BattleTech - The Board Game of Armored Combat
BattleTech Player Boards => Fan Designs and Rules => Topic started by: Karasu on 18 June 2015, 04:14:32
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So, I've been playing this game for a fair few years now, and over time I've had my fair share of house rules and alternative equipment. Many of them became obsolete as rules are changed, optional rules become more codified and additional rules are written. However, there are a number that I still harbour a fondness for. A couple of them are vaguely feasible, others would require re-designing hundreds of mechs.
Engine Hits / Heat Sinks
I'm not sure if anyone else has this feeling, but it has always really bugged me that a 60-rated engine with 2 single heat sinks in it and a 400-rated engine with 16 double heat sinks in it both produce the same amount of waste heat when damaged. If I had my way, engine critical hits would effectively destroy half of the heat sinks 'hidden' in the engine.
LB-X Autocannons
I wanted something that makes LB autocannons feel different from LRMs, but not take forever. The solution was to treat it a bit like an area effect. Roll location once only. That location and all locations touching it on the damage transfer diagram (except Head) are hit. They take damage equal to 1/5 of the AC class. LB-2s become pointless.
Ultra Autocannons
Similarly for UACs. The solution for this one is not to roll on the cluster chart, but just roll on location twice sequentially. If the second hit is somewhere not adjacent to the first hit, it misses.
And a couple of construction rules
Ferro-fibrous armour
Why couldn't it have been a nice straightforward 18 points per ton for basic Ferro-fibrous? Then Clan and Heavy FF are 20, and Light FF is 17. So much easier to calculate.
In my head, I can't understand why making more efficient armour means you can carry less of it by mass ratio. In my alternate reality battletech, the armour limit is by mass, not points.
Alternative construction materials
Here's an interesting excercise. What if all those things that take up critical locations without being discrete equipment had fixed distribution of slots, like Project Blue Shield? Endo-Steel always uses 3 slots in each Arm and Side torso and 1 slot in each leg. TSM is one in each side torso and limb. Etc. It creates more items that are mutually exclusive, thus requiring compromises and interesting decisions at the design stage.
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I know I have a few things that I've done differently that we still employ often in some of my groups:
Demolition Attempts
Remember in the BMR how you simply had to roll less than or equal to the weapon's strength to see if it cleared a hex of woods by one level? Pretty elegant and didn't need a lot of record keeping. Well, I applied the same to buildings, while allowing for weight of occupants to cause early collapse.
Infantry
Some of the things about infantry in either the BMR or Total Warfare, or whichever rule set you use, has always been a little too abstract for my taste. Here are a couple of things I've contemplated, though not necessarily implemented:
Static Damage Dealt to Conventional Troops
I've always been of the opinion that all damage dealt to conventional infantry should be random. All of it.
Infantry Attacks and Modifying the Cluster Table
I never really understood the need for a to-hit roll regarding conventional infantry and making attacks, especially against each other. Something I've been playing with lately (and applying to a BattleTech/40k interface) is simply having them roll straight on the appropriate cluster chart for the squad size, and modify the result via application of to-hit mods as negative modifiers, like how the new AMS works on determining number of missiles striking a target.
Mechanized Infantry
I haven't really finalized anything on this, but it has always been in my head that the intrinsic vehicles for Mechanized Infantry should have a hit-point line and be grouped like a Battle Armor squad. They should be subject to motive hits and destruction like normal vehicles and be a target as well as the infantry squad each carries. If they're 'open-topped' then some of that damage should be able to splash into the troop compartment. Or an attacker should be able to shoot either the vehicle or the troops on its back.
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Quad mech's Piloting bonus cause of 4 legs, extends to things such as Kicks and charges as well.
I like that engine issue, but i also felt that rather than each engine hit just ramps up your heat scale, you could have a lowering of power output. So energy weapons would do less damage/range, and movement gets hampered.
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I have thought about instead of being a percentile increase FF should be just a point boost. I never finalized the progression but I wouldn't mind testing out yours to see if it works well enough.
I rather like the idea of MASC, ES, FF, and other specialty items that consume criticals have to be placed in specific manners.
Some I've thought about(to avoid arguments I won't go into specifics on some):
Engines have rating/25 round down critical slots for Heat Sinks and do not come with free heat sinks. Main reason I haven't committed to it yet is I think it makes Inner Sphere Double Heat Sinks a little too questionable of an upgrade but I do like that it makes Compact Heat Sinks much more useful and makes the ammunition based weapons a bit more attractive due to lower heat. Still needs tweaking overall.
Change the AC stats. Even with the above modification they still need to go on a diet and trim down some. I have tested out some changes that I'm mostly happy with but I still debate that I might have to go a bit farther in my revisions.
Gauss Rifles produce more heat and need power amplifiers like energy weapons. To help compensate Heavy Gauss Rifle now does consistent damage but has a slight range drop off and Light Gauss Rifle has a slightly increased range.
Combat Vehicles don't get a free pass on any heat generated. In other words everything needs heat sinks. Combat vehicles would also no longer receive a suspension factor. To compensate shielding would no longer be required and ICE would weight the same as light fusion with fuel cell weighting the same as XLs. Rotors would also no longer receive reduced damage but only actually take damage on an additional roll of 2d6 of 8+.
I have actually started thinking about having the lower arm and hand actuator take up specific locations on the critical chart and can only be moved for dedicated physical combat weapons. Weapons would no longer be splitable across locations and likewise cannot be split through lower arm and hand actuators.
Dedicated physical combat weapons are now reduced to one type as far as rules are concerned but may take any appearance. So a weapon may appear as a hammer or sword but for abstraction's sake no matter the appearance they all follow the same rules. Dedicated physical combat weapons now do 3 points of damage per ton invested in them and occupy one critical slot per ton. Weapons that weight less than 5% of the mech's weight round up receive a -1 to hit bonus while weapons weighting more than 5% of the mechs mass round up but no more than 10% receive no modifier. Any weapon massing more than 10% of the mech's weight receives a +1 to hit modifier for every 5% above or fraction there of. If a dedicated physical combat weapon receives a +1 to hit modifier and/or is located in the leg a piloting skill roll with the same modifiers applied to the target number to avoid falling.
Punching and kicking without a dedicated physical combat weapon, or instead of one if one is mounted but no longer functional or for some reason the pilot/player wishes to make use of the limb itself instead of using the weapon applies a +2 to hit modifier and like above a missed kick results in a +2 modifier to the pilot skill roll target number in addition to any other modifiers due to damaged leg actuators or damaged gyro.
Critical hits that roll on an empty slots or locations that have already been critically hit(except for shoulder and hip actuators) do nothing further. In the case of shoulder or hip actuators roll 2d6 again, limb becomes severed on an 8+. Critical hits that result in a specialty armor or internal structure critical location cause another 1 point of damage for every 5 points, or fraction there of, of the attack that generated the critical. This damage is applied to the appropriate structure in question(for example ferro fibrous would apply the damage to armor in the location to the opposite facing if an opposite facing exists, if no armor remains to the opposite facing or no armor is left no further damage is to be applied). In the case of damage applied to internal structure no further critical hits are generated. This damage never transfers to the next location. Only Hardened Armor and Ferro Lamelor armor provide their benefits to this damage if such armors are mounted on the location in question.
Damage transfer now requires a roll on 2d6. 12, damage transfers normally. 8-11 only 1 point for every 5 or fraction there of transfers. All other results have the damage fail to transfer.
Ammunition criticals or weapons that explode when critically struck roll 2d6 and only explode on 8+ and carry no further risk of exploding.
CASE also allows for ammo dumping with no possibility of enemy fire triggering the ammunition.
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I find the infantry rules not high-level enough.
- Standard infantry weapons should not be able to damage combat armour. Low BARs, maybe, but you can empty an AK-47 against an Abrams all day and really not disable it. One-shot weapons should be provided, representing your LAWs/RPGs/etc.
- Squad-level light weapons allowed as exceptions to the above - one per squad - maximum 1 ton, representing HMGs/TOWs/that sort of thing. A "PBI mortar" providing something not unlike the BA artillery used by Centaur suits might be an extension.
- Heavier field weapons are their own unit, with its own crew, tow & ammo carriers abstracted under standard Mechanised rules. You can still stack a field gun unit in a hex with one infantry platoon, if you choose.
- Motorised infantry handled more like BA squads. So a Hoverbike unit might be 4-6 hoverbikes with random damage allocation, and hits per unit just like BA. Limits on size - the Savannah Master and Gabriel sit at the point where you'd have to decide whether to treat them as a squad or as single vehicles.
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I'm a tad leery of going too far on house rules -- before you know it, you're halfway to reinventing the whole game from the ground up. But a couple of things I might consider are
(a) nerfing kicks a bit because, let's face it, when they're so good that you earnestly have to ask yourself "should I actually use this here physical weapon I've invested tonnage and stuff in, or am I better off just plain kicking for free at better chances to hit for more damage and a shot at forcing a PSR after all?" something's wrong, and
(b) having infantry with primary and secondary weapons actually make two attacks (one for each) rather than try to mash them together into some weirdly-defined whole the way the official rules go at the moment.
Oh, and while we're at it, optionally
(c): get rid of "neurofeedback". Like, completely. There's no practical need for it. At best, have it be the optional rule and its absence the default (somewhat like Stackpoling), not vice versa.
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More infantry modifications - a way to slow them down a touch, or a whole new quick-and-easy game at a different level.
As it stands 'Standard' infantry perform in ways that make even our best trained people of today look inept. (Sorry, mil-folk.)
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I have thought about instead of being a percentile increase FF should be just a point boost. I never finalized the progression but I wouldn't mind testing out yours to see if it works well enough.
The official rules are original ferro-fibrous gives +12% armour points. That ends up being +1.92 per ton, or 17.92 points. Clan/Heavy and Light are 24% and 6% respectively, or 3.84 and 0.86 points. If the original had just been 12.5%, then everything would have been round numbers from then on. ???
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*nod*
It is one of those things I never really understood and can only really explain as they made mechs with FF before they actually came up with construction rules for it and when trying to retrofit it they came up with that really weird number. Which I think is why we have so many construction rules level issues that translate over to the table top rules in so many unpleasant/non-sensible ways.
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I find the infantry rules not high-level enough.
- Standard infantry weapons should not be able to damage combat armour. Low BARs, maybe, but you can empty an AK-47 against an Abrams all day and really not disable it. One-shot weapons should be provided, representing your LAWs/RPGs/etc.
- Squad-level light weapons allowed as exceptions to the above - one per squad - maximum 1 ton, representing HMGs/TOWs/that sort of thing. A "PBI mortar" providing something not unlike the BA artillery used by Centaur suits might be an extension.
- Heavier field weapons are their own unit, with its own crew, tow & ammo carriers abstracted under standard Mechanised rules. You can still stack a field gun unit in a hex with one infantry platoon, if you choose.
- Motorised infantry handled more like BA squads. So a Hoverbike unit might be 4-6 hoverbikes with random damage allocation, and hits per unit just like BA. Limits on size - the Savannah Master and Gabriel sit at the point where you'd have to decide whether to treat them as a squad or as single vehicles.
Exactly this (except I'd still let infantry do damage to 'Mechs without heavy weapons). I'd go so far as to separate infantry attacks into separate weapon attacks - and also consolidate the monstrous infantry weapons table into something cleaner and slightly less ridiculously varied for such little actual variation. Infantry weapons are the only place in the entire BattleTech ruleset where the brand name matters. I don't think that should be the case for TW scale games. "Assault Rifle" "Submachine Gun" "Sniper Rifle". Hell, even the full spectrum down to "Machine Pistol" "Battle Rifle" "Scout Rifle". The last thing I'd do is remove the silly decimals from infantry weapon damage, and instead express the damage figures as 'number of weapons required to do one damage'. An Assault Rifle might need four or five guys to hit that mark, but you'd be able to tell that, without having to multiply and average and all that crap in order to find how much damage your platoon does.
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I guess I would have written field gun and infantry rules a bit different.
Motorized and Mechanized infantry would most likely weigh more for transport costs... if we can not replicate the vehicle in rules that is able to actually transport a motorized or mechanized infantry unit, they don't get a free ride.
Mostly this comes from the fact that if I want to salvage a downed Vedette or wrecked Dragon, I need to haul forward a cargo vehicle of sufficient cargo capacity (either internal or external) to be able to carry the immobilized vehicle. Yet if I am using mechanized infantry, I am pretty much free to... for 5 tons... pack 25 men AND a sufficiently powerful enough vehicle that can carry all of them in fighting condition, enough heavy weapons to give them a respectable damage score, AND pull several field guns with little to no noticeable slow down. 8 tons if I want to ship them on an interstellar flight. That... is just wrong.
I do not mind having a vehicle being rolled into and made invisible for purposes of game rules but I would rewrite it to be a good deal heavier for purposes of transport. If a mechanized infantry unit can pull 24+ tons of field guns, it needs to have a vehicle (or vehicles) that can pull that much tonnage at a respectable speed and thus have a cargo weight sufficiently high enough to actually justify it. Yes, the field guns can be stored in cargo on a long trip but the infantry and their ride need to be sufficiently accounted for.
That and if I am able to provide a sufficiently powerful enough prime mover, like an APC, the rules should allow for the attachment of field guns to conventional infantry. Yes, it means an extra layer of paperwork and god knows we can't have that (*cough* BS *cough*). Yes, it means allowing the creation of just really complex mechanized/motorized infantry (Ooops, seems I actually took the APC into account) because I am actually tracking the prime mover AND the gun crews... but having the option there should not be completely excluded for simplicity sake.
So yes, I would seriously rework non-foot infantry transport weights to make them better conform to what they are capable of and are not riding around in magic super light cardboard boxes that are infinitely more efficient than any other vehicle in existence.
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I don't think there's a rule I haven't considered rewriting. Here's one I'm particularly fond of:
Centerline Weapons
When applicable (like the Marauder's AC/5 or the Goliath's PPC), results of "nearest torso (critical hit)" on the Hit Location Table strike the nearest armor location as normal but any resulting critical hits are redirected to the centerline weapon.
(If I wanted centerline weapons and floating TACs... maybe TAC happens if the weapon's To-Hit roll is the same as its location roll? I dunno. Not perfect, obviously.)
Ultra Autocannons
Similarly for UACs. The solution for this one is not to roll on the cluster chart, but just roll on location twice sequentially. If the second hit is somewhere not adjacent to the first hit, it misses.
This is really clever.
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LRMs/LB-X/other cluster weapons - For every full 2 pts that you beat the target number by, you get a +1 on the Cluster table. (So if the to-hit was 7, and you rolled a 9 or a 10, you get a +1)
Agree on the armor being fixed points per ton.
Station-keeping is .01 G, not .1G.
Space Stations can transit from a Jump point to/from a planet (and around the inner system), but this process takes 10* as long as a conventional 1G transit. Due to the slower transit times, this can cause different travel times, as the .01G acceleration would be slow enough to have the destination body to move appreciable.
Conventional fighters get a max of 10% their mass in armor (so there is a reason for equipping them with better armor).
Infantry SRMs have less range than Battlearmor SRMs, which have less range than Protomech SRMs, which have less range than Battlemech SRMs.
Pulse lasers don't get a bonus to-hit, they just do extra damage.
Infantry platoons get a fixed number of shots for their anti-Mech weapons. An infantryman can be assigned to either anti-infantry fire, anti-armor Support weapon, or Field gun support. If assigned to regular anti-infantry, they can take any of the one-person infantry weapons. If assigned to Support weapon, they can only carry a pistol as their anti-infantry weapon, the rest of their combat gear is devoted to carrying the support weapon and its ammo (Support weapons can be single person, or multiple person). If an infantryman is assigned to Field Gun support, they can only carry a pistol, and the rest of their gear should be body armor, protective equipment, and maintenance items for a Field gun.
Infantry platoons use the Support weapon range for anti-armor only. Infantry platoons use anti-infantry weapon ranges for anti-infantry duty only (so no taking a very long range AI weapon, and applying that to a high damage Support weapon, or vice versa).
Infantry platoons in combat should be highly abstracted. Just mark down how many anti-armor shots they have, and after those shots are expended they can only use their antiinfantry damage.
In Aerotech combat, there would be three categories: Boss, mains, and minions. If there is a Warship on the field, it is the Boss (for whichever side), the Dropships are the main combatants, and the ASF would be the minions. In any Aerotech game, minions would be given a fixed rating at the start of the game, and no change to those stats would be done (except for damage and usage of anti-Capital shots). If the largest unit is a Dropship, the Dropship is the Boss level, the ASF are the mains, and missiles would be considered minions. (In other words, if the main combatant is the ~20kton Dropships vs a 300 kton Warship, the 80-ton ASF aren't that big of a deal)
Flamers ignore terrain modifiers.
Battle cannons, where the lightest is a BC/2 with a range of up to 9 hexes, while the BC/20 is a 30-hex range weapon only mounted on the heaviest of mechs.
LRMs are reconfigurable (1 control system, and up to 4 launchers, each with up to 5 missiles). A critical hit takes out the launcher, but the other critical slots are unharmed (unless they take critical hits too). So an LRM-15 is 2 critical slots, the first being the control system and a 5-shot missile launcher, and the second being a pair of 5-shot launchers. If the second critical slot gets hit the whole system goes down, but the control system and the first 5-launcher are still intact and can be reset between battles (aka turned into an LRM-5). (This rule would only be used between battles and during construction, not during a tactical battle)
Gauss would do more heat per shot, reflecting the higher power demand. Similarly the ammo would be described as a metal dart rather than a sphere.
(Various ideas for Aerospace construction rules)
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weapons ranges:
reverse the weapons ranges of the ACs to more accurately reflect "larger caliber" weapons. For gameplay, the weapon tonnages/crit slots/heat generated/ammo reloads(or rather the limited number of per ton) is the balancer. So the AC 2 would have a long range of 9 and the 20 would have a long range of 24.
Soft target vs hardened:
Have units classed as either a Soft target or a hardened target. Then allow weapons to damage them at greater ranges if they are a soft target. A soft target may then allow an attack against it with something like a range times so many or plus so many hexes. Maybe make the range multiplier more for each range bracket? or make the addition amount go up for each range bracket. Something like +5 hexes at short range/ +10 at medium range/ +20 at long... Apply this only for ballistic and laser weapons as the missiles would still run out of fuel at their set ranges. Make infantry harder to hit, but easier to kill at longer ranges for example. As I understand it, the 'Mech mounted MG is supposed to be .50 cal or bigger. When I was in Basic at Fort Benning, they told us they were not allowed to fire the .50 on base because they were afraid a round might stray off into town (3 miles plus away) and kill someone.
Also, some vehicles (cars and such) should be listed as soft targets. Any unit that has 1 point of armor or at most 2 in every location should be listed as a soft target. Yes, I'm also looking at the LCT-1M (the most armor it has in one location is 3 points on the head).
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Soft target vs hardened:
Have units classed as either a Soft target or a hardened target. Then allow weapons to damage them at greater ranges if they are a soft target. A soft target may then allow an attack against it with something like a range times so many or plus so many hexes. Maybe make the range multiplier more for each range bracket? or make the addition amount go up for each range bracket. Something like +5 hexes at short range/ +10 at medium range/ +20 at long... Apply this only for ballistic and laser weapons as the missiles would still run out of fuel at their set ranges. Make infantry harder to hit, but easier to kill at longer ranges for example. As I understand it, the 'Mech mounted MG is supposed to be .50 cal or bigger. When I was in Basic at Fort Benning, they told us they were not allowed to fire the .50 on base because they were afraid a round might stray off into town (3 miles plus away) and kill someone.
I've considered something like this, as well. You might want to take a look at Aerospace ranges for your upper end. Even LRMs and SRMs can go for a couple kilometers in atmo or even further in vacuum. They do a standardized set of damage in the Space rules, though, which suggests what few were destroyed or disabled by ECM will have fallen away from the group, leaving the rest to strike. What is it for long range, again? 20 hexes? That's 10 kilometers on ground.
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The range limits were needed to keep the board small enough to fit in the house. Only way to make the ranges realistic under that constraint would be to have each hex be 100 meters. Otherwise I'd bring in the extreme range rule where you can shoot past long range but with increasing targeting penalties.
One thing that kind of bugs me about engines is that a 400 weighs SIX TIMES more than a 200. It would be far far more efficient to use a pair 200s than a 400 even taking into account the crit space used.
If anything, it should be the internal structure weight that goes up exponentially, not the engine's.
