of a tweak. Personally, I'd make them far heavier but they are OK in the current system. Lasers would be the only weapon capable of underwater fire other than Torpedoes, and they'd treat buildings as infantry....they do some damage but they tend to just go straight through without hitting anything important
C3 systems?
Forget the awkward counting range from multiple units. It provides a simple straightforward battlenet with a built in battlecomputer. In other words? It combines all the sensory date from equipped units into one making the sensors more sensitive and the fire control more accurate. +1 on initiative and -1TN to all long range fire.
I'm sure a lot of people would immediately go for the Autocannon's weight if they had the chance. However, I kind of liked my "quick fix" over on the Autocannon thread, and since I've actually play-tested them live a bit I figured it's best to go with something I know that works. So my Autocannon changes for "BT Second Edition" are:
AC/2 (All Variants)
• Heat->0
• Min Range->0
• Ammo/ton->60
AC/5 (All Variants)
• Min Range->0
• Ammo/ton->24
Vanilla, Protomech & Light Autocannon
• Modified Rapid Fire rules: +1 to-hit when double tapping, rolls on Cluster Hit Table, Jams on 2 (Unjammable)
Ultra Autocannon
• Rolls to-hit per shot when double-tapping, no jamming.
LB-X Autocannon
• Modified Rapid Fire rules: +1 to-hit when double tapping, rolls on Cluster Hit Table, Jams on 2 (Unjammable)
• Rapid-Fired Cluster Ammo loses -1 to-hit bonus, gains -2 cluster malus
My reasoning for these was as follows:
The /2 is weak for its weight and heavy to begin with, and it's actually not particularly cold if you consider what little damage it does (.5 heat-damage ratio is pretty "normal"). I think no one will mourn the loss of heat. So Ax that.
The /2 and /5 are both rather heavy, so they don't need the minimum ranges as a crutch too. Ax those.
ACs in general are a bit weak. How can I make them better without actually touching damage directly? My answer: Make autocannons... auto. Give them a lesser version of Ultra's "rapid fire" autocannons. And the LB-X too (but I was concerned that would make Clusters a bit powerful, so I nerfed that munition specifically in "auto mode".
That solves the AC issues pretty well, but the Ultras are getting slightly encroached now. But I think they needed to be buffed up anyways. So make Ultra's shtick "Like Autocannons, but better" with an even more favourable version of double-tapping than they already have. They're not "Ultra Autocannons" for nothing.
I also wanted to make Autocannons have 120 damage per ton of ammo instead of 100, but that was less of a balance thing than it was a matter of taste.
So ends the Autocannon Tweaks
Gauss RiflesAnother ballistic weapon, except they're actually pretty good. Really, there's not much reason to change them, they're perfectly competitive.
I did so anyways.
All Gauss Rifles require Power Amplifiersif unit does not have a fusion/fission engine
Standard
• Ammo/ton->9
Light
• Damage->9
• Ammo/ton->15
• Heat->0
• Minimum Range->1
Heavy
• Ammo/ton->6
Improved Heavy
• Ammo/ton->6
HAG
• HAG-40->HAG-45
• HAG-30->HAG-35
• HAG-20->HAG-25
o Ammo/ton->5
• HAG-10->HAG-15
o Ammo/ton->9
AP Gauss Rifle
• Ammo/ton->45
Magshot
• Ammo/ton->60
My reasoning for these changes is as follows:
Gauss Rifles have to put out a bunch of energy in a very short amount of time to work. That means Capacitors (what this game calls "Power Amplifiers"). Indirectly this also makes Autocannons slightly more favourable over Gauss in ICE or FCE vehicles. Unfortunately there may be some canon vehicles that would need a redesign due to the added weight...
I switched the Autocannons from 100 to 120 damage/ton. But I think it would make sense if the Gauss Rifle's ammo has a higher "damage density" since the Gauss rounds don't need to waste weight carrying the power and use propulsion from power in the engine. So let's increase it to a new target of 135 damage/ton for Gauss weapons.
A lot of people don't like the Light Gauss Rifle. I actually like it personally but I can see where they come from. So I gave it just a bit of an incremental nudge: A tiny bit more damage, a bit less heat and a shorter minimum range. The ammo's damage density also hits my damage target of 135 damage/ton.
HAGs: This was a tough one. I was beginning to think I shot myself in the foot with the 135 damage/ton target. Then I discovered that if I incremented all the HAGs up by 5 points of damage each (so a HAG/40 becomes a HAG/45), they'd fit much closer to the target. It's still not perfect (HAG/35 has an "extra" 5 points of damage) but it's much better than what it would have been.
So ends the gauss tweaks
MissilesHonestly, missiles probably don't need any tweaks either. But I still think there's a few good tweaks you can make to them.
•LRM-10 -> 3 Heat
Reasoning: The LRM-10 is simply the weakest of the LRMs, going from 2 tons to 5 tons (a 150% weight increase), but heat still doubles. Why not at least pretend that one of those tons went into an integrated heat sink or something?
• All types of missiles can draw from "Missile Ammo Bays", no matter the size of the launcher. For instance, LRM Ammo Bays have 24 shots/ton. LRM-5 consumes 1x shot, LRM-10 consumes 2x shots, LRM-15s 3x, LRM-20s 4x.
Reasoning: It's not strictly necessary, really, but I think it's a nice quality-of-life improvement and a bit of flexibility to let your different-sized missile. I mean, the launchers can already draw your ammo from one arm, through the torso, to a launcher on the other arm. Why not let them share bins?
• MRMs have 5/10/15 Range Brackets
Reasoning: Some people love and swear by MRMs as they already are. I do not. Its weird range brackets is a huge bugbear to me.
I've tried it with normal range brackets. I liked it with normal range brackets. I keep it with normal range brackets.
• Artemis IV/V: LRMs don't require a special "Artemis Compatible Ammo" type to give a bonus.
Reasoning: Artemis gives a small Cluster bonus that is easily nullified by ECM. If you don't use Artemis IV compatible ammunition you still get a BV increase for the launcher. If you do, you essentially pay a "double whammy" in BV and C-Bills, since the Artemis ammo costs more than regular ammo and the Artemis system is not cheap either. So ax the idea that you need a special ammo for it and say the guidance system benefits from it by default.
So ends the missile tweaks.
Energy WeaponsArguably the best weapons in Battletech. Everyone knows about the notorious efficiency of the Medium Lasers. There's a few straggling energy weapons that could use a boost, but there were a few that definitely needed to be tuned down.
• Pulse Weapons only have a -1 to-hit bonus instead of -2 (IS Pulse Lasers have their ranges raised up to the same ranges as their vanilla counterparts to compensate).
Reasoning:Clan Pulse Lasers in particular are notoriously annoying when fit with Targeting Computers, to say the least. This change is to, first and foremost, nip that in the bud. The range of the IS Pulse Lasers are bulked up a bit to compensate so they're not completely useless. This also has the side benefit of narrowing the gap between IS and Clan lasers, which is rather huge.
• Clan ER Lasers have a damage reduction of 1 point.
Reasoning:They're already ridiculously powerful. The ER SL is short ranged but hits like a medium laser for less heat and half the tonnage. The ER ML is even more of a Medium Laser than the Medium Laser is. So this levels the gap between the two, although it's not a big step.
• IS ER Large Laser has range brackets of 7/14/21
Another minor bugbear of mine. Why did they stop the long range bracket at 19? They were only two hexes away from perfection!
And so ends the Energy weapon tweaks
That's all I got at the moment. Feel free to post questions, comments or other "tweaks" that you want to make or have made to BT's equipment.
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