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I actually have a theory about why engines are that way. That weight also includes structural reinforcements, beefed up actuators, and other components needed to actually make the mech withstand the stresses of going that fast in addition to actually making the mech go that fast in the first place. So while two 200 engines could provide sufficient power to make a mech go that fast the mech would tear itself apart trying to do so.
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I actually have a theory about why engines are that way. That weight also includes structural reinforcements, beefed up actuators, and other components needed to actually make the mech withstand the stresses of going that fast in addition to actually making the mech go that fast in the first place. So while two 200 engines could provide sufficient power to make a mech go that fast the mech would tear itself apart trying to do so.
Makes sense to me. Explains why "internal structure" tonnage is purely a function of weight rather than weight and speed and why actuators cost basically no tonnage at all -- that stuff's all subsumed into the "engine weight" already. Heck, for all we know the actual reactor at the core of it all isn't all that much bigger in a 400-rated engine than in a 10...
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weapons ranges:
reverse the weapons ranges of the ACs to more accurately reflect "larger caliber" weapons. For gameplay, the weapon tonnages/crit slots/heat generated/ammo reloads(or rather the limited number of per ton) is the balancer. So the AC 2 would have a long range of 9 and the 20 would have a long range of 24.
IMO the reason they made the Lower Acs have the greater range is so there was actually a reason to take them over the 10 and 20 class.
Switching it around so the 20 class not only does the most damage but has the most range, would pretty much render the 2 class and 5 class AC's obsolete and no one would take them.
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Unless you also made them light enough that you could take them in place of say SRMs or even Medium Lasers. Though I probably would up the heat a bit on the 10 and 20 as well if I were to do that.
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One thing that kind of bugs me about engines is that a 400 weighs SIX TIMES more than a 200. It would be far far more efficient to use a pair 200s than a 400 even taking into account the crit space used.
If anything, it should be the internal structure weight that goes up exponentially, not the engine's.
I would not mind having an ability to create multi-bank engines really. It has a precedent.
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If you want "realistic" ballistic weapons, do keep in mind that as range and punch per shot tend to indeed go up with gun size (a function of both caliber and barrel length, as I understand it -- 'Mechs could run into some practical issues with the latter), their rate of fire drops. You just can't load increasingly heavy shells as quickly as lighter ones. So you might have to settle for, I don't know, AC/20s that only fire a single shot every other turn...
Of course, just as in real life, no matter how quick-firing your weapons are, if the slower-working but longer-ranged guns have ripped you to pieces already while you were still trying to get close enough to use them that's not going to do you much good anymore anyway. That was pretty much the whole point of giving battleships and -cruisers the biggest guns possible back in their WWI heyday. (The comparison breaks down a bit in that they of course had to worry a little less about intervening terrain than our units...though given factors like inclement weather, nighttime action, smoke screens and so on, it wasn't always clear shooting at an enemy made out and identified as such from a dozen miles away with no way to hide either.)
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Way too many house rules . I think that any of them that does not make any unit transportable to a standard game to be of less value as it is hard enough to get any players with the existing published rules people can hav on hand .
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For lighter engines, just go with the continuing XXL increases.
XXXL engines (TL G)
4XL engines (TL H)
5XL engines (TL I)
aso.
You divide the weight by (1+ number of 'X'es), and the number of extra crits is equal to 6 (split 3 and 3) if you are building at the TL, but lose 2 extra crits for each TL above). This is why the XL engine takes up 6 crits for TL E (Star League), but only 4 crits for TL F. At TL G it would only take up 2 extra crits, and TL H it would be standard. If you try to build an engine from a higher TL, double the number of crits needed in a side torso per higher TL. So trying to build a TL F XXL engine with a TL E base would need 6 crits in each side torso, trying to build a TL G XXXL engine with a TL E base would need 12 crits in each side torso.
Unless you also made them light enough that you could take them in place of say SRMs or even Medium Lasers. Though I probably would up the heat a bit on the 10 and 20 as well if I were to do that.
Already tried that with Battle Cannons:
| Name | Heat | Damage | Range | Tons | Crits | Shots/ton |
| BC-2 | 1 | 2 | 3/6/9 | 1.5 | 1 | 45 |
| BC-5 | 1 | 5 | 5/10/15 | 8 | 4 | 20 |
| BC-10 | 3 | 10 | 6/12/18 | 15 | 8 | 10 |
| BC-20 | 7 | 20 | 8/16/24 | 35 | 12 | 5 |
(I have a munchfactor spreadsheet that I used to create these, so they had the same values as the source weapon (or close to it. It incorporates range, cluster effect, damage, heat, and tonnage to make a rough number of their effectiveness. From tat chart, AC and SRM-2 rank ~3.2, while Medium Lasers rank ~5.)
So to fix the Medium Laser I'd want to decrease the damage, and/or increase the tonnage, heat, and/or crits to bring it in line. Easy fix would be dropping the damage to 4 and raising the mass to 2 tons, aka:
| Name | Heat | Damage | Range | Tons | Crits | Shots/ton |
| ModMedium Laser | 3 | 4 | 3/6/9 | 2 | 1 | N/A |
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Way too many house rules . I think that any of them that does not make any unit transportable to a standard game to be of less value as it is hard enough to get any players with the existing published rules people can hav on hand .
And, thank you for your constructive participation. :P
Now. Back to the topic at hand.
What other rules would I have rewritten? I would have taken a solid look at scale of damage and maybe found a way to reduce the number of pips that a player has to mark off. Pip marking is a big time sink.
In the same vein, a friend and I even looked at treating individual locations like dropship bays in damage performance based on range, and looked at a simplified heat exchange system.
We tried everything to see what we could do to make something faster than the standard BattleTech, but keep the randomized damage feel. For the most part, it worked, more or less. And it seemed far more like BattleTech than what Alpha Strike is now, or even with linear stat reductions on your health meter like with ClickTech.
As for realistic ranges: That's why you change the scale of the maps you're on. The Atmo level is quite fine for tracking long range ground movement and extreme ranges. Heck, I've played around with the notion and would love to see an official version of something on that level. BattleForce and BF 2 didn't quite cut it in my opinion. The only drawback is that you'd probably have to take the turn lengths up to a minute to allow for decent ground coverage, instead of the 10 second flight times that ASFs get. Sad thing is, you'd still have movement rates in turns per hex for a lot of ground units, instead of hexes per turn.
When I first tried it, we kept it as a means of devising uneven pair-ups in forces as they maneuvered on the macro, and then set up the standard games. But, if you really want to do LoS ranged games, that is the way to go.
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Way too many house rules . I think that any of them that does not make any unit transportable to a standard game to be of less value as it is hard enough to get any players with the existing published rules people can hav on hand .
I did not think that mine was that bad off. Redressing some of the grossly over-simplified infantry rules in light of making them comparable to other units (speed, transport capability, field gun towing and operation) did not seem to make something less of value.
Then again, some rules may be more in the attempt to draw in a more traditionalist wargamer set who might be drawn into more grounded details and assumptions... an hard uphill battle to be sure but one that could be chipped at slowly.
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I put this elsewhere, but as I'm actively using this rules in a campaign and they work:
Production MASC / Prototype MASC
Production MASC (SL era and 3050+) gets a free turn of success on its first use, requiring a roll of zero to succeed. On the 2nd turn, a 2D6 roll of a 3+ is needed to avoid failure. Each successive turn increases the difficulty of this roll by 2. (The rest of the rule is written as it is in TW).
Current rules for MASC get moved down to "Prototype" level, i.e.: early Star League / 4th Succession War. These need the 3+ on Turn 1 of use, giving it an instant chance of failure.
Production UAC / Prototype UAC
As above, production removes the failure rate. Only this time it's permanent. Production Ultra ACs cannot jam. Current UACs are moved to "Prototype" status.
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Makes sense to me. Explains why "internal structure" tonnage is purely a function of weight rather than weight and speed and why actuators cost basically no tonnage at all -- that stuff's all subsumed into the "engine weight" already. Heck, for all we know the actual reactor at the core of it all isn't all that much bigger in a 400-rated engine than in a 10...
That makes sense in terms of getting the overall mass correct, but it begs the question of why we should have any of the chassis mass listed separately at all. I'll grant that it has a use in figuring out how much you save going to endo, but most of us use something like SWW or know the stats by heart anyhow. It's not as big a deal for mechs aside from wanting to use multiple smaller engines, but it would make a big difference to vehicles and aircraft that have a much simpler frame and drivetrain setup.
For other stuff instead of having all the different types of laser I'd just have standard and ER versions and have standard tarcomps and improved tarcomps for when you want those targeting bonuses. It would really unclutter the energy weapon list. Maybe even allow them to make one full power shot or two half-power shots.
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I tend to think of the base IS weight as the feed mechanisms(ammo, coolant, electrical), and the basic mounting points for all additional gear to be installed. This also provides sufficient strength to support the mech at a standstill with a basic skeleton.
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Reverse AC range would be my first change. So this makes the AC20 even better, and the AC2 even worse. So what? No all weapons should be equal. There are times you want a 20mm autocannon, and times you want a 200mm howitzer. We don't put 120mm tank guns on every single vehicle in real life, and so why would we in a game? I just don't see the problem.
PPC would be the short range, high damage weapon. Lasers ignore target movement modifiers since they are speed of light. They aren't freaking heat beams, even if some bad writers describe them that way.
FF and ES would not have critical space penalties - it would be based on cost, availability, or some other sensible reason. If there absolutely, positively had to be crit penalties, I'd accept something like the previous suggestions as to making the locations static.
Don't track heat, track energy usage. Speed isn't determined by the size of the engine, but by how much power (up to the max the actuators can handle) you have available. Don't shoot any energy weapons, and you have more power to run.
The default hex size would be smaller on paper, yet represent the same area as it does now. This would allow the feel of a bigger game board, without needing the extra large tables to put the maps on.
If bumping a building and falling down can damage a mech, then kicking or punching something will also damage it. Maybe not a lot, but there would be some damage.
Jump jets lift a set amount of mass 1 hex. Buy as many as is needed to get the jump you need for the mech. No more buying them mech size class. And personally, I'd have jump jets in 95% of the mechs - the increased mobility would be a prime in-setting reason to take them over vehicles.
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I actually have a theory about why engines are that way. That weight also includes structural reinforcements, beefed up actuators, and other components needed to actually make the mech withstand the stresses of going that fast in addition to actually making the mech go that fast in the first place. So while two 200 engines could provide sufficient power to make a mech go that fast the mech would tear itself apart trying to do so.
I have an old txt document (dated to 2007, but I know that the text is older) where I saved an old post of a question my brother once asked, on Mechs horsepower.
In it they mentioned the fact that the only thing that really changes in regards to weight when you make a mech faster or slower is the engine, which would seem to indicate that the Mechs myomers and improved actuators would have to be part of the engines mass.
As logically if you make the mech faster you adding a more powerful engine, but adding a few more horsepower to your engine is not necessarily enough, you also have often have to improve the transmission and whatnot to be able to use that extra power. Or in this case better or more myomers and actuators.
Theirs a book dated to 1990 called the Technology of Tanks by Richard M. Ogorkiewicz, in it it mentions that if you look at the motive side of things a Tank typically spends about 30% of it's mass on getting it to move, with the brake down as
Armor ~45-51% for most MBTs, though light tanks it can go as low as ~35% and heavy tanks it can be as high as 56%, if built more for structural concerns than as armor the "armor shell" will still be about 20% of the over all weight. Per cubic meter of internal volume most tanks range from .5 to 2 tons per cubic meter of internal volume (in terms of armor mass).
Running gear ~20-23% of the over all weight, broken down
- 8-10% tracks
- 11-13% suspension
Engine, transmission & final drive ~12%
Weapons & mountings3-7% /10% on lighter tanks with big guns
Main gun Ammo is generally around .8 and 1.5 tons
Fuel is Generally around .7 to 1.5 tons
The remainder of the tank is taken up by electronics, the crew and their gear, and any other miscellaneous items.
With B-tech tanks 30ish percent of mass for ICE seems to be around 3/5 for most heavier tanks, and 4/6 with fusion...
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From the SP Artillery thread, specifically for this quote:
The problem is Khymerion that the construction rules don't support your vision when it comes to artillery. Artillery is extremely crit-heavy which precludes you from mounting it on Support Vees under 100 tons (which I always thought was a significant failing of the SuV rules). So really, they do have to be built as Combat Vehicles.
I would argue for a rule saying a unit has the existing number of crits, along with an 'exterior' set of crits equal to the number of interior crits. However anything in the extra crits is not protected by armor. So if you have a vehicle that has 10 crits normally, and you want to mount an Arrow IV (15 crits, IIRC), with 5 tons of ammo (5 more crits needed), you can, but only 10 crits total can be mounted internally. The rest gives the attacker a free critical roll, and any crits from that roll are applied immediately to whatever is outside the armor first.
So if the designer decided to put all 5 tons of ammo inside the armor (sensible), and leave the 15 crit Arrow IV with 5 crits internal and 10 crits external, it could do so. However, if that artillery unit takes fire, each shot is a potential crit that will take out the artillery system.
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Followup on my first post: I've since experimented a bit with setting the base to-hit number for kicks at unmodified Piloting skill without the usual -2 (which is to say, exactly the same as for punches...assuming a full set of actuators in either case). So far I like the resulting balance rather better than the rules default one; you can in practice still kick sufficiently helpless targets in front of you easily enough, but the risk/reward ratio now starts to actually discourage reflexively trying to kick any old time you have a target in your face and front arc just because you happen to have a free leg available and nothing else to do. And yet kicks remain the most readily available physical attack mode on most 'Mechs and one that actually connects still has the same effects as ever, so it's also not as though I'd already nerfed them into oblivion.
Also makes it that much harder to step on infantry, of course. But given that it's a thirty-meter hex you're stomping around in and looking down on from several meters above ground while they're presumably doing their best to not get stepped on at 'Mech foot level and that letting enemy troopers into your hex where you can't shoot at them is a bad idea to begin with, I can live with that.
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i don't play with many genuine house rules - we've adopted lance movement and the alpha strike mechanic of unifying target declaration and firing into one action to speed up gameplay. also i've never counted immobile units as part of initiative. If you have six units and two are immobilized for some reason, you only have four units for the purposes of movement.
i don't have any firm solutions, but here are a few things about the ruleset that i'd change
1) cluster rolls. there has to be an easier way than 1) hit/miss 2) how many projectiles 3) roll group of projectiles 4) goto 3
i use a little box o death when things get really out of control, but i still have to read results one at a time. it would be great if somehow and cluster weapon were resolvable in two rolls. i'm not sure how this can be done under the current game setup without creating a whole new series of charts or somesuch.
2) having more concentrated damage. i'm going to start implementing the tacops called shots option for high/low targeting in my next chaos campaign. i've never liked how randomly units take damage from direct-fire weapons. I get how the mechanics of the game turns combat into segments of ten second bursts where the firing of weapons is abstracted under a blanket, but coming to the table top from the MW2 experience, I rarely ever fired in anything but banks of weapons.
3) primitive combat vehicle construction - give them primitive components like mechs
4) infantry damage - I agree with separating support weapon attacks from the rest - i don't think the vast majority of infantry weapons should be able to damage armor. see complaint #1 regarding how platoon damage is determined. too many rolls.
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One proposal I've seen for missile to-hits -- instead of a separate to-hit and cluster roll, just roll 3d6, subtract the to-hit modifiers, and compare the result to the cluster table.
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Two we have been recently testing and are about let go free range...
1) Allowing sub-cap cannons fire like artillery against ground targets as well as space targets. Long Toms, Cruise Missiles, and Sub-Cap Missiles still out range the SCCs and thus still retains an effective role but it allowed heavy ground fortresses and a few custom vehicles to turn their big guns towards immediate threats when pressed. Not the most effective rule but one that gives a bit more versatility to certain units.
2) Any non-streak missile launcher can be modified into a torpedo. Made sense to us playing. Simple to implement, no fuss.
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One proposal I've seen for missile to-hits -- instead of a separate to-hit and cluster roll, just roll 3d6, subtract the to-hit modifiers, and compare the result to the cluster table.
Oh, I like that. What's the maths like? My gut instinct is that it makes missiles a bit better.
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Would make SRMs, MRMs, and LRMs a lot better in their sweet spots but doing rough calculations it would result in a noticeable improvement that I think could be counter balanced nicely by AMS(something I think is underutilized in existing designs as is).
I'll have to more thorough thought exercises on it to see how it really plays out.
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3 things all aerospace rules . PPC spinal mount 10 heat per Capital point damage weight scaled up accordingly other types would need far more work to develop. Change the rules again for interposing KF fields to a lose 1 structural integrity point for both ships and all passengers and crew takes 20 point's of lethal and 40 points of fatigue points . Perhaps scaled up depending on the power level of the game . Give a codified statistics for a super heavy mech bay .
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Hmmm. random crazy, Dropship with a spinal-mount NL or NPPC....
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Would make SRMs, MRMs, and LRMs a lot better in their sweet spots but doing rough calculations it would result in a noticeable improvement that I think could be counter balanced nicely by AMS(something I think is underutilized in existing designs as is).
I'll have to more thorough thought exercises on it to see how it really plays out.
Yeah, I like this too. Helps missiles compete against energy weapons with DHS, and anything that works halfway well that simplifies the calculations and speeds up the game is a good thing.
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Another rule I discussed was having the weapon BV split between ammunition and the total BV of the weapon. i.e.:
Weapon A is 300 BV and requires 2 tons of ammunition (10 shots each) to be "functional". Functional is defined as having 12+ shots for the purpose of this rule.
Weapon A = 150 BV
Ammunition = 75 BV per ton (150 BV total for 20 shots)
This more-closely simulates the fact that, without ammo, a weapon is a useless hunk of metal. But also that current Ballistic weapons are saddled with being charged for the complete weapon BV + ammunition, where energy simply has the full weapon BV and does not require ammo.
EXAMPLE
AC/10 (Standard)
Total BV (current) = 123
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Weapon BV = 62
Ammo BV (needs 2 tons for "functionality") = 31 BV per ton
The effect of this being that units that are under-ammoed have a real boost in-game, such as the Enforcer, Banshee -5S or Phoenix -4R.
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Another rule I discussed was having the weapon BV split between ammunition and the total BV of the weapon.
Makes perfect sense to me.
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I'd have only made two real changes.
A: Armor would be 10 points a ton. This makes it easier to figure out numbers on the fly. Modify damage to scale.
B: Double Heat Sinks would be a bit more prohibitive. Twenty Heat Dissipation, without paying for it, is pretty good and puts using ballistic into the 'Why bother?' category until you get to heavier units with bigger payloads.
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Prototype DHS are written how normal DHS should have been, way back in 1989. If we had that kind of structure, this game would be far more balanced and interesting between the tech levels.
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I currently use a 5 second impulse initiative system much like the old TNE 2.0 where the Mechs agility, modified by its pilots skill, determines its number of actions/movement, dodge depending on load/encumbrance of what weapons are mounted/carried, equipment, appliqué armor, frame mass etc. it carries vs. power output. There is no heat, only ammunition or power consumption and armor is not ablative, instead using a toughness factor and critical hit system much like a simplified TNE 2.0.
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I currently use a 5 second impulse initiative system much like the old TNE 2.0 where the Mechs agility, modified by its pilots skill, determines its number of actions/movement, dodge depending on load/encumbrance of what weapons are mounted/carried, equipment, appliqué armor, frame mass etc. it carries vs. power output. There is no heat, only ammunition or power consumption and armor is not ablative, instead using a toughness factor and critical hit system much like a simplified TNE 2.0.
That sounds very cool (on account of not using heat... sorry), but dare I say that it doesn't seem like 'Battletech' to me.
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Having had a reasonable number of comments, here’s the ones I’d use now:
Tabletop rules (ould be used now with current designs)
My LB-X autocannon rule (Implications: 6.8 damage average on LB10 compared to 6.3)
My Ultra autocannon rule (Implications: 48.5% of double-tap compared to 41.6%)
Monbvol’s basic physical attack rule (Implications: Unarmed physicals harder to hit with)
A Lurker’s neurofeedback rule (ie, it doesn't exist)
Tigershark’s MASC rule (Modified slightly: first attempt requires a 1+ on 2d6, then +2 from then on)
Croaker’s missiles rule (Implications need attacked by a Stats degree)
I'm also tempted by the idea of making SRMs work in 5-point clusters as well.
Construction rules (Would need re-writing of designs)
My Ferro-fibrous Armour rules
My alternative materials rule
Something for infantry, possibly beachhead1985’s musings
Monbvol’s description of Engine weights
Orion’s Jump Jet rule (tempted to say that 1t of Jets gives 50thexes of jump)
Prototype DHS, as per Tigershark (Is this the one where you get 10 dissipation free, than can add SHS for an extra one each or DHS for an extra two each?)
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I like the game so I don't want to change too much. I'd probably go back to the original game rules. I'd try to better integrate artillery, infantry, vehicles, and aerospace. Right now a lot of those seem tacked on with their own rules that don't fit well with the basic mech stuff. Some of the changes might be descriptive-only. The actual mechanics might not be different but the explanation for what is happening would be.
I'd change the scale so that hexes were 180 meters and turns were one minute. This would make the ranges at least a little more believable. I'd also point out that these ranges are an abstraction for gameplay, and are not indicative of their "actual" max range.
I'd point out that a "miss" does not necessarily indicate that an attack did not make contact. An infantry unit whose guns harmlessly bounce off of Battlemech armored plate might have simply not rolled high enough to "hit" the target. An infantry unit would be presumed to shoot at joints, heat vents, cockpit glass, maintenance panels, etc. Shooting directly at the armor is a good way to do no damage. Similarly, the -2 a pulse laser gets might be due to being better able to get around standard armor's anti-laser treatment.
One problem that I have is with advanced tech explanations that really aren't that advanced. In other words, explaining too much of how things work. When reactive armor and reflective armor were first introduced, it made me roll my eyes because I figured that sort of technology would either be already be in use, or way out of date. You just now thought to make the armor shiny? So I would steer clear of describing advanced technologies with any sort of real world terminology. Star Trek does this right with making all of their stuff up. Trying to incorporate real world tech into Battletech makes the standard weapons seem less super-tech.
I'd give better hand held weapon rules, so mechs could drop them and then pick up guns from other mechs. I'd make things like A-Pods be quirks instead of equipment that took up actual tonnage.
There would be a "basic" level of Battletech very similar to the introductory box. Then there would be an "advanced" level that added stuff like ECM rules, over-the-horizon weapons fire, and other more complicated things. The in-game effect would be the same -- units with intro equipment would basically cancel each other out. So a Griffin vs a Shadowhawk would be the same if you played it in either rules set, the Shadowhawk's free ECM suite countering the Griffin's free active probe. But the advanced rules would better describe how that functioned, and better incorporate other types of tech.
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Oh, and thinking about it, one more 'rule'.
Add MoS modifiers to cluster hit tables.
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Oh, and thinking about it, one more 'rule'.
Add MoS modifiers to cluster hit tables.
So, a bit like TacOps direct blows? That works, I suppose, although a simple "bonus = MoS" rule would be more powerful than "+2 per 3 over TN or over 2, whichever is less".
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I have got some:
1)Make AMS work in certain range for example 4 hexes. So one unit could provide cover for others if it chooses so. Multiple AMS units could really shine here (Uller C i am looking at You).
2)Burst fire weapon also work against Battle Armour. This is because in my group We use little to no coventional infantry. It also makes flamers and MG's more usefull to have.
3)Drop the weight of all classic AC's and increse the ranges a little bit. Whatever to make them more attractive for players.
4)Make pulse laser split their damage into two groupings. Multiple beams right?
5)Make mounting & dismounting cost 1 MP for both carrier and the carried. Also unit that wants to mount must end its movement in carriers hex with 1 MP left, then carrier also spends 1 MP to pickup and is ready to go. It is simpler that way and allows for faster operations with infantry.
5) c3 cost in BV must go down since it needs LoS and cost calculating formula remains the same.
6)nerfing kicks & punches is not an answer. Make physical weapons better by making them use Punch attack table or some new table- making a standard roll is a pain in the ass when You swing Your hatchet and hit... a leg!
7)I also have been testing the additive BV skill modifier table. Lower skill costs encourage players to field better pilots.
I like the ideas for UAC and LBX hit distribution.
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I'd have only made two real changes.
A: Armor would be 10 points a ton. This makes it easier to figure out numbers on the fly. Modify damage to scale.
B: Double Heat Sinks would be a bit more prohibitive. Twenty Heat Dissipation, without paying for it, is pretty good and puts using ballistic into the 'Why bother?' category until you get to heavier units with bigger payloads.
Perhaps make it that all heat sinks in the engine are single only and if you want doubles they are mounted outside the engine.
1)Make AMS work in certain range for example 4 hexes. So one unit could provide cover for others if it chooses so. Multiple AMS units could really shine here (Uller C i am looking at You).
I could see an either or.. Either you defend someone else or yourself.
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Perhaps make it that all heat sinks in the engine are single only and if you want doubles they are mounted outside the engine.
This is a change i would have made to the rules.
All mass-free engine sinks are always treated as single heat sinks, that is all mechs have base heat dissipation of 10 regardless where they are located. Not sure about the size they should be though, single or used sink-type size. Keeping them SHS size makes distinguishing them simple for purposes of crit checking but requires modifying most mechs record sheets. Keeping them the size of the chosen sink-type means these free sinks must be designated but the record sheet doesn't have to be modified as much.
Additional heat sinks could be either singles, compacts (IS), doubles (IS or Clan), or laser sinks (Clans) but no mixing types (ie no compacts and doubles in one design).
Any additional sinks an engine can hold are of the used heat sink type (eg 300-rated engine can hold two extra single, double or laser sinks, or four compact sinks) as usual.
Not sure the change would be that big deal. Sure, heat management for many mechs would be suddenly very difficult, on the other hand, things would rarely quite as difficult as 3025-era mechs have it. Some designs that are meant to be high-firepower-heat-neutral would be kind of broken i guess (like the Hellstar) but... *shrug*, i'm not a fan of those in the first place so i'll just say "whatever".
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This rule already exists in the Historical: Reunification War book. Prototype DHS.
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I'm not currently interested in invalidating huge chunks of if not outright all canon by messing about with the construction rules to the point where existing designs no longer match them. Though if I was and wanted to distinguish more between a 'Mech's engine and its heat sinks proper, I might simply give the former ten points of "reserve" dissipation free of charge (no weight, no crits, that's just what every fusion engine comes with as a safeguard -- which incidentally handily explains why it shuts down once that's gone, i.e. after the third hit) and then insist on having any and all "actual" heat sinks on top of that mounted externally regardless of engine rating...
Could see myself waiving the prohibition against OmniMechs having hands on the same arm as an autocannon, Gauss weapon, or PPC, though. That wouldn't actually break any canon units at all, and any "officially illegal" designs resulting from that could in a pinch always be converted back again by just stripping them of the offending actuators.
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Perhaps make it that all heat sinks in the engine are single only and if you want doubles they are mounted outside the engine.
Cray had an idea where you develop half-mass heat sinks. Clan versions take up half a ton, 1 crit space, and dissipate 1 pt of heat. Engines can still only mount 10 heat sinks. Effectively they are identical in heat dissipated per ton and critical space as regular DHS, but are more resistant to damage.
Inner sphere version might be half a ton, 2 crits, and dissipate 1 pt of heat.
Disadvantage is you lose the 10 extra heat being dissipated by the engine. Advantage is your heat sinks are more robust (instead of a single crit taking out a DHS and removing 2 pts of heat dissipation, you only lose one of the two HMHS and 1 pt of heat dissipation).
Of course, I'd want to be able to mix half mass heat sinks with regular heat sinks, as the half mass heat sinks in the legs are not as heat efficient as regular heat sinks for their size.
Of course, I'd want to make Flamers and Inferno rounds to heat damage based on the number of heat sinks a target has. Perhaps a Flamer would do 1 pt of heat for every 10 heat sinks the target has (FRD, min 1 per attack), and Infernos would do 1 pt for every 20 heat sinks (and since Infernos are fired in salvos, this isn't as bad for the attacker). If multiple sources of heat are fired, they are totaled and divided, then rounded down. So a single Flamer against a mech with 15 heat dissipation would do 1 pt of heat, while a unit mounting 2 Flamers would do 3 pts of heat. A unit hitting with 5 Inferno SRMs would do 5 pts of heat, as the regular math would be 3 pts of heat (5 * 15 = 75, 75/80 = 3.75, FRD = 3), but since there wee 5 SRMs it will do 5 pts of heat.
This also means we need to make larger Flamers >:D. Imagine a 5 ton mech Flamer, fed off the main reactor, with the following stats:
Hvy Flamer:
Heat: 15
Dmg: .9* (Heat)
Range: 1/2/3
Tons: 5
Crits: 5
* Does 9 pts of heat for every 10 points of heat dissipation the target has in operation, minimum 1 pt of heat. If the target does not track heat, it does 4d6 damage (more than the little Flamer, but since it is a single weapon instead of smaller redundant).
* As anti-infantry, does 3* the damage of a regular Flamer as anti-infantry damage (not as efficient as the smaller, as it is still a single stream).
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I echo the calls to revamp how infantry work. Support weapons and disposables should be required to damage armored targets, with perhaps some exceptions such as weapons with underbarrel grenade launchers and maybe a few higher tech infantry weapons. The latter would provide an advantage for SLDF and Clan troops, for example. Infantry units would be squad sized at most, with limits on the number that can be carried in APCs.
Revamp WarShips, both construction and usage, so that we don't have situations like the magic armor with the former, while for the latter the main goal is to create a situation where naval battles are more like WW1 than WW2 in the Pacific. ASFs would be much less effective against capital scale armor, requiring Alamos and ASMs to do significant damage, with their own guns mostly limited to damaging sensors, weapons bays, PD arrays, bay doors, etc, although they would be able to inflict damage against arcs stripped of armor. PD would be rebalanced so that nukes become viable without themselves being overpowered.
Greatly reduce the number of weapons. For example, HVACs and RACs would be gone. Normal ACs are already very high velocity so there's no need for HVACs, and RACs should be covered between UACs and ACs. We already have the idea that an AC class represents a plethora of different weapon types, with a AC20 either a slow firing large caliber weapon or a smaller caliber weapon firing multiple rounds per shot, so really the features of HVACs and RACs should already be encompassed by that abstraction.
Bring back the rule that allowed OmniFighters to increase thrust if they dropped or removed some pods. It's simple physics: the thrust output of your engines is constant, but mass is lowered, thus you should have higher acceleration. Unlike OmniMechs, for example there wouldn't be suspension limits or some other restriction.
Reduce the anti-armor damage for APGRs to 2 points.
No quad BA.
No mechanized or motorized infantry as currently presented. These should either be lightweight combat vehicles, or regular infantry carried in separate transports.
Realism mode. As an optional set of rules, give weapons the sort of ranges they'd actually have. This would require map hexes to be scaled up and thus movement would be much less effective, so the flow of the game would be much different.
Revamp the boarding rules, particularly with respect to BA. It's currently possible to design a suit that's strong in terms of Marine Boarding Points, but sucks in ATOW/TW terms.
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No quad BA.
:D ;D
Perhaps they could be designated micro-mechs or something... Probably wouldn't retcon them out of existence though. Even though i don't care for them either. (Dark Age Fenrir mini looks good though, perhaps the only exception. But only because it looks good! No comment on its stats in CBT.)
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I echo the calls to revamp how infantry work. Support weapons and disposables should be required to damage armored targets, with perhaps some exceptions such as weapons with underbarrel grenade launchers and maybe a few higher tech infantry weapons. The latter would provide an advantage for SLDF and Clan troops, for example. Infantry units would be squad sized at most, with limits on the number that can be carried in APCs.
No mechanized or motorized infantry as currently presented. These should either be lightweight combat vehicles, or regular infantry carried in separate transports.
Realism mode. As an optional set of rules, give weapons the sort of ranges they'd actually have. This would require map hexes to be scaled up and thus movement would be much less effective, so the flow of the game would be much different.
Realism mode would be nice. Glad to see someone else thinks the mechanized and motorized infantry need a major revamp.
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I'm fine with mechanized and motorized infantry conceptually. They might need tweaking a bit. But the idea that they move around in vehicles too insignificant to be covered by the game rules is fine with me.
I haven't liked any of the RPGs since 2nd edition. I'd like to see some sort of Mechwarrior/Battletroops/Battletech integration where there was consistency between the games.
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I'm fine with mechanized and motorized infantry conceptually. They might need tweaking a bit. But the idea that they move around in vehicles too insignificant to be covered by the game rules is fine with me.
There is a big difference between too insignificant to be covered and completely unreproducible with rules and magic in terms of weight with abilities beyond reasonable disbelief.
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Revamp WarShips, both construction and usage, so that we don't have situations like the magic armor with the former, while for the latter the main goal is to create a situation where naval battles are more like WW1 than WW2 in the Pacific. ASFs would be much less effective against capital scale armor, requiring Alamos and ASMs to do significant damage, with their own guns mostly limited to damaging sensors, weapons bays, PD arrays, bay doors, etc, although they would be able to inflict damage against arcs stripped of armor. PD would be rebalanced so that nukes become viable without themselves being overpowered.
Would you be too averse to the idea of having the items that get damaged through critical hits having their own armor values instead of having to power through all of an arc's armor? That is what bothers me about capital ship combat. It makes sense on something that large, even droppers, especially with the hyper-futuristic accuracy BT is known for, to pick at certain locations and keep hammering them until they break. It happens in the fiction all the time, why can't it happen on the game board?
It makes sense that landing gear may be less armored than weaponry or vice versa. This, in my opinion would certainly make the armor seem less magic as you can punch small holes in it somewhere instead of having to demolish a whole 30 square meters or more of armor plate before you can start hurting stuff.
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I'm certainly a proponent of a revised BattleTroops that integrates well with both RPG and BattleTech Tactical.
In fact, I kinda wish they did something along the lines of Descent.
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There is a big difference between too insignificant to be covered and completely unreproducible with rules and magic in terms of weight with abilities beyond reasonable disbelief.
My point is that something like a Jeep probably isn't significant enough as a vehicle for it to matter. I've played a bunch of different game systems and so I'm okay with using different mechanics to represent the same thing.
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If I were to rewrite it, I'd start with 3025 technology and balance it as best as I could. Start there, and include infantry, tanks, aerospace, and balance all of it. I'd probably use a combination of BMR and TW for infantry and vehicle rules. I'd combine the bonuses (but not the penalties) from a lot of the specialty ammo (tracer, flak, and flechette) and give it to ACs for free. So -2 to hit against VTOLs and fighters, +1 for night fight instead of +2, and double damage against infantry. That would all be part of "standard" AC ammo and would explain why so many mechs had them. Suddenly they become really good weapons, versatile even if they are a bit inefficient against mechs. Double-tapping rules would be standard.
I'd have an infantry scale game similar to Battletroops (I'm probably the only person who liked that game), but I'd make it similar to other 28mm games like Infinity. There would be a clear connection between the rules in the troops-scale game and the rules in the mech-scale game.
I like my Robotech mechs, where they are mobile and they can do drop kicks and throw girders at each other, so I'd give rules that favor those over simply the walking tanks of the computer games. There would be a physical attack for grabbing a vehicle and flipping it over -- or if it is light enough, grabbing one and throwing it. Cinematic play would be given a preference over realistic style.
I'd rework the top of the engine chart as well, so that a 400 rating engine doesn't screw you over as much. Maybe the 400 would weigh in at 38 tons or something instead of 52.5, and scale down from there.
I'd base infantry around the squad. So an SRM squad is 7 men, has a leader, two SRM guys, and four riflemen. Each guy adds something to the squad, even if it's just a body to take damage. While a medium laser might kill a random guy, something like a machine gun might simply just kill a squad outright (Damage: one squad). So if you get lucky, your 2 medium lasers might kill the two guys holding the SRMs, and then the squad can't do anything to you. Or you might just kill two riflemen and the squad is pretty much unharmed. You could have a platoon of multiple squads, and that would increase their firepower, but then anti-infantry weapons (infernos, autocannons, machine guns) would have a chance to hit multiple squads at once.
I'd dramatically expand the quirks system, and give some of them significant in game effects. Each mech and vehicle would have its own standard quirks. Some might be good (the Rifleman's anti-air capabilities), and some would be bad (say a vehicle that can't fire when moving at more than cruising speed). I'd be liberal with them too, to try and make the rules match the fluff. Some types of "advanced technology" (like rocket launchers, a-pods, maybe anti-missile, early active probes and ECM, alternate ammo and missiles) would become standard technology. Let's give the 3025 players a lot of good options.
Anyway, I'd get 3025 technology balanced and working exactly how I wanted it. Then I'd move on to advanced equipment. A lot of the advantages of Star League tech would be handled with "good" quirks. "Improved heat sinks" might give you +5 or +10 heat dissipation every round, instead of double heat sinks. "Extralight engine" might give you an extra Walking MP. "Ultra AC" might just eliminate the jamming from double tapping. "ER Lasers" could add 1 to all ranges. And then certain types of advanced technology would have their own game stats. Gauss Rifles would obviously need their own stats. Ferro-fibrous armor might just be 18 points per ton. LB-X ACs would probably be lighter with longer range. I'd probably give them a -1 to hit but do the cluster rolls in 5 point locations.
The goal would be to give SL mechs some pure advantages over baseline Inner Sphere stuff, and give a justification as to why certain mechs (like the Marauder) seem to be designed badly -- they originally had SL quirks that made them very effective. When (and if) Clan stuff came out, they would continue that trend. They'd probably get lighter and better weapons, but it would be the mech quirks that really set them apart. The goal would be to give the Clans a big advantage, but not insurmountable. Also BT really needs to trim down the weapon charts. They are insane right now. Pulse lasers also need to be nerfed, especially Clan, because it's 25 years later and they're still the best weapons in the game.
As far as including all these quirks in the construction rules, I might say that the average IS mech has, say, 2 pts of positive quirks. The average SL mech has like 7 pts, and the average Clan mech has like 10 pts.
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My point is that something like a Jeep probably isn't significant enough as a vehicle for it to matter. I've played a bunch of different game systems and so I'm okay with using different mechanics to represent the same thing.
It's good that you are.
For me, I find that it shouldn't be the guys that are being tracked, but the jeep and the guys in it. If it's so insignificant to track, then the damage should probably be the same to the platoon no matter what was used to deal it - the Jeep is being destroyed, leaving all occupants either dead or incapacitated. Even inside ten seconds, if the rest of the platoon were to stop and pick up any survivors, there should be some slowdown to represent that. There isn't, and thus the narrative in my head doesn't hold up under scrutiny.
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I'd have an infantry scale game similar to Battletroops (I'm probably the only person who liked that game), but I'd make it similar to other 28mm games like Infinity. There would be a clear connection between the rules in the troops-scale game and the rules in the mech-scale game.
On its own, BattleTroops was a neat game. The only problem I had was the integration with the larger game it was meant to work with.
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My point is that something like a Jeep probably isn't significant enough as a vehicle for it to matter. I've played a bunch of different game systems and so I'm okay with using different mechanics to represent the same thing.
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No, it is not a significant vehicle on it's own. It's the magical transport weight of said vehicle that is capable of pulling 20+ tons of field guns and move all of it's men who are capable of firing all their various weapons and who in my head glued to the side like some terrible parody of the Keystone Cops. If I can't reproduce that capability with a basic vehicle and be able to account for it's abilities and it's transport capacity within a dropship... then it needs to be redressed and updated. For me, the transport weight for a mechanized or motorized unit really grates me.
BTW: This is how I think most of our infantry must get around if they are using something that only adds a scant few tons to it's transport weight over foot infantry...
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As I understood it, mechanised (hope I get them round the right way) use personal transport - motorcycles, possibly with sidecars, quad bikes, and the like. Motorised use trucks/cars/hummers & equivalents.
So mechanised doesn't add that much; motorised does. Jeeps, Bren carriers, Kettenkrad, all live in the grey area between the two types.
FWIW, anyway ;)
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Continuing on the next gen BattleTroops approach, while I would still offer a quick and durty, abstract means of resolving boarding operations, I would so use BattleTroops Revised as a means of having a dungeon crawl session in the same vein as Descent or HeroQuest or the old Dungeons and Dragons.
Ships would have different rooms and decks mapped out with one side playing an 'overlord' the ship's crew, and the other side playing the 'heroes' grave robbers tomb raiders borders.
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Oh yes, another I was just reminded of that I'd do.
Torpedoes are now just another specialty ammunition and thus available for MMLs, SRMs, and LRMs. I may expand this to MRMs but not sure about ATMs/iATMs.
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Oh yes, another I was just reminded of that I'd do.
Torpedoes are now just another specialty ammunition and thus available for MMLs, SRMs, and LRMs. I may expand this to MRMs but not sure about ATMs/iATMs.
And thunderbolts?
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The concentration of damage Thunderbolts present does concern me for game balance but not so much that I don't think a reasonable counter could not be found to make them acceptable.
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Cruise missiles would be individual weapons that don't require a launcher over twice the weight of the missile.
Meow Liao
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I'm certainly a proponent of a revised BattleTroops that integrates well with both RPG and BattleTech Tactical.
/snipped/
This would rock.
I also liked the previous post of making the infantry on board a squad level action as opposed to a platoon level. Make it possible to stack infantry squads in the same hex up to a company sized element, but don't make it required at platoon level. Whenever I can, I run my games with infantry squads over platoons anyway. then a squad should include at least a squad leader (sgt) and a team leader/assistant squad leader (cpl). At each level up, there should be room for a couple of extra persons in leadership position to be added e.g. platoons are generally lead by a lieutenant, and have a platoon sergeant. Companies are generally lead by a captain and have a first sergeant,... Companies and above generally have an extra squad or platoon or bigger element added to them to represent command staff and admin anyway. My problem is that there is no leadership representation at company and below organization level. I would like to see some rules wherein it would integrate the old avalon hill wargame squad leader with the battletech "wear down" or loss of personnel as opposed to the SL squad morale check/killed results.
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And thunderbolts?
That reminds me: Thunderbolts could definitely use some alternate ammo types. They've been around long enough by now, and a single big missile should offer plenty of room for fancy options -- even if it obviously doesn't particularly need to worry about cluster bonuses. :)
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No, it is not a significant vehicle on it's own. It's the magical transport weight of said vehicle that is capable of pulling 20+ tons of field guns and move all of it's men who are capable of firing all their various weapons and who in my head glued to the side like some terrible parody of the Keystone Cops. If I can't reproduce that capability with a basic vehicle and be able to account for it's abilities and it's transport capacity within a dropship... then it needs to be redressed and updated. For me, the transport weight for a mechanized or motorized unit really grates me.
BTW: This is how I think most of our infantry must get around if they are using something that only adds a scant few tons to it's transport weight over foot infantry...
Well, it's all abstracted. I suppose it depends on what level of abstraction you are okay with in your game.
I imagined mechanized infantry as something like this:
(http://www.allrader.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/wuestenterroristen_1.jpg)
(http://www.cbn.com/CBNNews_Files/images13/world/TerroristsTruck_LG.jpg)
You pile as many people as you can into/onto the vehicle. The slower movement rate over a traditional vehicle can represent people jumping on or off of it during the fighting. The exact number of guys per vehicle, and the exact types of vehicles, would not be precisely defined. It could be guys in a SWAT team van, in Humvees, Toyota pickups, or potentially even something like big golf carts. We don't know exactly how many there are because it's not that important to track where each particular infantry guy is riding, whether he's mounted or dismounted, or exactly how many transport vehicles remain. With all the wide variety of vehicles available in the Inner Sphere, it could be all sorts of things.
Do the game stats need tweaked? Sure, that's fine. I don't have a problem with that. But conceptually I like them.
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That's motorized infantry.
Mechanized infantry has APCs that I would insist actually be run as separate vehicles.
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That's motorized infantry.
Mechanized infantry has APCs that I would insist actually be run as separate vehicles.
BattleTech: where APCs are worthy (of individual attention) and people are not! :)
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Considering that we actually have official game stats for APCs...
Heck, we have official stats for trucks and jeeps in TRO: Vehicle Annex.
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That's motorized infantry.
Mechanized infantry has APCs that I would insist actually be run as separate vehicles.
You mean if you were to rewrite the rules? That's fine. But that's not how they currently work. Mechanized infantry is its own thing and doesn't have separate vehicles.
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A foot platoon with an APC = mechanized. So I'm not sure how tiny the vehicles are within a Mechanized Platoon, but they must be smaller than a jeep to have no stats of their own.
More likely, they were lumped together for simplicity. Just like the Support Weapons and Primary Weapons were lumped together in range brackets. Creating some very silly scenarios, I might add (like vibro-axes going 21 hexes).
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You mean if you were to rewrite the rules? That's fine. But that's not how they currently work. Mechanized infantry is its own thing and doesn't have separate vehicles.
That is okay, that is why this is a rewrite the rules thread... to actually make them accountable.
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A foot platoon with an APC = mechanized. So I'm not sure how tiny the vehicles are within a Mechanized Platoon, but they must be smaller than a jeep to have no stats of their own.
More likely, they were lumped together for simplicity. Just like the Support Weapons and Primary Weapons were lumped together in range brackets. Creating some very silly scenarios, I might add (like vibro-axes going 21 hexes).
It mentions in the Techmanual that they are lumped together as an abstraction. It really depends on what strains your suspension of disbelief. As I said earlier, I've played a lot of different games. To me it isn't any different than a guy having 100 hit points that represent him ducking out of the way/being tough/being an experienced warrior/any other justification, and you're hitting him with a sword that does a D6 damage. "You mean I have to stab this normal guy 30 times with my sword before he falls down?" "Umm... yeah."
Things are sometimes represented in more than one way on the tabletop.
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That is okay, that is why this is a rewrite the rules thread... to actually make them accountable.
???
Accountable to who?
I want the game to be streamlined and playable. The biggest problem I have with the game at the moment is how long it takes to play. It is clunky. I am much more concerned with that than I am making sure every infantryman accounts for each bullet he fires.
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It mentions in the Techmanual that they are lumped together as an abstraction. It really depends on what strains your suspension of disbelief. As I said earlier, I've played a lot of different games. To me it isn't any different than a guy having 100 hit points that represent him ducking out of the way/being tough/being an experienced warrior/any other justification, and you're hitting him with a sword that does a D6 damage. "You mean I have to stab this normal guy 30 times with my sword before he falls down?" "Umm... yeah."
Things are sometimes represented in more than one way on the tabletop.
That is also why in certain other games that have the 100+ HP characters, they have optional rules that add in things like damage thresholds or ways to seriously injure someone with special hits to bypass the need to stab 30 times with a D6 sword to kill someone. It is for those who want a little less abstraction in their mechanics and a bit more simulation.
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That is also why in certain other games that have the 100+ HP characters, they have optional rules that add in things like damage thresholds or ways to seriously injure someone with special hits to bypass the need to stab 30 times with a D6 sword to kill someone. It is for those who want a little less abstraction in their mechanics and a bit more simulation.
And that's cool too. I don't have anything against the increased level of detail, but I do appreciate the option of simplifying things. In my experience, infantry platoons tend to last right up until a mech looks at them funny. Then enough firepower gets directed at them to make them not exist anymore.
Back on topic, I think this brings up a good point. I think having two different levels of Battletech game rules would work as well. You could have the "abstract" version and the "crunchy" version. For instance, artillery fire or aerospace support can be handled as simply as taking a unit gives you X number of bombardments during a game, or it can be done in a very meticulous manner where you calculate everything out. If you want to break out the low altitude map, and set out mapsheets for your off-board units you can, or you can just say "I took an aerospace fighter, I get 3 strafing attempts this game" and be done with it.
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???
Accountable to who?
I want the game to be streamlined and playable. The biggest problem I have with the game at the moment is how long it takes to play. It is clunky. I am much more concerned with that than I am making sure every infantryman accounts for each bullet he fires.
This thread is about a person's opinion on what they would re-write. Why shoot down an opinion that is just that -- an opinion?
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This thread is about a person's opinion on what they would re-write. Why shoot down an opinion that is just that -- an opinion?
I'm not shooting down his idea, just trying to figure out what he meant by "accountable". I also think there's a bit of "the current rules are WRONG" going around in this thread.
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The concentration of damage Thunderbolts present does concern me for game balance but not so much that I don't think a reasonable counter could not be found to make them acceptable.
Like the fact that JUST one shot from an AMS is all it take to down the single massive missile?
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I would actually be surprised if there weren't already rules for this out there somewhere....I'd like to redo all missile and LB autocannon hits. No more rolls on the cluster table. Margin of success of the to-hit roll is indexed to the number that hit. I'd want range to the target to modify this for the LB autocannon. I think I'd also want range to modify the number of missiles that hit, but could be talked out of it.
As an optional rule, the LB autocannon must divide the damage into two clusters at short range, 3 at medium range, and 5 at long range. If it does less damage than that, then each point is rolled separately. This would simulate the spreading of the sub-munitions nicely. Optional though, because it is more complicated.
Second optional rule - the LB autocannon gets no bonus at short range, +1 at medium range, and +2 at long range. Or maybe 0/2/4. So it gets easier to hit at longer ranges, but the damage is going down.
I don't like the concept of mech shotguns at all. Wouldn't bother me at all to remove them from the game entirely. But if I were to keep them, I'd probably just make LB a type of specialty ammo any autocannon can use. Not much different from flechette, after all.
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I'm not shooting down his idea, just trying to figure out what he meant by "accountable". I also think there's a bit of "the current rules are WRONG" going around in this thread.
Ehh... without going TOO far off topic...
I don't know about wrong/right, but I do know what works/doesn't. The average TT gamer doesn't have the volume necessary to really see how busted a rule is until it's been played a few times. Maybe dozens of times. Case-in-point: C3 and Line-of-Sight rules. Until there were enough DB games played, nobody could have known how over-powered C3 was. Electronic versions discovered this VERY early on, but rules changes were slow to come about. Why? Most likely, the data from Megamek/Mekwars isn't really taken as seriously as TT data from official Agents / playtesters.
So I think there are plenty of rules which should/could change to better the game, but TPTB just aren't willing to move on them yet.
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Ehh... without going TOO far off topic...
I don't know about wrong/right, but I do know what works/doesn't. The average TT gamer doesn't have the volume necessary to really see how busted a rule is until it's been played a few times. Maybe dozens of times. Case-in-point: C3 and Line-of-Sight rules. Until there were enough DB games played, nobody could have known how over-powered C3 was. Electronic versions discovered this VERY early on, but rules changes were slow to come about. Why? Most likely, the data from Megamek/Mekwars isn't really taken as seriously as TT data from official Agents / playtesters.
So I think there are plenty of rules which should/could change to better the game, but TPTB just aren't willing to move on them yet.
I disagree. I don't know anyone who didn't recognize C3 as being incredibly nasty when they first laid eyes on it.
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I disagree. I don't know anyone who didn't recognize C3 as being incredibly nasty when they first laid eyes on it.
Not just talking 'nasty.' But having a fatal flaw in it. You could hide a spotter inside a building basement, where nobody would ever find it, and still provide Short range bracketing for 5 other units. On a table, you could at least see where the guy was and move forward / flush him out. In double-blind, it was just a permanent zone of death.
That's fine if that's how the rule is intended to work, but I don't think the BV was taking double-blind into account, as it's a TacOps rule. Just as BV doesn't take Rapid Fire MGs into account. So one or the other needed to be fixed.
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Like the fact that JUST one shot from an AMS is all it take to down the single massive missile?
The 1 shot AMS shoot downs are a good hard counter, it is not a guaranteed chance but it worked plus, as a torpedo, it would actually be less effective than the 'Itano Circus' approach to LRT/SRT spamming since it would only give a single chance at flooding instead of multiple so it is a nice counter.
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It'd have to be Laser AMS as ammunition fed AMS could be problematic... Unless you made a specialty AMS that used micro torpedoes/rockets as intercepts...
Okay Thunderbolts getting a Torpedo specialty version are fine by me.
As for C3, I've not really been that big of a fan. In fact I do tend to think it's usefulness is overhyped as I've just had too many games where I never got a bonus for having C3 and many of those included an enemy force that didn't have any ECM at all.
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The main big deal with C3 these days is probably its BV cost -- the system itself doesn't really add anything to your force's raw firepower, it just enables you to concentrate what's still there after installing the C3 components in the first place more effectively if you play your cards right. Since Battle Value runs mostly off a "best case" analysis, C3 naturally adds to it under the assumption that every C3 user is a tactical genius who'll somehow manage to contrive optimal working conditions in every single turn (and if it didn't make that assumption it'd simply break the other way as a balancing tool as soon as such a player came along), which can then result in it looking overcosted for what you get out of it for many of us.
Of course, in universe they don't know squat about our little tabletop balance concerns and in fact would probably happily argue that fair fights are for suckers in the first place. There, C3 is pretty much just an electronic teamwork enhancer, and if ECM does happen to temporarily jam your connection you just spit out some colorful invective and keep firing the old-fashioned way until your link comes back on line.
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I'd probably still re-do C3 completely because to me it doesn't make a lot of sense that a unit that is closer but almost certainly with a different angle of attack is feeding another useful targeting data to a degree to make your shots easier, especially since it partially dispels the mythos of Battletech's magic armor being part of the reason weapon ranges are so short.
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I'd probably still re-do C3 completely because to me it doesn't make a lot of sense that a unit that is closer but almost certainly with a different angle of attack is feeding another useful targeting data to a degree to make your shots easier, especially since it partially dispels the mythos of Battletech's magic armor being part of the reason weapon ranges are so short.
It's not necessarily 'feeding it' the data, but triangulating a position. Distance from firing unit to spotter + spotter to target + firing unit to target.
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As for C3, I've not really been that big of a fan. In fact I do tend to think it's usefulness is overhyped as I've just had too many games where I never got a bonus for having C3 and many of those included an enemy force that didn't have any ECM at all.
Unless you're playing on a map big enough to exploit the usefulness, you'll get hammered. Just as in Clan v. IS. You can't use 2x2 map sheets and expect it to function properly. Needs to be 3x3, minimum.
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Not just talking 'nasty.' But having a fatal flaw in it. You could hide a spotter inside a building basement, where nobody would ever find it, and still provide Short range bracketing for 5 other units. On a table, you could at least see where the guy was and move forward / flush him out. In double-blind, it was just a permanent zone of death.
That's fine if that's how the rule is intended to work, but I don't think the BV was taking double-blind into account, as it's a TacOps rule. Just as BV doesn't take Rapid Fire MGs into account. So one or the other needed to be fixed.
Well, that's a pretty specific set of circumstances. I honestly don't see that being a problem in anything except Megamek. The first double blind rules came out in the Tactical Handbook in 1994, which was several years after C3 was introduced. And honestly during that time it was so complicated that I don't remember anyone using it except for maybe in an RPG setting where there was already a GM.
In a normal game, where you can see your opponent's mech sheets, it's pretty simple to deduce "hey, that guy is shooting me as if he's 5 hexes away. He is not 5 hexes away. The only thing within 5 hexes of me is that building. Hey, his guys have a C3 computer. Hmm..." In a Megamek game it's different because double blind is much easier to play and the to-hit rolls go by a million times faster. You might not even realize the guy's higher hit chance is because of the C3 unit until you've been pounded for like 7 turns. But in the regular game, I don't think that is a big issue.
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Well, that's a pretty specific set of circumstances. I honestly don't see that being a problem in anything except Megamek. The first double blind rules came out in the Tactical Handbook in 1994, which was several years after C3 was introduced. And honestly during that time it was so complicated that I don't remember anyone using it except for maybe in an RPG setting where there was already a GM.
In a normal game, where you can see your opponent's mech sheets, it's pretty simple to deduce "hey, that guy is shooting me as if he's 5 hexes away. He is not 5 hexes away. The only thing within 5 hexes of me is that building. Hey, his guys have a C3 computer. Hmm..." In a Megamek game it's different because double blind is much easier to play and the to-hit rolls go by a million times faster. You might not even realize the guy's higher hit chance is because of the C3 unit until you've been pounded for like 7 turns. But in the regular game, I don't think that is a big issue.
It's not that 'specific' set of circumstances at all. All maps, with the exception of those which are wide open, have spots where LOS breaks. There are folks who only play their TT games on the intro boxed set maps. And if you do, then it's pretty easy to guess. But outside of that, especially in Urban, Wooded or Mountain maps... Yeah. Plenty of places a spotter can hide and provide target data from -1 terrain, behind a hill, inside a building, standing in a river that is 2 levels below the terrain, in the middle of a clump of woods, hiding between buildings, inside the nooks/crannies of an industrial map, etc. etc. etc.
And that is VERY common. And FYI - I'd say MM games outnumber table top by exponents. Probably in the tens (if not hundreds) to 1.
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It's not that 'specific' set of circumstances at all. All maps, with the exception of those which are wide open, have spots where LOS breaks. There are folks who only play their TT games on the intro boxed set maps. And if you do, then it's pretty easy to guess. But outside of that, especially in Urban, Wooded or Mountain maps... Yeah. Plenty of places a spotter can hide and provide target data from -1 terrain, behind a hill, inside a building, standing in a river that is 2 levels below the terrain, in the middle of a clump of woods, hiding between buildings, inside the nooks/crannies of an industrial map, etc. etc. etc.
And that is VERY common. And FYI - I'd say MM games outnumber table top by exponents. Probably in the tens (if not hundreds) to 1.
My point is that in the standard tabletop game, it isn't a problem at all. The game was written and balanced with that in mind. Double blind is an optional rule that is almost never utilized on the tabletop. It is simply too much work. And on those rare occasions when it is played, it is still relatively easy to figure out where the spotter is because you know the range bracket the opponent is using.
The fact that a computer program came along and made an optional rule very easy to implement does not mean that C3 is imbalanced in anything other than in the computer game with that specific optional rule in place.
Now C3 is very powerful, as I agreed earlier. In many cases it is too powerful. But your complaint is really about Megamek, and not Battletech.
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I would say it's the fact that BattleTech is slowly dying as a result of the bloated, difficult-to-implement rule set and things aren't being play tested. Table top BT is pretty difficult to find. More difficult to find consistently. And even more difficult to find a group which doesn't demand "3025 only."
Gauging the rules by 1980s testing methods doesn't help things move forward. People just flat-out don't play TT as much as the electronic version(s) [questionable whether I'd call MWO a version of BT, but that's another topic]. I don't see a reason to gauge the effectiveness of a rule according to an out-dated mode which is becoming increasingly scarce. Gotta move forward and that's what MegaMek and Alpha Strike attempt to do.
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Since a C3 spotter needs line of sight to the target to provide any bonuses, about the only way one could do so and not be detected in turn would be by using the hidden unit rules. Which, incidentally, MegaMek doesn't implement to this day for much the same reason it doesn't have command-detonated minefields (basically, nobody's figured out yet how to make surprise-interrupts in the middle of another player's action work in that context)...
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Since a C3 spotter needs line of sight to the target to provide any bonuses, about the only way one could do so and not be detected in turn would be by using the hidden unit rules. Which, incidentally, MegaMek doesn't implement to this day for much the same reason it doesn't have command-detonated minefields (basically, nobody's figured out yet how to make surprise-interrupts in the middle of another player's action work in that context)...
Yeah, that's a bit of a puzzle. I'd say that once the movement turn ends for the unit, the player can get a pop-up dialog asking if he wants to detonate any of those fields. If he does, the unit's movement is reset to the place of the mine detonation.
But I can see why it isn't coded.
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I'd probably still re-do C3 completely because to me it doesn't make a lot of sense that a unit that is closer but almost certainly with a different angle of attack is feeding another useful targeting data to a degree to make your shots easier, especially since it partially dispels the mythos of Battletech's magic armor being part of the reason weapon ranges are so short.
Yeah. It only helps in regards to helping overcome ECM, or helping to overwhelm an opponent's defensive movement.
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It's not necessarily 'feeding it' the data, but triangulating a position. Distance from firing unit to spotter + spotter to target + firing unit to target.
With what I know about how fire control computers of even the 1940's working that still is not going to result in the kind of accuracy improvement that C3 gives and still flies in the face of how Battletech armor is supposed to be part of what limits the range of weapons to what we see.
Unless you're playing on a map big enough to exploit the usefulness, you'll get hammered. Just as in Clan v. IS. You can't use 2x2 map sheets and expect it to function properly. Needs to be 3x3, minimum.
I've used C3 under a lot of conditions and honestly even with it's original limitations(where the spotter didn't actually have to have LOS to the target) it has rarely been useful.
I do feel like Alphastrike is the way of the future but I also feel like it has come about 5 years too late to keep Battletech from dying a slow painful death.
MegaMek makes me wish I was a bit better with Java so I could start re-writing more stuff more thoroughly.
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I imagined mechanized infantry as something like this:
http://www.allrader.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/wuestenterroristen_1.jpg
http://www.cbn.com/CBNNews_Files/images13/world/TerroristsTruck_LG.jpg
You pile as many people as you can into/onto the vehicle. The slower movement rate over a traditional vehicle can represent people jumping on or off of it during the fighting. The exact number of guys per vehicle, and the exact types of vehicles, would not be precisely defined. It could be guys in a SWAT team van, in Humvees, Toyota pickups, or potentially even something like big golf carts. We don't know exactly how many there are because it's not that important to track where each particular infantry guy is riding, whether he's mounted or dismounted, or exactly how many transport vehicles remain. With all the wide variety of vehicles available in the Inner Sphere, it could be all sorts of things.
So if the vehicle moves at flank on anything other than clear terrain, you roll a D3 for every squad, and that many infantry are mission-killed from bouncing out? ;D
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With what I know about how fire control computers of even the 1940's working that still is not going to result in the kind of accuracy improvement that C3 gives and still flies in the face of how Battletech armor is supposed to be part of what limits the range of weapons to what we see.
I've used C3 under a lot of conditions and honestly even with it's original limitations(where the spotter didn't actually have to have LOS to the target) it has rarely been useful.
I do feel like Alphastrike is the way of the future but I also feel like it has come about 5 years too late to keep Battletech from dying a slow painful death.
MegaMek makes me wish I was a bit better with Java so I could start re-writing more stuff more thoroughly.
Not having played you, I don't know if that's a play style issue or if your opponents are just "that" good. But I guarantee I'd make it a nightmare for ya' lol
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Well. Looks like one more thing I'd add would be buildings and terrain.
I've already looked at this once, but I would definitely separate the class of building from how much Construction Factor it's supposed to have. The Class of building is all about how much protection it provides to infantry. The CF is how much tonnage and damage it can support. Always made sense to me that buildings with lots of glass windows as your sole protection against the elements should provide little to no protection from high-grade, futuristic weapons. Heck, lasers should be going right through glass.
Secondly, the whole TARDIS effect for Mechs never made sense. They never mentioned anything of the sort in the old BattleTech Manual Rules. That seems to be something introduced in the BMR.
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The main thing I would like to have changed, is make better pilots have better defense. Of some kind. Dodge, target modifier, something. Maybe even cap TMM based on skill. As a game it works as is, as a campaign, elites die too easily. As in, once they are specifically targeted, not much will stop their impending doom.
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The main thing I would like to have changed, is make better pilots have better defense. Of some kind. Dodge, target modifier, something. Maybe even cap TMM based on skill. As a game it works as is, as a campaign, elites die too easily. As in, once they are specifically targeted, not much will stop their impending doom.
One thing I've found is that SPAs really help, especially when one ability is Edge. It's gotten to the point where neither of my groups plays without one guy on each side having a unit moderately decked out with some special ability. And, this would be a good place to put in something to that effect. SPAs are a great way to experiment with things that could normally break the standard rules and make things unbalanced. For example, you normally can't use two hatchets in a single close combat phase. Give a guy an SPA that allows him two, and he comes up with a custom hatchetman wielding two hatchets.
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Adding Edge as an optional rule in TW would be better than putting it exclusively in AToW. There's a point of diminishing returns when a 5,000 BV unit can be taken out in 1 hit. If that same unit were a 2/2 and got 1 point of Edge per Piloting skill upgrade, it would have 3 re-rolls of head caps. That makes a lot of sense in balancing out the horrible Piloting BV spike.
I have no idea why it's 15% per Piloting level anyhow. Should be 5-8% and it shouldn't be multiplied with Gunnery like it is now. Just makes 3/4 and above a tough sell for bigger units.
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The main thing I would like to have changed, is make better pilots have better defense. Of some kind. Dodge, target modifier, something. Maybe even cap TMM based on skill. As a game it works as is, as a campaign, elites die too easily. As in, once they are specifically targeted, not much will stop their impending doom.
It's funny, I was just thinking about that yesterday. I like this idea.
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FYI, We've extensively tested my pilot skill chart, bringing it down from +15% to +10%. Since pilot leveling is 100% voluntary, we're able to gauge this a bit better than in a purely random pilot leveling environment.
I literally had ZERO complaints about 'Mechs being "too cheap" at higher levels. People voluntarily made 4/4 and even 4/3 Assaults (admittedly, the latter were on the faster ones like the CGR- and RMP- series). I saw absolutely no drawback in moving the BV down for piloting, whatsoever. And we're talking around 500+ test games for data over the past two years. This, in combination with eliminating the multiplication system, is surely something which should be pursued and replace the current Skill Chart.
CURRENT
1.2 (Gunnery) * 1.15 (Piloting) = 138% BV for a 3/4
PROPOSED
1.2 (Gunnery) + 1.1 (Piloting) = 130% BV for 3/4
That 8% is pretty huge in terms of game balance and the number of units one could add in, say, Clan v. IS scenarios.
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I would also use the same movement modifiers for attack and defense. One mech moves 30kph and another 180kph yet the effect on their own targeting is the same. Meanwhile the effect on targeting those mechs is vastly different. The modifier chart needs to better represent the effort required to pilot a mech at high speeds.
Meow Liao
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I would also use the same movement modifiers for attack and defense. One mech moves 30kph and another 180kph yet the effect on their own targeting is the same. Meanwhile the effect on targeting those mechs is vastly different. The modifier chart needs to better represent the effort required to pilot a mech at high speeds.
Meow Liao
That eliminates half the strategy of the game.
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That eliminates half the strategy of the game.
And forces new ones to rise.
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And forces new ones to rise.
I don't know; seems to me to at least at a glance reward playing TurretTech, which is hardly a "new" strategy at all.
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Fair enough.
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Yeah I'm not sure making AMM worse is a good way to go. Would make WiGe units all but ineffective and does make Battletech seem less technologically advanced as weapon stabilization to allow for accurate fire on the move was a thing by the mid 1940's.
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It does seem to be more of an RPG Tie-In element than anything else, but I -would- like to see highly-skilled Aces get the respect they deserve, yes. And for piloting skill to be useful for more than setting the to-hits for physical attacks.
I don't have ATOW handy so this may already be in there as a pilot special ability, but:
"Fire on the Run" - Reduce the movement penalty to gunnery TNs by 1.
And something to allow high-skill pilots to use Evasive Maneuvers more effectively.
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I go back and forth on the "evasion" issue, between wanting it incorporated into the standard game rules and wanting it to be more of an RPG kind of thing.
I like the Special Pilot abilities. I've been thinking the next time I run a Mechwarrior game (which, honestly, is more of an "if" than a "when"), of requiring players to take SPAs as they improve their Gunnery/Piloting. So a guy who is a 4/5 probably doesn't have any SPAs. He's just a normal mech pilot. But a guy who is a 3/4 should either have one already or should be about to learn one. Guys who are a 2/3 should have a few SPAs, and the truly elite elite should be dripping with them. So to get your 1/1 pilot to that level, you'd probably have to buy him like 8 or 9 SPAs on the way. And some of those abilities should be things that increase the defenses of your mech. The "Maneuvering Ace" ability can make it easier to eke out a higher target movement modifier. Having something like "Whack-A-Mole" where you get an extra +1 bonus for terrain, or "Missile Swatter" where you count as having AMS even if you don't have it (and get an extra bonus if you do), or "Arm Block" where with a piloting roll you can choose to take damage from one weapon on your arm instead of wherever they hit -- those type of things could make the really good pilots a pain in the butt to deal with.
Alternatively you might have some game mechanic where really good pilots could choose to raise to-hit rolls for everyone equally. So Badass McGraw (Gunnery 1/Piloting 2) in his Awesome can make a piloting skill roll and choose to give everybody who shoots at him a +4 to hit penalty, on top of every other modifier. He takes the same penalty himself, but he's really good so he can still hit. He'll need 9s and 10s instead of 5s and 6s, but now instead of the other guys needing 8s, they need 12s.
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Well, I think not being able to shoot if you evade is a bit much. Makes evading a mute point for me. I think instead of not being able to shoot back, it should be something like +3 or +4 to the to hit TNs of the evading pilot. That way, yeah, you can evade, but those jerky, dodging movements affect your own shots as well.
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I'm sure there was an Evade movement mode in one of the optional rulesets at one point. If memory serves correctly it was: Have the MP of walking, the heat of running, +3 for your to hit, an additional +2(?) on anyone shooting at you.
I'm unsure of how balanced that is...
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Targetting computers affected by ECM
Vehicle armour must be reduced significantly before you can get the easy critical hits. Unless you roll a 2
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There was the idea to make all weapons of a type work the same so, after 3052 all UACs should have an unjam roll akin to the RAC.
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There was the idea to make all weapons of a type work the same so, after 3052 all UACs should have an unjam roll akin to the RAC.
It still doesn't solve the issue, since an Ultra AC that does not jam, and one that does, both have the same Battle Value. There should either be a removal of jamming or an inclusion of a BV reduction in the calculation for the jam %. I think people would be more comfortable with the latter, but after removing jamming in my campaign, I saw no adverse affects. The UAC simply became a competitive weapon. Gods forbid. :)
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I just remembered a fairly simple house rule I've actually been reflexively using for a while now: when a quad 'Mech loses a side torso, the corresponding foreleg stays attached because it is after all a leg and not an arm.
Makes quads a little tougher overall and allows them to enjoy the unique benefits of their construction a little longer on average, but I haven't noticed any particularly game-breaking side effects. You still lose a chunk of your firepower with that side when it goes, it's just that you no longer take an automatic fall and mobility hit to go as well. Rather like, you know, those non-quad 'Mechs who don't have that happen to them either...
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From the TRO: 1945 thread, i had an idea:
Alternate tech target movement modifier tables.
For example a low-tech force might use the following table:
| Target Movement | TMM |
| 0 | 0 |
| 1-2 | +1 |
| 3-4 | +2 |
| 5-6 | +3 |
While a higher-tech (i.e. Clan) force might use:
| Target Movement | TMM |
| 0-2 | 0 |
| 3-7 | +1 |
| 8-15 | +2 |
| 16+ | +3 |
(A bit excessive, but you should get the idea.)
One piece of tech might be the Movement tracker system. The Inner Sphere version only takes up 1 ton for every 10 tons of weaponry hooked to it. It allows the mounting unit to ignore 1 pt of target movement modifier, and is incompatible with Targeting Computers and Artemis systems. (Targeting Computer for the obvious reasons, and Artemis would require constant dedicated feed from the system as it guides missiles in their flight).
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I would treat quirks differently. Many of them would have costs and availability ratings. I'd also have two versions built in and add ons. Built in has cost built into the unit, add ons cost more and enough could also force a penalty quirk. This would mostly be for sensor and targeting systems though. Add to many and you've got a cramped cockpit. Or you could have your cockpit factory refurbished and get everything built in for a whole lot more money.
I would bring in any items from older books and update them as necessary. Some like Max Tech's targeting systems could be considered older tech versions. I would allow those that take weight and crits to be mounted any place though.
I would give Rifle Cannons more ammo types. I would also change how Rifle Cannons have their damages reduced. Light Rifle Cannons should do some damage. Everything else does. I'm really tempted to remove the damage reduction completely. Autocannons increased ammo loads and versatility are enough to outclass Rifles and force their wide spread abandonment. Rifle Cannon's weight, damage and range though would be enticing enough to keep them lingering around in specialty shops though.
I would change how Aerospace interact with ground units. I'd convert thrust to cruise MP and have Aerospace units use them for not just for movement in hexes but also vertically by elevation. Like Naval units only faster. Weapons have the same ranges plus elevation. That would apply to all units. Although ground units aren't likely to benefit as much. VTOL and Naval units would benefit from this more. Naval units would also be allowed to drop/fire torpedo bombs. Airships may carry bombs. Ground units can also use the same modes for Active Probes as Fighters. More than one probe may also be used providing they're operating in different modes. (aerospace games would also have rules for 3 dimensions, not just two.)
I'd have actual rules for Hoff's single crit Double Strength "Chemical" Heat sinks that matches the fluff. I'd also make rules for other fluffed items.
Infantry would be revised. Damages on support weapons would be changed to be more accurate to original stats and fluff. Motorized and Mechanized Infantry would be changed to operate more like battle armor with vehicles having actual stats. Field Artillery and Guns would be built as trailers and could include missile and laser weapons. They may be used by other infantry types but not moved and fired in the same turn.
I'd have quirks to make autocannon types more different. Regular, gast guns, gattling guns and the like.
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I think one of the big changes to aerospace I would want to propose is the breaking up of weapons into what I would designate as three major types. As we stand currently, all of our weapons are generically grouped by weapon type, locked to a certain arc, and capped by a single set damage value. This is a terrible hold over from a malfunctioning but beloved earlier game engine that about half of the battlespace rules were cribbed from in the first place... without any of the fun still in it. Since we have slowly sliced more and more of the old Renegade Legion: Leviathan rules out... it is time to dispense with the last few vestiges of those rules that are being maintained out of tradition sake for a 20+ year old dead rule set (that I do love) and change for something more.
As I said, I did say three types.
Type 1: Bays. This is the closest to how we currently know of our warships, massive gun bays that are mounted in our traditional locked arcs. Maintain the traditional damage cap on the bay.
Type 2: Turrets, limited in the number of guns they are able to carry but give an increased arc of fire, to give more versatility to certain weapon systems at the expense of a vastly increased tonnage of the mount in question. There would be two subtypes, Dorsal/Ventral and lets just call it for familiarity sake, sponson or casemate mounts. Lacking the damage cap but instead limited to only having a set number of capital or sub-capital weapons in a turret.
Type 3: Spinal/Co-axial mounts. For we do have Mass Drivers and they still need to be accounted for or any future diabolical weapon/wave motion guns/co-axial super PPCs someone might come up with in the future.
I should toss in a 4th type to cover missiles... we have long come to accept the idea of the VLS rack in modern surface ships and submarines that provide a rather large and versatile range of what can be targeted and hit with a missile, it feels odd that once we go to space, we still mount missile launchers like torpedo tubes in set arcs. Yes, we have optional rules that let us fire missiles out of arc but that should be standard.
This is all just to break the space game away from some of the last pieces of it's defunct corpse of an ancestor's hold on the rules and provide a few more options to make ship designing feel a bit more interesting and less like we are driving giant space pre-dreadnaught ironclads.
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Just remembered this, but there should be different skill charts for different unit types. For example, tracked vees shouldn't be elevating their BV by 15% every time they increase Piloting. They never use it, while a VTOL is in constant use of this skill. 'Mechs are over-charged at 15%, while Aerospace on Ground Maps could actually be under-charged, depending on your POV.
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Infantry would have more than one range for weapons and more than one attack. They can continue to be grouped by weapon type for ease of game though. No more pocket knifes hitting at 9 hexes and damaging a mech because the next guy has a laser cannon.
Mortars would be artillery area effect weapons. Not as powerful as regular artillery but still better than they are now.
Battle Armor weapons and equipment are available to be mounted on small vehicles under 5 tons. Same with their armor. Cost and availability would keep them in check though along with infantry versions being just as good as was originally printed. Vehicles would need to mount heat sinks per energy weapon per the old Combat Equipment rules.
Aerospace fighters and Aerodyne small craft and dropships can be made amphibious.
Mechs can have cockpits in more than one location, and the old dual cockpit are valid again and tripod cockpits can be used by all. They're just really expensive and rare.
Quad LAMs are legal.
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What do you mean, "More than one location"? Do you mean putting a cockpit in say, the right torso? The left leg?
While I agree with the concept of being able to change where the cockpit is more freely, I think it should be mandatory to have all the other associated crits (Life support, sensors) move with it, into said torso. That would keep people from doing stupid weird things like leg-mounted cockpits. Maybe restrict moving the head to torso/head slots only?
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I just figured the "head" of the mech was wherever the cockpit was. Because you've gotta have a way in and out, probably an ejection system as well, and you can't put it too close to the fusion reactor, that's why the "head" only has 3 pts of internal structure and can only carry 9 armor.
Of course that logic doesn't really work with torso-mounted cockpits working the way they do, but it's my own personal explanation for it.
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Caedis_Animus
I was aiming for the Side Torso. Although legs or arms might be interesting for some of the AutoMechs. :D
What got me wanting to was the original Scorpion and Goliath Mechs. Especially their source material. They have cockpits in the side torso. They also have another in what could be considered a head. The Goliath (Crab Gunner) also has a cockpit in the turret along with an infantry compartment.
As for having all the crits, I agree they should be there but I don't think they must be in the same place. The Torso Cockpit has it's life support crits in each side torso. The Center Torso has the cockpit and additional sensor.
massey
That's pretty much how TPTB and the rules handle it. The head is where the cockpit is, even if its in a side torso, or below the arms or even below the waist of the mech.
More things I'd do is allow the purchase and installation of extra life support and sensor crits. Each weighs .5 tons and takes 1 critical slot. Life Support adds an extra 48 hours of air. The sensors can be just additional redundant systems or for extra c-bills function like a lower tech Improved Sensor Quirk.
Mechs can carry infantry and passengers.
Create rules for the fold out camper used on the Marco Mech.
Allow Steam, Battery, and Solar Powered Mechs.
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Thing's I would have written differently include TMMs, a couple pieces of equipment, and a portion of the Aerospace Fighter rules.
TMMs
I dislike the idea of units managing to regularly receiving target numbers of 11 or higher with a high portion of that being based on movement modifiers. I would cap TMMs at +4, and spread them out a bit, something like:
0-2 = +0
3-6 = +1
6-10 = +2
11-15 = +3
15+ = +4
Jumping = +1 for moving 15 or less
Now, I recognize this would probably make things a lot easier to hit, and thus severely limit the effectiveness of lighter units, particularly when opposing pilots are skilled up. To counter this somewhat I would include rules for evasive maneuvers. Evasive maneuvers would increase the target number by anywhere from 1 to 3 - choice of the pilot - while also increasing the target number of the unit making evasive maneuvers by a like amount.
Standard movement mods would remain the same, so a unit moving at safe/walking/cruising speed receives +1 penalty to hit, and max/running/etc. receives +2 penalty to hit.
Ideally this would cause a trade-off between being more offensively or defensively oriented for that particular turn, without heavily skewing things in favor of lighter or heavier units.
Equipment
There are only a couple pieces of equipment that I would change, and this is primarily due to the above TMM changes.
Pulse Lasers: Only receive a bonus to hit of -1 rather than -2. The -2 has always felt like too much to me.
TAG: Receives a bonus to hit of -2 at short range, -1 at medium range and +1 at long range, also ranges change to 6/12/21 rather than 5/10/15.
Long Ranges on ballistic and missile based weapons: Increase their long range increment by half the current spread. I'll use a gauss rifle as an example, the current base gauss rifle has a long range of 16-22, a spread of 7, half of that is 4 (rounding normally), and producing a long range of 16-26 in my modification to the rules.
Aerospace Fighters
I would change them to be a little bit more in line with how other units are built and armored, as well as slightly limit their choice of equipment.
Engines are limited to standard engines as normal in the Succession Wars eras, they are limited to lights in Clan Invasion through Jihad and Star League eras, and then in the Republic Era they start to have access to XL engines. In most advanced tech eras engines end up limited to 1 step below the best able to be used in battlemechs (and also light engines end up being developed much, much earlier than in canon).
Add a 5% tonnage internal structure, and when endo-steel becomes available allow it to cut it down to 2.5%.
And finally armor, I've always hated the idea of the "flying brick," armor should be limited to similar amounts as equivalent weight battlemechs.
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I just remembered a fairly simple house rule I've actually been reflexively using for a while now: when a quad 'Mech loses a side torso, the corresponding foreleg stays attached because it is after all a leg and not an arm.
Makes quads a little tougher overall and allows them to enjoy the unique benefits of their construction a little longer on average, but I haven't noticed any particularly game-breaking side effects. You still lose a chunk of your firepower with that side when it goes, it's just that you no longer take an automatic fall and mobility hit to go as well. Rather like, you know, those non-quad 'Mechs who don't have that happen to them either...
I like that rule. Treat forelegs as just that LEGS rather than arms.
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I have considered, at times, using Aerospace construction and rules for standard ground vehicles. Instead of having 4 or 5 different locations for internals, you have a structural capacity.
One of the things about vehicle movement that struck me as odd was that there was nothing to represent transmission drives. Aerospace movement has that. Applying it to ground to show vehicles getting up to highway speeds makes perfect sense to me.
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I have considered, at times, using Aerospace construction and rules for standard ground vehicles. Instead of having 4 or 5 different locations for internals, you have a structural capacity.
One of the things about vehicle movement that struck me as odd was that there was nothing to represent transmission drives. Aerospace movement has that. Applying it to ground to show vehicles getting up to highway speeds makes perfect sense to me.
How about:
Running: You must walk before you can run. When moving a number of hexes above your walking modifier, the unit must have walked the prior turn. (This only affects distance traveled, 'running' by using additional power from the engine to cross rough terrain, go up a slop, or punch through a building etc is still freely allowed.)
So if you are in a Locust (walk 8, run 12), and want to go from a standing start through a patch of rough terrain (2 MP cost per hex for a total of 6 hexes), no problem. However if the patch of rough terrain is short enough that the Locust could go 9 hexes in distance (3 rough and 2 clear), the it could only travel 8 hexes, and the rest is explained that you have to get up to speed. Next turn though, the Locust can either walk, run, or stop.
But since this is a specific situation and most units are walking every turn, I see why it wasn't used.
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I'm not a fan of the armour limit for vehicles. I'd not have added that.
I'd also make it so you had to burn through some armour before you could start scoring the free critical hits on the location chart.
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After getting the question answered, i now wonder what the logic was in NOT letting a mech who is getting Death From Above'ed get to make a physical attack (punch of hatchets) back? I can see why it wouldn't get to kick back, but why not punch or something?
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How about:
Running: You must walk before you can run. When moving a number of hexes above your walking modifier, the unit must have walked the prior turn. (This only affects distance traveled, 'running' by using additional power from the engine to cross rough terrain, go up a slop, or punch through a building etc is still freely allowed.)
So if you are in a Locust (walk 8, run 12), and want to go from a standing start through a patch of rough terrain (2 MP cost per hex for a total of 6 hexes), no problem. However if the patch of rough terrain is short enough that the Locust could go 9 hexes in distance (3 rough and 2 clear), the it could only travel 8 hexes, and the rest is explained that you have to get up to speed. Next turn though, the Locust can either walk, run, or stop.
But since this is a specific situation and most units are walking every turn, I see why it wasn't used.
They already had that in MaxTech and I bet Tac Ops, and I'm not impressed. Besides, I was only thinking of vehicles. Pedal movement systems I don't see as being effected by inertia so much since walking or running is a matter of controlled falling.
So, I'm passing on that, but for vehicles like the flatbed truck laden down with cargo, it makes sense it should still be able to get to 65 mph even if it's down to a 1/2 cruise/flank movement profile. Hense transmission drive. You accelerate at safe or max and continue to pick up speed the more you spend. If you hit a rise, it subtracts from your velocity unless you account for it by spending 'thrust' or drive.
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They already had that in MaxTech and I bet Tac Ops, and I'm not impressed. Besides, I was only thinking of vehicles. Pedal movement systems I don't see as being effected by inertia so much since walking or running is a matter of controlled falling.
So, I'm passing on that, but for vehicles like the flatbed truck laden down with cargo, it makes sense it should still be able to get to 65 mph even if it's down to a 1/2 cruise/flank movement profile. Hense transmission drive. You accelerate at safe or max and continue to pick up speed the more you spend. If you hit a rise, it subtracts from your velocity unless you account for it by spending 'thrust' or drive.
Hence making it an "aerospace" type movement system? A lot of people won't play aerospace because they don't want to go through the trouble of keeping track of "velocity" on top of using thrust. Actually, there was a little more than that, but still, more complexity = fewer players. Another thing to consider is that these are 10 second turns. I used to drive a bobtail end dump that weighed 12 tons empty and could carry 15 tons legally (probably 20 pushing it). With a legal load on and good pavement, I could get up to 65 within the span of 10 seconds no problem. I actually had the thing doing 50 backwards for one job and could achieve that in 5 seconds.
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Hence making it an "aerospace" type movement system? A lot of people won't play aerospace because they don't want to go through the trouble of keeping track of "velocity" on top of using thrust. Actually, there was a little more than that, but still, more complexity = fewer players. Another thing to consider is that these are 10 second turns. I used to drive a bobtail end dump that weighed 12 tons empty and could carry 15 tons legally (probably 20 pushing it). With a legal load on and good pavement, I could get up to 65 within the span of 10 seconds no problem. I actually had the thing doing 50 backwards for one job and could achieve that in 5 seconds.
1) Yup. I probably would make it a form of alternative technology now, or an advanced rules option at the time.
2) Sure, you could have the bobcat up to 65 in 10, but would it have covered the same amount of ground in that time that you would get with a flat velocity of 65? There's a difference in reaching the speed and covering the same amount of ground while you're accelerating. And 12-15 tons ain't that great of a difference. I'm thinking a 17 ton semi maxed to 40 ton legal road weight limit.
I still would've put it out there, as much as any of you argue against it.
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1) Yup. I probably would make it a form of alternative technology now, or an advanced rules option at the time.
How about if a vehicle that is loaded can get up to its original speed, but only at a rate of change equal to its current cruising speed per turn? So a 5/8 vehicle getting reduced to 1/2 due to overloading will take ~5 turns to get to its original speed?
However, this is a vehicle that has to drive carefully due to the load, so anything shooting at it gets a +2 or +3 bonus to hitting it. The 5/8 that a normal combat vehicle does also allows for combat maneuvers, but if it gets loaded, it can only do 1/2 with combat maneuvering. If it tries to drive faster, it will be a much more stable (and easier) target.
Again, a limited area where it would apply. It might be true for the first couple turns on a map, then the convoy will slow down and scatter.
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There are a multitude of changes I would make:
1 dice per roll, having to keep dice paired up slows down any instances of mass rolling without a box o' doom. I've already got hit location and to-hit charts made up for this.
Unify the construction rules for vehicles and mechs... This would probably make me a few enemies, but it would be worth it to have tracked units with mech torsos after all.
Unify the construction rules for dropships and warships with those for Mobile Structures.
Unify the construction rules for Infantry, BA, and Protomechs though things like the MD infantry certainly blur the lines already.
Lastly, make a Custom Weapon Construction rule set, then take the most optimized weapons that the set can create for any given role and make them the canon weapons list.
...At that point though I might as well change the name as well, because the game would be just about unrecognizable.
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A vehicle with a mech's torso.. I can finally make that Terminator HK tank!
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I would like to have it so that mechs could kneel and go hull down in lvl 1 terrain. It would restrain torso and leg mounted weaponry but allow for an increase of accuracy with arm mounted and hand held weapons as well as making the mech more difficult to hit or by a custom location chart that has several voids in it where the hill eats the incoming fire instead of the mech.
I would like mechs the be able to purposefully go prone and be able to crawl, thus gaining the ability to actually use lvl 1 terrain to block line of sight and to make use of broken lvl 0 terrain to go hull down like vehicles are able to do.
Steal a concept from aerospace and put a modified version of bracket firing into use for ground forces. If there are multiple weapons of the same type firing at the same target, they get a bonus to hit modifier based on how many weapons are firing in that group. Single dice roll but then roll on the appropriate missile chart to see just how many weapons of that type actually hit from the barrage.
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I would like to have it so that mechs could kneel and go hull down in lvl 1 terrain. It would restrain torso and leg mounted weaponry but allow for an increase of accuracy with arm mounted and hand held weapons as well as making the mech more difficult to hit or by a custom location chart that has several voids in it where the hill eats the incoming fire instead of the mech.
That's already a rule. TacOps.
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That's already a rule. TacOps.
Thanks... I must have missed it. I rarely use mechs enough to catch every rule. Thank you for pointing me in the right direction.
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I would say it's the fact that BattleTech is slowly dying as a result of the bloated, difficult-to-implement rule set and things aren't being play tested. Table top BT is pretty difficult to find. More difficult to find consistently. And even more difficult to find a group which doesn't demand "3025 only."
I am not sure about this, but in my area I do not know of any groups that are playing in 3025 at all.
Gauging the rules by 1980s testing methods doesn't help things move forward. People just flat-out don't play TT as much as the electronic version(s) [questionable whether I'd call MWO a version of BT, but that's another topic]. I don't see a reason to gauge the effectiveness of a rule according to an out-dated mode which is becoming increasingly scarce. Gotta move forward and that's what MegaMek and Alpha Strike attempt to do.
Again at least in my area this is 100% false. I know of three groups that actively play table top, two I play in last have but not much (I am not active with them). Of the two that I play in first one is up to about 12-14 players now, when I started with them we were about six to eight. The second (smaller) one is right now about six players, but at the next game we are supposed to have one more added. To the best of my knowledge none of them play megamek. I do use it a bit, mostly to test things for the table top. Of the ones who know about megamek the main reason that they do not play is two fold, first the dice rolls. You can tell me as much as you want that they are truly random, but when you need threes to hit with all six weapons and roll nothing but two, and in the same turn have three mechs headcaped when only four shots are fired at you that does not pass the smell test. The second one from the only person that I know who has played more than just against the bot, he was saying that the players made him say never again (not first hand experience on this one).
The one thing that I did not see anyone put forward is the AMS. I would kind of go back to the way it was IS roll 1D6 that is how many missiles you shoot down, 2D6 for clan. What I would change is that it can fire as many times per turn as you have ammo, this would keep someone from firing the SRM2/LRM5 to take out the AMS and then using the big launchers. Next I would make it so that you can chain fire them at the same volley, so you have three MRM 40's incoming and your mech has four AMS's on it, you can potentially shoot down up to 24 (48 if clan) of each volley. And last each shot uses one round of ammo, but still makes the one heat. So in the example of the three MRM 40's you would use up one ton of ammo and make 12 heat that you had not planed on but may have saved the mech.
As for the infantry, the issue I see with the mechanized infantry is that I am running around on my quad-runner or whatever and now I jump on a mech (anti-mech attack) the mech runs around for a couple of turns before it shakes me off, and mike quad-runner is now back with me?
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As for the infantry, the issue I see with the mechanized infantry is that I am running around on my quad-runner or whatever and now I jump on a mech (anti-mech attack) the mech runs around for a couple of turns before it shakes me off, and mike quad-runner is now back with me?
Mechanized infantry can't make anti-'Mech attacks.
Now, motorized infantry can if they're suitably equipped with anti-'Mech gear, and yes, that's kind of weird at best in this sort of situation. It's just an artifact of infantry units being treated as singular blobs with no real "subsystem" resolution whatsoever, though -- one of the points at which the notion of the game as a simulation of in-universe reality simply breaks down because the rules don't support the necessary level of detail.
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Mechanized infantry can't make anti-'Mech attacks.
Now, motorized infantry can if they're suitably equipped with anti-'Mech gear, and yes, that's kind of weird at best in this sort of situation. It's just an artifact of infantry units being treated as singular blobs with no real "subsystem" resolution whatsoever, though -- one of the points at which the notion of the game as a simulation of in-universe reality simply breaks down because the rules don't support the necessary level of detail.
My bad, thanks for the correction. To me there would only be three types of PBI infantry. Foot, Jump, or mechanized. And mechanized have separate transports so really there is just foot or jump with or with out extra transport.
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2 things always bugged me. MASC and ballistics.
MASC is a great item but the failure rate is too short for strategic ops.
Instead of reducing walking MP each MASC failure should reduce Run MP by 1 whether your using MASC or not.
My problem with ballistics is that they hold no practical advantage. Even on the logistics side they're on par with energy weapons with the only thing keeping energy weapons in check is that a critical hit usually leads to destruction. Missiles otoh fair very well against energy weapons under specific and still practical circumstances.
My change to ballistics is to give all of them the following attributes.
-1 modifier to all woods and buildings in the way of your target.
If you don't have line of sight and the only thing between you and the target are woods then you can use indirect firing rules.
Lastly when firing at targets in buildings ballistics get their damage reduced by (construction factor / 20 ) instead of (construction factor / 10)
This is to give ballistics an in game universe value of having better penetrating abilities than energy and missile weapons.
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Mechanized infantry can't make anti-'Mech attacks.
Now, motorized infantry can if they're suitably equipped with anti-'Mech gear, and yes, that's kind of weird at best in this sort of situation. It's just an artifact of infantry units being treated as singular blobs with no real "subsystem" resolution whatsoever, though -- one of the points at which the notion of the game as a simulation of in-universe reality simply breaks down because the rules don't support the necessary level of detail.
I've actually seen something akin to motorized infantry in training IRL a foreign country. Two men to a dirt bike. The driver slows down just enought that the passenger can jump back off his seat and deploy then the driver keeps going. later, the driver comes back to pick up the passenger. It was really neat to see. I just wonder how effective it would be in actual combat.
Honestly, I think the motorized and mechanized infantry are slower than they should be in representation on the board. I would also break them down into squads then give them a modifier to be hit based on their smaller size.
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I've actually seen something akin to motorized infantry in training IRL a foreign country. Two men to a dirt bike. The driver slows down just enought that the passenger can jump back off his seat and deploy then the driver keeps going. later, the driver comes back to pick up the passenger. It was really neat to see. I just wonder how effective it would be in actual combat.
Honestly, I think the motorized and mechanized infantry are slower than they should be in representation on the board. I would also break them down into squads then give them a modifier to be hit based on their smaller size.
This is an interesting thought, if they had a system so that a % of the troops did not take part that could work. Just thinking about this as I type. If one out of every three troops does not participate in the anti-mech attack, to keep it simplistic I would have them "disappear" when the troops were doing something that the vehicle could not and "reappear" after it stopped doing what it was. Just using simple numbers the platoon starts with 21 troops this would give them 14 that could do the anti-mech attack. During the attack they lose four troops, leaving them with ten troops. As so as they are off the mech they get back the five drivers, bringing there strength up to 15 troops for shooting/damage and all that. I could see this working and making some sense, but I think that it is to complex overall and think keeping the transports separate.
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Another rule i was always wanting to see. Using AC cannons to bracket a mine hex, to set the mines off. IIRC by the rules only other LRMS can do so.
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Squads should have been the default rules for infantry.
I like what others have said about tracking ammo for anti mech/ vehicle weapons in an infantry unit.
I also agree lasers should ignore TTM but would go as far and say that they should be short range weapons.
I would increase the range of the autocannons to make the more viable weapons.
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My bad, thanks for the correction. To me there would only be three types of PBI infantry. Foot, Jump, or mechanized. And mechanized have separate transports so really there is just foot or jump with or with out extra transport.
I'd keep the various kinds of infantry only I'd have the ones in vehicles treated like as a cross between battle armor and vehicle units. The vehicles actually have their own stats and weapons and function with vehicle rules but you could possibly stack more per hex than normal.
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My problem with ballistics is that they hold no practical advantage. Even on the logistics side they're on par with energy weapons with the only thing keeping energy weapons in check is that a critical hit usually leads to destruction. Missiles otoh fair very well against energy weapons under specific and still practical circumstances.
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Actually, they can be lighter than energy weapons, especially on vehicles or lower tech units. Their damage is also more consistent than most missile launchers, so you're not wasting munitions. Their also fewer countermeasures against them then there are against energy and missile weapons. Then there's their alternative munitions. So they do have a purpose. It would be nice to fire them indirectly though. And I like your idea of giving them greater penetrating power against woods. I haven't made up my mind about buildings yet though.
This is an interesting thought, if they had a system so that a % of the troops did not take part that could work. Just thinking about this as I type. If one out of every three troops does not participate in the anti-mech attack, to keep it simplistic I would have them "disappear" when the troops were doing something that the vehicle could not and "reappear" after it stopped doing what it was. Just using simple numbers the platoon starts with 21 troops this would give them 14 that could do the anti-mech attack. During the attack they lose four troops, leaving them with ten troops. As so as they are off the mech they get back the five drivers, bringing there strength up to 15 troops for shooting/damage and all that. I could see this working and making some sense, but I think that it is to complex overall and think keeping the transports separate.
I don't know. You've got 7 vehicles trying to swarm a mech so 14 troopers can get off and on again, in 10 seconds? I can see them throwing grenades and satchel charges but not actually climbing on and off. Maybe on a quad or tripod but I'm having trouble picturing it happening with a biped mech. And the losses only come from the troopers jumping onto the mech. What if vehicles get stepped on? There goes 1 trooper and the ride of 2 others. So you really can lose three there with just one vehicle. I'm sure it's doable but it seems overly complicated to me.
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The more I think about it, the less and less enamored I am of armour limits at all. It comes across as more or less arbitrary in different unit types, but it's always at least somewhat dubious.
I mean; stuff is stuff, right? 14 ton AC... or 14 tons or armour? whats the difference?
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The more I think about it, the less and less enamored I am of armour limits at all. It comes across as more or less arbitrary in different unit types, but it's always at least somewhat dubious.
I mean; stuff is stuff, right? 14 ton AC... or 14 tons or armour? whats the difference?
The armor has to provide enough flexibility and room around the joints for the Mech to still be able to move.. Witness Heavy Armor that imposes a Run speed penalty. A Large Laser can be mounted almost anywhere along the arm (upper or lower), but the armor has to be mounted in a specific layer pattern to allow the joints to move properly.
But that could allow for other options:
For each full 25% less than the armor maximum, the Mech gets a 1 pt bonus to all Piloting rolls (it is more flexible). As a comparison, observe how flexible people are in a spandex outfit vs a thick winter coat (but the coat cannot compress).
For infantry, I would allow stacking multiple platoons in a hex, but when a weapon is used in anti-infantry mode, it does its full AI damage to the target platoon, and half damage to each other platoon in the targeted hex. Presto, a rules effect that encourages infantry to scatter when Mechs get in range. Infantry platoons on separate levels in a building do not get penalized in this manner, though still take damage from AoE weapons per regular rules. (So infantry in a city are really nasty because in a 4 level building you can have 1 platoon per level and you have to kill them individually, or just collapse the building.)
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A lot of the suggestions here are really interesting, but I think there are two different mentalities on display in this thread.
The first leaves Battletech mostly as it is, and offers a few small rules tweaks. Some people are talking about small changes to the way Battle Value is calculated. Other changes are much larger, altering some of the basics of the game (like lasers ignoring target movement). If I'm going to do something like that, I think the whole game engine needs modified.
If I'm going to recreate the entire game, I'm going to try to make it more cinematic, with a lot less record keeping. Battletech is a fun game, but it definitely has an early 80s design philosophy. Modern games tend to play a lot faster. I'd probably make it so that piloting skill rolls let you do something good, rather than avoiding something bad. Dodge an enemy missile barrage, grab a nearby vehicle and use it as a shield, instead of just not falling down when you get shot a bunch or when you turn on concrete. The game would focus less on wearing through your opponent's massive plates of armor, and more on outmaneuvering them and catching them with a solid blow. Only the heaviest of mechs should be able to just stand there and absorb round after round of fire.
I'd like to see a game system where a Wasp can fight a Daishi if the pilot is good enough. He doesn't just trade fire. He jumps around, hides behind buildings, catches his enemy from behind, targets weak points in the armor, etc. The Daishi would certainly have the advantage, but it wouldn't be as unbalanced as it is now.
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I'd like to see a game system where a Wasp can fight a Daishi if the pilot is good enough. He doesn't just trade fire. He jumps around, hides behind buildings, catches his enemy from behind, targets weak points in the armor, etc. The Daishi would certainly have the advantage, but it wouldn't be as unbalanced as it is now.
With only two skills (gunnery, and Piloting) difficult to do on the board, but very doable in the RPG.
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I'd like to see a game system where a Wasp can fight a Daishi if the pilot is good enough. He doesn't just trade fire. He jumps around, hides behind buildings, catches his enemy from behind, targets weak points in the armor, etc. The Daishi would certainly have the advantage, but it wouldn't be as unbalanced as it is now.
How lucky are you and who else is on your team?
I've done stuff like this with Valkyries against assault mechs, including a custom Daishi before...Didn't win, but kept em bottled up for a while.
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How lucky are you and who else is on your team?
I've done stuff like this with Valkyries against assault mechs, including a custom Daishi before...Didn't win, but kept em bottled up for a while.
I'm basically thinking of an entirely different system. More of a mech dueling game. So a skilled pilot in a 3025 Wasp goes up against a Daishi, and while he's at a disadvantage (maybe even a big one), if he's good enough he can win. With no help.
Maybe you're making opposed piloting rolls to dodge enemy attacks.
Think of it more that the mech is just a piece of equipment that the mechwarrior uses. Yeah, the Daishi is a better weapon, but if a 20th level D&D fighter with a nonmagical club was to match up against a 12th level Fighter with a +5 longsword, your money would be on the 20th level guy.
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I'm basically thinking of an entirely different system. More of a mech dueling game. So a skilled pilot in a 3025 Wasp goes up against a Daishi, and while he's at a disadvantage (maybe even a big one), if he's good enough he can win. With no help.
Maybe you're making opposed piloting rolls to dodge enemy attacks.
Think of it more that the mech is just a piece of equipment that the mechwarrior uses. Yeah, the Daishi is a better weapon, but if a 20th level D&D fighter with a nonmagical club was to match up against a 12th level Fighter with a +5 longsword, your money would be on the 20th level guy.
The Solaris VII rules for 'mech combat using MW3rd ed or CBT:RPG (they are the same), tried to do this. You basically got to add to your tohit number based on the 'mech's potential movement rate, what kind of movement the pilot was doing, and what the pilot's skill was. IMHO they went about it the wrong way and made the 'mech's movement potential and pilot's ability a mutual limiting factor.
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Depends on how much meddling I'm allowed to do.
If we want to keep most of the design rules intact, we can just mess with weapon balance by adjusting damage, heat, and occasionally crit size.
The original Battletech and Citytech would thus have introduced weapons with slightly different stats:
Light Autocannon - 4 damage, 1 heat, range (3)8/16/24. 6 tons, 2 crits.
(Medium) Autocannon - 8 damage, 3 heat, range (3)6/12/18. 8 tons, 4 crits.
Heavy Autocannon - 12 damage, 5 heat, range (2)6/12/18. 12 tons, 6 crits.
Assault Autocannon - 16 damage, 7 heat, range (1)5/10/15. 14 tons, 8 crits.
Large Laser - 6 heat (all other stats the same)
LRM5 - 3 heat (all other stats the same)
If we keep the original Battletech 2nd Edition as canon, and start at 2750, then we just give TRO 2750 an additional balance pass:
- the ER PPC would have a range of 8/16/24, while the ER Large Laser would have a range of 7/14/21.
- the Gauss Rifle would generate 10 heat instead of 1, and have a range of (2)7/14/21.
- Mechs that mounted double heat sinks would come with 5 heat sinks in the engine, rather than 10.
- Pulse lasers would have the same damage and range as normal lasers.
- The Ultra AC/5 would have the same range as a normal AC/5, and could be unjammed. (If I get my alternate Autocannon introduced, then it's just an Ultra Autocannon, and does 8 damage at 3 heat per shot).
- the LB-10X wouldn't have been introduced; instead, LBX would just be an alternate ammunition type for normal autocannon.
Further weapons would always conform to the "Medium Range = 2x Short Range, Long Range = 3x Short Range" pattern.
On the other hand, if I'm allowed to go REALLY out there, then I'd adjust critical hit slots rather substantially:
1. Smaller chassis have fewer critical slots than larger chassis. Heavy 'mechs lose 1 slot per arm and torso; Medium 'mechs lose 2 slots per arm and torso; Light 'mechs lose 3 slots per arm and torso. These are the ONLY critical hit slots that are 'rerolled'; a hit to any other empty or already-hit slot just counts as 'not actually a critical hit'.
2. Engines have a variable number of critical slots, and provide a variable number of "integral heat dissipation", rather than just a variable number of heat sinks that can be hidden inside the engine. Engines up to a rating of 150 take up 3 crit slots and provide 6 heat dissipation per turn; every additional 50 points of Engine Rating (or fraction thereof) provides +2 integral heat dissipation and requires 1 additional crit slot. Likewise, XL engines up to a rating of 75 take up 3 crit slots and provide 3 heat dissipation per turn; every additional 25 points of engine rating (or fraction thereof) provides +1 integral heat dissipation and requires 1 additional crit slot. Compact Engines up to a rating of 300 take up 3 crit slots and provide 6 heat dissipation per turn; every additional 100 points of Engine Rating (or fraction thereof) provides +2 integral heat dissipation and requires 1 additional crit slot.
While the first 3 engine slots MUST be mounted in the Center Torso, additional slots may either be mounted in the center torso, or split evenly between both side torsos (with any remainder in the Center Torso), but each side torso cannot have more slots than the center torso. Thus, a standard 350-rated engine may either be mounted with 7 slots in the CT, or with 3 slots in the CT and 2 slots in each side torso.
3. Similarly, gyros have 1 critical hit slot per 100 engine rating; XL gyros have 1 critical hit slot per 50 engine rating, and compact gyros have 1 critical hit slot per 200 engine rating, all to a minimum of 2 critical hit slots.
4. Jump Jets weigh 0.5 tons and 1 critical slot for Light mechs, 1 ton and 1 critical slot for Medium mechs, 1.5 tons and 2 crits each for Heavy mechs, and 2 tons and 2 crits each for Assault mechs.
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Even without super-wacky stuff, one set of rules I've always REALLY wanted to see done differently is the infantry rules.
Specifically, I want infantry deployed in 5- to 7-man squads, with one or two support weapons per squad - which have the full Battletech weapon rules. Motorized infantry should be built using the small support-vee rules, and deployed just like Battlearmor.
1. Battletech scale weapons are assigned one of four damage codes - P, B, F, or H.
- P-weapons kill 1 trooper per 5 points of damage, but ignore heavy armor. All Gauss Rifles, non-Pulse Lasers, and PPCs are P-weapons.
- B-weapons kill 1 trooper per point of damage, or 1 trooper per 2 points of damage if the squad is wearing heavy armor. All Autocannon, Pulse Lasers, and Missiles are B-weapons by default.
- F-weapons kill 1d6 troopers per point of damage, or 1 trooper per point of damage if the squad is wearing heavy armor. All Machine Guns and LBX cluster munitions are F-weapons, and autocannon and missiles can fire F-rated ammunition that deals half damage against armored targets.
- H-weapons kill 1d6 troopers per point of damage. All flamers, infernos, and plasma weapons are H-weapons.
2. Motorized infantry are built as small support vees, and deployed like battlearmor. Their MP is equal to their Cruising speed, and their effective armor is equal to half their total armor rating, but they ignore facing just like normal infantry.
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Even without super-wacky stuff, one set of rules I've always REALLY wanted to see done differently is the infantry rules.
Specifically, I want infantry deployed in 5- to 7-man squads, with one or two support weapons per squad - which have the full Battletech weapon rules. Motorized infantry should be built using the small support-vee rules, and deployed just like Battlearmor.
1. Battletech scale weapons are assigned one of four damage codes - P, B, F, or H.
- P-weapons kill 1 trooper per 5 points of damage, but ignore heavy armor. All Gauss Rifles, non-Pulse Lasers, and PPCs are P-weapons.
- B-weapons kill 1 trooper per point of damage, or 1 trooper per 2 points of damage if the squad is wearing heavy armor. All Autocannon, Pulse Lasers, and Missiles are B-weapons by default.
- F-weapons kill 1d6 troopers per point of damage, or 1 trooper per point of damage if the squad is wearing heavy armor. All Machine Guns and LBX cluster munitions are F-weapons, and autocannon and missiles can fire F-rated ammunition that deals half damage against armored targets.
- H-weapons kill 1d6 troopers per point of damage. All flamers, infernos, and plasma weapons are H-weapons.
2. Motorized infantry are built as small support vees, and deployed like battlearmor. Their MP is equal to their Cruising speed, and their effective armor is equal to half their total armor rating, but they ignore facing just like normal infantry.
I like this. O0
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The biggest changes I would have made would be to the Aerospace game. first I would have warships have four weapon categories. Cap, cub cap, standard, and Point defense. A warship would be able to mount a maximum of 20 of each weapon type per firing arc. Second, point defense weapons would not require gunners. Third, I would rework the armoring techniques to make it possible to mount more armor on larger naval vessels, between 4 and 5 times as much. I want the naval battles to be true slug fests with warships throwing dozens of shots back and forth before damage starts to become serious. I'm a fan of making conventional weapons less effective against warships but I would then rework jumpships to use standard scale armor to represent them being so easy to destroy in fluff. To give the Inner Sphere some hope against clan warships I would make sub cap weapons available throughout the succession wars and even have small (300-500kt) warships in the Inner Sphere navies entirely armed with sub cap and conventional weapons Another idea my brother andf I played around with was making each conventional weapons bay(we capped it at 20 weapons per bay) count as a single weapon on warships. We did that as our only modification in one game though and my brother trashed my Mckenna with his Kimagure retrofitted with 400 clan ER PPCs per firing arc, so gamer beware. I'm pretty sure this ridiculous run-on has gone on long enough so I'm going to stop here and go to bed. Been up about 22 hours now.
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The other thread discussing the RAC/2 got me thinking of the changes some have made at the table. As it is, the Rotary guns have no provision in their Battle Value for jamming. They simply take the average damage at various ranges / avg number of shots hitting at full firing rate (6 shots). That means the gun is grossly over-valued, as it will almost assuredly jam on a 6 (Needing a 5). IMO, you're paying for the gun to be fully-operational, so it should be operational, most of the time:
RAC/2 & RAC/5 Jamming Table
1-Shot: Needs 2 (Automatic Success)
2-Shot: Needs 2 (Automatic Success)
3-Shot: Needs 3
4-Shot: Needs 3
5-Shot: Needs 3
6-Shot: Needs 4
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I would have made winning initiative mean you pick who goes first rather than automatically benefiting from going last.
Sometimes going first is more valuable than getting the last move, and in those cases the winner of initiative should have had the option to go first.
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Modify the Thunder munitions so the minefield created is LRM salvo size divided by 5.
Modify the FASCAM rounds so instead of a minefield of the weapon's rated damage, it is 1/5 that damage.
The reason is that a standard LRM-20 can have all its missiles hit the target, and do a maximum of 20 pts of damage. Yet if you replace that with a Thunder volley it will create a 20-pt minefield that will damage anything that walks inside a 30-meter wide hex, and repeatedly damage things on following turns if they are foolish enough to walk through it.
Same missile size (shots per ton and critical space), same ranges, same launcher, yet somehow the 1 pt warheads in the regular LRM munitions are able to do multiple points of damage when put in a minefield.
Gauss weaponry produces more heat per pt of damage than an AC, as the brass of the AC will carry away some of the heat produced.
Gauss weaponry can take advantage of extra capacitor mounts (similar to PPC capacitors), but still suffer the 5 pts of heat to charge them (and additional 5 pts of heat per additional shot). So the first Gauss shot might do 1 pt of heat, but the 2nd and subsequent shots in that turn will do 6 pts of heat (up to the number of charged capacitors).
Dropships:
Civilian drives require less tonnage than military engines, but are more vulnerable to critical hits and consume more fuel per burn-day.
Jumpships/Warships:
Station-keeping is .01G.
Space Stations:
You can put as much SI and armor as you want. The problem is that armor only contributes slightly to Threshold, and SI is needed for Threshold. Without the KF core, a Space Station needs more tonnage per point of SI than a Warship.
Space Stations can transit in-system at .01G, effectively taking 10* as long as a vessel transiting at 1G (but they only need 1/10 the fuel to do so). This allows a Space station to be Jumped to a new Star system using a Repair Bay, or a smaller station to be attached to a Dropship Docking point and jumped via regular Jumpship.
Ballistic weaponry on a Space station may need additional bracing. Each ballistic weapon needs an amount of tonnage equal the stations's SI minus the mass of the ballistic mount for recoil dissipation, FRU. So if the station has 1 SI, and you want to mount Machine guns (quarter, half, or full ton) feel free. But if you want to mount a dozen AC/2 (6 tons each, that is a difference of 5 tons for each weapon, so each of the 12 AC/s will need 5 tons of recoil bracing, for a total of 60 tons. Missile weapons need half the SI to mount (so a 150 ton AR-12 missile launcher only needs 75 SI). Energy weapons don't have recoil.
Yes, it is possible that mounting more bracing is less massive than mounting more SI.
Smaller weaponry takes up more surface area for its tonnage than a larger weapon. So larger ships don't have the surface area to practically mount more capital weaponry, while smaller hulls don't have the tonnage for larger weaponry. (For example, imagine 2 weapons, all else the same. The larger weapon is 2* as long, wide, and tall, and as a result masses 8* as much. However, it only requires 4* as much surface area.)
ASF Launch Bays would mass more than ASF storage bays. Launch Bays can launch fighters into space, while storage bays can't. Both can do maintenance on ASF. ASF can be transferred from Launch Bays to Storage bays, and vice versa. Basic idea is you have a few Launch Bays that actually deploy ASF, and a lot more Storage bays where you hold the reserve fighters or those being prepped for launch.
Surface area would be another calculation. Given a vessel's tonnage there is a chart or equation that tells how much base surface area it has. From there, you would have modifiers based on hull shape (for Dropships and Space stations), and you add surface area for other items (i.e. ASF Launch Bays, advanced sensor/jammer systems, external cooling arrays, etc). Surface items are the only things ASF can shoot at when attacking a Warship Dropship, until the armor is gone (unless they carry weapons heavy enough to break through Warship Threshold). As more Surface items are added, surface area climbs. You then specify the armor tonnage you want, and look up on the Surface area table (or equation) to determine how many points per ton of armor the armor tonnage gets (or how many tons per pt of armor). So the more Surface Area stuff you add, the thinner the armor gets.
Example:
A space station has a heat intensive civilian rig that produces more heat than the station's inherent heat sinks can dissipate. Instead of spending 1 ton per pt of heat to dissipate by putting in lots of standard heat sinks, the designer decides to put in a Droplet radiator (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_droplet_radiator). This allows the design to dissipate 4 pts of heat per ton (numbers guessed at), and is used.
Later the space station is under attack by pirates. Deciding to ignore their first hails and trust the thick armor, the (idiotic) station commander refuses to turn over some of his refined product (Endo-steel?). The pirates then send a pair of ASF in and shoot off the Droplet radiator. The station commander then sees the heat gauges spike on the civilian gear and has a choice of either melting the station, turning off the Endo-Steel furnace, or giving up.
Another designer wants to make a Jump point defense base. This station needs to have extensive ASF Launch Bays, as he expects the need to rapidly launch ASF after someone Jumps. The number of ASF Launch Bays boost surface area by 25%, so the armor is only 80% as thick.
A third designer makes a defense station. Deciding to go with ASF as the primary armament, he makes it where there is 1 ASF Launch bay for every 19 ASF storage bays. As the station will be in orbit he expects that there will be 20 minutes available to launch the full complement of ASF.
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Ground vehicles should get twice the critspace as mechs.
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Are you advocating for less space on ground vehicles?
Because if you're advocating more ground vehicles already enjoy technically way more crit space than Mechs.
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Are you advocating for less space on ground vehicles?
Because if you're advocating more ground vehicles already enjoy technically way more crit space than Mechs.
Yeah. They get quite a bit. The "slots" don't have 1-for-1 parity with the crit slots of a 'Mech.
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I'd like to see Sup Vees not follow crit rules at all; they are supposed to be totally task-oriented, so this makes sense to me.
Still working on my homebrew infantry rules...
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I would like to see tracked and wheeled vehicles get a better movement rate when following a road. e.g. move from one road hex to another = 1/2 mp spent in lieu of the +1 if entire movement is along a road. Include motorized and mechanized infantry of the same motive types with this rule. I would rather have the infantry broke down to the squad level for operations. Then, the heavy weapons squads would make more sense to me than the platoon sized elements do.
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Another thing i'd change is how trailers and cargo work. I think the movement penalties for trailers are too severe. I'd go more with piloting skill roll modifiers. Still slow vehicles down, but not as much.
I'd also make it possible to over-engine vehicles and install a "Cargo Bay" vs cargo space and then have them able to carry much, much more. Probably for SupVees only.
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Completely re do space combat from a clean sheet perspective.
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The more I think about it, the more I think I would also change PBI. You are either foot or jump that is it. If you want to move faster you have a transport (separate unit).
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The more I think about it, the more I think I would also change PBI. You are either foot or jump that is it. If you want to move faster you have a transport (separate unit).
I really like the idea of making all infantry Personal-class weapons only damage units with BAR 5 or under (or any BAR damage, really). At the same time, Squad Support weapons become 'Mech-scale, are separated from the damage divisor, and do their own damage.
Example:
28-man Platoon
Primary Weapon: Automatic Rifle (0.54 per trooper, may only damage BAR 5 or under)
Secondary Weapon: Heavy MG (0.64 per 2 troopers)
If the platoon fires at a soft target...
0.64 * 4 squads (8 troopers) = 2.56 damage
0.54 * 20 troopers = 10.8 damage
Total = 13 damage max
If the platoon fires at a hard target ('Mech, for example)...
0.64 * 4 squads (8 troopers) = 2.56 damage
0.54 * 20 troopers = 0 damage
Total = 3 damage max
This would likely cause a full re-structuring of the damage values of Support Weapons, but it would be far easier to standardize them by whole or half numbers.
Heavy MG = 2 damage/2 trooper crew per squad
Squad MG = 1.5 damage/1 trooper crew per squad
Light MG = 1 damage/1 trooper crew per squad
This is done for simplification, as well as reflecting that they are truly "Mech-scale weapons" being employed by infantry, such as taking a Magshot and giving it a 3-person crew per squad. You'd lessen the amount of math needed to figure out the damage and give it parity with the weapons it mirrors. This is already done with Field Gunners and the larger, ballistic weapons. Why not the smaller weapons, such as an AP Gauss Rifle?
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Basic changes:
Initiative
unbalanced force sizes: When one side starts with (or has achieved) a larger force than the other, upon losing their initiative, movement will require moving multiple units until parity is reached, in the same general order as occurs when forces are equal. Example: Bob has 8 units, Joe has 5. Bob has lost initiative this turn. In movement order, Bob moves 2 units, Joe moves 1, Bob moves 2, joe moves 1, bob moves 1, joe moves 1, Bob moves 1, Joe moves his last unit, and the firing phase begins.
Artillery
(By weapon type)
Damage/splash (Baseline)
Long Tom 20 to center, 10 to adjacent
Sniper: 10 to Center, 5 to Adjacent.
Thumper: 5 to Center, 3 to adjacent.
Arrow IV: 20 to center, 10 to adjacent. (Baseline or homing)
Ranges:
Long Tom: 25 Mapsheets
Sniper: 10 Mapsheets
Thumper 15 Mapsheets
Arrow IV: 5 Mapsheets.
Artillery Scatter/usage
Scatter on a miss is the margin of failure plus one hex (or 2 inches) per 3 mapsheets of range (Round to the nearest whole number) for off-board artillery. for example, Troy needs an 11 to hit his targeted hex. His Long Tom is 20 hexes away. He rolls 10, making his margin of failure 1, plus 7=8hexes drift, he rolls direction of drift and checks the impact to see if any enemy, or friendly, units are in the resulting hex or adjoining hexes. If Tony had rolled a 2 his margin of failure would be 8, the drift would have been 13 hexes distance.
Scatter: is rolled on 1D6 to determine direction.
On-map or Indirect fire with non-artillery weapons: Works the same way, minus reference to mapsheet distances.
For all ranges with Artillery, Gunnery score Plus Five, plus the spotter (up to three)=your target number to hit a given hex.
Spotters:
Each unit spotting for artillery reduces target number by 1, spotters must have Line of Sight, and must make a gunnery check to apply this bonus (TAG reduces the difficulty of this check by 1), if the spotter is engaged in combat, this check is made as a secondary target, and if failed, does not provide the bonus to the artillery gunnery.
Flight Times: 1 turn per 5 Mapsheets delay when firing artillery from off-board.
ALL Artillery regardless of mounting, must emplace for one turn before firing, and must take a full turn to de-emplace before moving. This includes any and all vehicles mounting an artillery weapon or acting as an artillery platform with the exception of:
Large Vehicle (Wet Naval large support vehicles), Dropships (must be grounded, but weapons are already considered 'emplaced') and other units of comparable size (over 1000 tons).
For targeting purposes, emplaced artillery is considered to be a stationary target, and suffers the relevant defensive modifiers.
THIS INCLUDES ARROW IV UNITS.
(this does not include Arrow IV missiles dropped from wing hardpoints on aerospace craft.)
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Initiative
unbalanced force sizes: When one side starts with (or has achieved) a larger force than the other, upon losing their initiative, movement will require moving multiple units until parity is reached, in the same general order as occurs when forces are equal. Example: Bob has 8 units, Joe has 5. Bob has lost initiative this turn. In movement order, Bob moves 2 units, Joe moves 1, Bob moves 2, joe moves 1, bob moves 1, joe moves 1, Bob moves 1, Joe moves his last unit, and the firing phase begins.
This exists in MegaMek. It's called "Front-Loaded Init." And it's the most easily-fixed rule in BT. Instead of round "down" when determining how many units to move at the start of a turn, you round "up". One-word change and the entire game's problem with swarms is mitigated without Force Size Modifier.
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This exists in MegaMek. It's called "Front-Loaded Init." And it's the most easily-fixed rule in BT. Instead of round "down" when determining how many units to move at the start of a turn, you round "up". One-word change and the entire game's problem with swarms is mitigated without Force Size Modifier.
I know, I started lobbying for this back before Megamek was coded, and others were lobbying for it before me.
Mostly, because it made sense.
Fundamentally, human beings are human beings, and it's harder to coordinate a larger group of people, than a smaller one (all other factors being equal).
here's another one...
Target Movement Modifier-calculate based on Hex distance from start to finish.
How it works: Joe runs his 'mech in a circle. To calculate his TMM, you count the number of hexes from his starting point, to his final location, using the shortest distance between each point. this is actually an extension of a much older ruling issued when a player would back up, move forward, back up, move forward to get a massive TMM bonus while remaining in the same exact place-this was ruled illegal by TPTB back when Battletech was still a FASA product.
Essentially what this change does, is force the battlefield to be fluid, as opposed to rewarding static positioning-by limiting the TMM to the shortest distance between the starting point, and the end point, units that rely on speed have to plan their movement more carefully to keep an opponent from getting an easy shot.
Infantry Combat Ranges
Weapons designed to combat infantry, and weapons used by infantry against other infantry (not including BA), gain 3x the listed effective ranges (short, medium, long) against Infantry formations.
This means that 'stock' rifle infantry engages OTHER infantry out to nine hexes distance, but only engage Armored or Battlearmored units at the current listed range, it also means the standard Machine-gun, SRM, LRM, etc. weapons engage at much longer ranges. I call it the "Naked Man range". (aka PBI ranges) Impacted weapons include:
Support Needlers
Support Lasers
Machine Guns
Dedicated antipersonnel weapons such as that Jade falcon gauss rifle.
etc.
(basically weapons or systems that come in under 5 tons.)
I know that 'split ranges' on SOME weapons, would be a bit of a headache. this one's just a suggestion, possibly worth discusssing.
Heavy Machine Guns
Thesis: Clan engineers and Scientists don't share their work with the Inner Sphere readily, or willingly, and there is zero guarantee that addressing what is largely a similar (but not precisely the same) problem should result in nearly identical solutions. For example, while most of Europe were developing Sub-Machine-guns for trench-clearance based on the experiences of WW1, Japan developed the 2 inch "Knee Mortar" for roughly the same purpose-that is, a compact means of delivering aggressive firepower in what amounted to close quarters combat.
The Clan solutions: Light and heavy Machine guns. Per the actual published stats. Clan LMG's generate 0 heat, do 1 point of damage or 1D6 out to 6 hexes at .25 tons mass. Clan Heavies do 3 Points or 3D6 damage out to 2 hexes at .75 tons.
The Spheroid solution: The Heavy MG The Inner Sphere heavy machine gun, does 2 points damage out to 6 hexes for the mass of .75 tons, with a 3 points per shot ammunition explosion risk at the same ammunition count. It's based on firing the same bullet from a hotter propellant charge through a reinforced barrel. IS HMG's must be mounted in Pairs on units larger than a battlearmor suit, each pair taking up 1 critical or item slot. (making it weigh, for 'mech or vehicle mounting, 1.5 tons) Range brackets are Short 2, Med. 4, Long 6. 1/2 ton of HMG ammunition is worth 300 points of internal damage if it is detonated before it had been expended, and requires a PSR if CASE is installed, or the CASE fails.
Infantry support version: the IS Support HMG has a range of 2, 4, and 6, does 2D6 damage to infantry, and 2 points of damage to armored units, with a mandatory crew of 3, enabling a 21 man platoon to field 7 total. This weapon may not be equipped by Jump infantry, Mechanized infantry may not equip them in odd numbered quantities (round down).
Battlesuit version: Weight-750 kilograms, range 2/4/6, does 2D6 to conventional infantry, or 2 points per gun to armored opponents.
Purpose: diversity of tech bases is good when you have more than one faction. The Clans tech development angle SHOULD be different from the Inner Sphere's, they have different tactical, logistical, and other factors that SHOULD influence not only what problems the engineers are looking at, but what solutions they come up with. The ritual nature of Clan warfare would influence a trend toward weapons that favour a warrior's specific fighting style (close up, or far away), while the Inner Sphere's 'riot instead of a boxing match' environment should favour more 'generalist' weapons (given that Omnitech is a NEW THING, but there is no lack of diversity in terms of what you might face on the other end of the gunsights.)
This TYPE of weapon would most likely be developed in the Lyran-side Periphery or coreward areas of the FWL, given the presence of both Armored, and un-armored, ground forces that may at any time turn up for a raiding party.
(basically, the Clan "Heavy" machine-gun favours throwing a larger projectile with armor-piercing charges, like a short-barrelled grenade launcher, while the Sphere design is throwing the same caliber bullets/slugs at higher velocities at the same firing rate, each weapon has the same rough mass, but one has superior penetration and killing power, the other, has average penetration and killing power, but superior range, at a significantly increased risk in the event of an ammunition explosion, even in the presence of CASE.)
Availability: Lyran/FWL border, Lyran Periphery, Mercenary, Magistracy of Canopus, Comstar/Word of Blake
Origin: Bolan Province, Lyran Alliance and Silverhawks coalition, FWL, Magistracy of Canopus (Simultaneous development, possibly with industrial espionage.)
Era: 3061
Note: these are not the Cappellan "Self exploding cannons" from the XTRO.
On the subject of self-exploding cannons...
This is an old idea-it predates the Jihad by quite a few years...and I still think it's a good one.
RAP autocannon rounds RAP-"Rocket Assisted Projectile" rounds are a specialty autocannon munition that sacrifices some damage and ammunition capacity, for the ability to reach out further to hit a target.
RAP rounds are only available in 5,10, and 20 sizes.
RAP-AC 5: 4 Damage, same heat as standard, Minimum 2, short 7, Med. 14, Long 21
RAP-AC 10: 8 Damage, Same heat as standard, Minimum 1, Short 6, Med. 12, Long 18
RAP-AC 20: 16 Damage, Same heat as standard, Short 5, Med. 10, Long 16
These rounds can be fed through a standard Autocannon without modification, however...
RAP (per ton)
Class 5: 16 rounds
Class 10: 8 rounds
Class 20: 4 Rounds
In-Universe: The RAP autocannon round was developed from 20th century concepts, a portion of the standard projectile's body is extended to a better ballistic shape, and the explosive filling and Depleted Uranium core is reduced to make space for a short-burn solid rocket motor that boosts velocity after leaving the barrel of a standard autocannon.
Ammo Explosion danger:
In the event of an ammunition critical, each round does the following:
Class 5: Does 9 points internal damage per remaining round (PSR if bin is CASE protected for half damage)
Class 10: Does 14 Points internal damage per remaining round (PSR if bin is CASE protected for half damage)
Class 20: does 24 points internal damage Per remaining round (PSR for half damage if bin is CASE equipped)
Additionally, each round of RAP that detonates in the event of an ammunition explosion generates 5 additional heat.
Availability: Com Guards, House Kurita, House Davion, Taurian Concordat, Mercenary.
Origin: Taurian Concordat or Outworlds Alliance
Era: 3059
Mines! we need to clear the mines!!
Developed by the Cappellan Confederation in 3057, the Mine Clearance Line Charge launcher is a rapid means of clearing a safe path through a hex that has been mined with any of the following: Vibrobombs, standard or magnetic minefields, and command detonated minefields.
Mass: 6 tons
Range: 4 hexes (all four hexes)
Shots: 12
Crits: 4 (must be continuous)
Special rules: May not be CASE protected. Vehicles may mount to hull, but not turret. May not be employed by infantry.
Ammunition explosion hazard: each unused shot inflicts 40 points of internal damage that can not be CASEd, and generates 10 heat.
Damage: Special (3 points to armored units along the line of fire out to 4 hexes. 3D6 to conventional infantry in each linear hex, 1D6 damage to conventional conventional infantry in adjacent hexes to the line of 'fire', including friendly units.)
In-Universe: The Mclic applies a 120 meter long, 60mm diameter, net of four lines per shot down a straight line corridor, this line is comprised of layered and braided C-20 high explosive with fibers of artificial diamond and density-enhanced glass. when detonated, it creates an overpressure and heat zone with a tuned EM signature capable of setting off a wide range of detonators and common military explosives via sympathetic detonation. This device also clears an open path through light woods, and converts heavy to light per the normal clearance rules. Due to the dimensions of the 'spools' the MCLIC is a four-shot one-shot weapon that can not be installed with CASE protection.
Available to:
Cappellan Confederation
Magistracy of Canopus
St. Ives Compact
Comstar/Word of Blake
Invented by: the Cappellans
Era: 3055 to 3065
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RAP autocannon rounds RAP-"Rocket Assisted Projectile
I like this but think it should be available to AC/2 as well. Kind of a safer alternative to HVACs. Possibly Light ACs, Protomech ACs, and even Rifle Cannons. The Rifle Cannons because they've had such rounds in history. The others because ACs, LACs, and PACs, can all use the same ammo types. Why stop now?
What Cappellan "Self exploding cannons" from which XTRO? ???
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So, I've been playing this game for a fair few years now, and over time I've had my fair share of house rules and alternative equipment. Many of them became obsolete as rules are changed, optional rules become more codified and additional rules are written. However, there are a number that I still harbour a fondness for. A couple of them are vaguely feasible, others would require re-designing hundreds of mechs.
Engine Hits / Heat Sinks
LB-X Autocannons
Ultra Autocannons
Ferro-fibrous armour
Alternative construction materials
Interesting ideas.
Heatsinks = Free/25 Rated Engine. Not Base 10 Free & then Rating/25 in Engine.
Suddenly tiny engines are not so effective & the 400 starts to have a small bit of value.
Also, SFE = Single Heatsinks only. XL = DHS only Ditto the same for ASF & Vee.
Outside the Engine you can have whichever type you want.
I wouldn't touch LBX
Ultras. Don't care for that adjacent thing. Just have it get 2 shots when it double taps. Separate To-Hit & Damage. Means you miss more at Long range & hit More at Short Range. Like would make sense.
Love that Ferro Idea. Never understood the need for the fractions
Also like the Endo idea since that is how Stealth Armor & Blue Shield & CLP & Null Sig all work.
Some others.......
JumpJets & IJJ's.
Get rid of those odd 55 & 85 points & have it match Mech Classifications.
Light = .5/MP
Medium = 1/MP
Heavy = 1.5/MP
Assault = 2.0/MP
This means Lights actually have a small edge over Mediums in SOMETHING at least.
IJJ's are no longer x2 Weight/Crits & 1/2 Heat.
Instead they are SAME Weight & DOUBLE Heat. (Crits up for debate, same or x2, meh)
Now they are easier to mount but using them is not an Auto-Default Button every turn.
SRM/LRM
I would have had these be like MML's from the start & had them match the ACs as well for 2-5-10-20 sized launchers. SRM/LRM "Regular" ammo would just be different ammo types.
While we are at it, the 2-cluster table would be 7 = 2 so you are over 50% like the rest of the launchers.
Ammo:
All Missile/AC Ammo would Total 100 Damage/Ton
Gauss would total 120 because Gauss are simple slugs w/o propellant. H-Gauss would have been flat 20/bracket.
There would be no funky odd 1-off brackets. Everything would be perfect Multiples of 3 like in 3025.
Oh, and NOTHING would have a range of 3. Not even MGs. Hehe.
Not that I really want to play a game where we are shooting 3 tables away, but getting into Melee will be a "little" harder I think.
I think maybe instead of the "common" short brackets being 1-3-7 in 3025 they would be 2-5-10
Energy weapons would actually be LESS effective on a damage/ton basis I think, since they get the benefit of unlimited ammo & no explosions.
I won't get any more in depth into specifics, just a general way I would have gone with weapons.
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RAP autocannon rounds RAP-"Rocket Assisted Projectile
I like this but think it should be available to AC/2 as well. Kind of a safer alternative to HVACs. Possibly Light ACs, Protomech ACs, and even Rifle Cannons. The Rifle Cannons because they've had such rounds in history. The others because ACs, LACs, and PACs, can all use the same ammo types. Why stop now?
What Cappellan "Self exploding cannons" from which XTRO? ???
HVAC's are self-detonating internal bombs that sometimes work like autocannons. (you have a 1/36 chance on the lightest one that you'll destroy whatever location it's mounted in...by firing it.)
One of the reasons I left out AC/2's and the Rotaries and the rest, is because it would put too much unbalancing on the RACs, I determined that an AC/2 would lose too much from using it (remember, you lose damage. AC/2 has 2 points of damage, so you'd end up with an AC/1 with rickokulously long range with this.)
Cannonshop, did you mean "His Long Tom is 20 mapsheets away. He rolls 10, making his margin of failure 1, plus 7 because of 20/3=6.66etc. rounded up is 7; so 7+1=8hexes drift."
um, probably? The basic idea was to make things like distance and gunnery skills matter in a way that doesn't take a lot of effort or time to handle, while still keeping the game 'roughly balanced'. There are always two camps in wargames-the camp that wants lots and lots of fine detail, and the camp that wants rough-and-ready playable rules. This solves multiple issues simultaneously, in my humble view, because it can be 'charted' out for fast reference, and that means having arty/indirect fire units doesn't cost as much time from playing, and doesn't suffer the "I splash rounds behind the firing unit" problem that came up when TacOps re-introduced artillery while retaining the problem from BMR(r) days of adding several minutes of time per turn to resolve, and retaining a defect that I'm probably one of the few people here to see as a defect-that is, you can park arty off-board and it's just as accurate as artillery close-to-hand. (that is to say, not at all...)
the concept is to scale the misses by two things that players SHOULD be pretty familiar with: the gunnery of the firing unit (modified by number of spotters), and the distance. A 'close' miss at 20 miles is several hundred yards, but that same gun-crew firing at less than 2 miles, should be able to get (if they're competent) within a 100 meter circle of the target on a reasonably consistent basis.
(what it means, is that you're more likely to score hits, if you're close enough that your gun isn't immune-by-being-off-the-map)
what it also does, is cut out a couple dice rolls. "Distance" rolls in particular. Your miss ratio is based on...how badly you missed, plus how far the round had to travel through crosswinds, etc. etc...but it's a predicable, and thus, tactical condition-you can actually build TACTICs off of it, where the present system you really are sticking your finger in the wind and hoping the dice gods love you today.
Basically I wanted a simpler artillery rules, with damages balanced out so that a 250 kilogram Arrow or Long tom round isn't doing vastly more damage than a one-ton bomb(that doesn't have to pay for propellant or guidance!)
thus, I went with smaller projectile payloads, that have a definite tactical role. (as in, you can actually build tactics around them) while not being autohit-wonders. (you can still miss, and miss BADLY, depending on how you employ them.)
Other, basic refinements as follows:
Copperhead/guided rounds: use the spotter's gunnery instead of the artilleryman's gunnery, they don't splash outside the immediate zone of impact. (i.e. for hex-map usage, they do damage to the hex they hit, not to the surrounding area). Spotter 'Tags" primary target, the primary target takes the 'core' damage. if there are secondary targets in the hex (or in base contact if you're using minis/terrain) those secondary targets, including FRIENDLIES, take half damage. (basically for an Arrow, you hit the primary targeted unit with tag as if you were firing a laser on the round the shell arrives, so his TMM matters and your range relative to him matters,but if you hit, he takes a 20 point whap. if you've got infantry in base contact, you just lost 10 guys per infantry squad or platoon in contact with him. If he was straddling one of HIS tanks, that tank takes 10 points distributed in 5 point groups...etc. etc.) If the tagger is firing on something else, he takes the normal split-target penalty.
Example:
Josh fires four Arrow IV homing missiles from off-board, they're arriving this turn. He has one tag-equipped unit, in large laser range of Tony's three-legged mega-monster-darkage 'mech of expensive doom.
For Josh's TAG to hit, he needs a 10 or better. (the monster mech o' dhoom walked this turn, Josh's spottermech walked this turn, range is long.)
Josh rolls...10!
All four homing missiles hit Tony's monster-mech'o'Doom, delivering 20 points per, in 5 point clusters. Tony's monstermech'o'Dhomm also just dropped off four sets of BAttlearmor (let's call 'em Elementals for simplicity). WELL... each stand takes ten points damage in five point groups, in addition to the damage to his monster'mech of doom.
It's not enough to erase the suits, but it IS enough to force a PSR on the tripodded monster 'mech of Dhoom, and to do damage to each stand of BA in the hex.
Cluster rounds:
do the same damage to the entire splash area of center hex plus surrounding six. Special purpose rule: roll 1D6 per stand of infantry, per point.
Long Tom/Arrow 'firecracker' (cluster): 15 points of damage to the entire splash zone. (long tom=20 center, 10 surrounding for standard shot, 20 plus 10=30, divide by 2, fifteen.) 15 D6 damage to infantry in the blast zone.
Sniper: 8 points in each hex, (10 center, 5 splash, cluster rounds average out with a round up to 8 points) 8 D6 damage to infantry in the blast zone.
Thumper: 4 points (5 plus 2 is 7, 7/2 is 3.5, round up.) 4 D6 damage to infantry in the blast zone.
This would include both BA and Mechanized infantry types, standard leg infantry, etc.
Example: Josh's shot with cluster lands on a forested hillside infested with the presence of a 'mech, two APC's, and a company (3 platoons) of infantry. Josh is using a Thumper for this (he's an arty nerd...)
The 'mech takes 4 points. Period. The APC's take a four point hit each. Now comes the damage rolls on the targeted infantry company...
4 D6 to each platoon. OUCH. That's 4-24 men put out of action. If there's also a stand of Elementals (because Elementals are kind of THE basic suit), then each of those takes 4 points of damage. If Josh had been using a Sniper, everyone would take 7, except the infantry, who'd be facing 7 to 42 points of damage (enough to overkill grotesquely any infantry that isn't Manei Domini quality.) The mech and the vehicles come out pretty much 'okay', battlesuits come out pretty much 'okay', but the Leg troops that aren't in hard cover...they don't come out so okay.
If the infantry are in a hardened building...well, it doesn't do much to them, honestly. Reduce damage by 10, round up. (most of the time, regardless of gun, a cluster hitting a bunkered up infantry force isn't going to kill more htan one or two guys. They gotta be outside the building.)
Penetrator rounds/bunker buster: Full damage to buildings, structures in the target hex, no damage to surrounding hexes. basically a Long Tom version would do 30 points to any single structure (such as a bunker or pillbox) in the target hex (reducing buildings and structures by 1 type with each hit. If used on an immobilized armored vehicle, well..that's when you start actually caring about marking off the damages.) Penetrators do 1/10 damage to infantry in the hex. (they're a focused explosion.)
Example: Tony's bunkered up his perimeter with some bunker-type terrain features, from which, his infantry are holding their position. Josh needs to reduce that fortification. Josh selects Penetrator rounds for the task. While Josh was able to reduce those fortifications from "hardened" to "Medium" with a single hit, he only killed three infantrymen. If Tony had an immobilized vehicle in that hex instead, the vehicle would take 30 points of damage, and if Josh fired a penetrator on a stand of Battlearmor, one suit would take 3 points of damage (assuming Long Tom/Arrow IV).
So Josh lays down some penetrators first, followed by standard HE rounds, followed by clusters to mop up the infantry thus revealed...
assuming all of his shots actually hit. There's no guarantee they will...
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Making the minimum jump distance for Primitive KF Drive be 10 light years...since the average distance between stars in Milky Way is about a tiny bit over 5 light years.
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ALL Artillery regardless of mounting, must emplace for one turn before firing, and must take a full turn to de-emplace before moving. This includes any and all vehicles mounting an artillery weapon or acting as an artillery platform with the exception of:
...
For targeting purposes, emplaced artillery is considered to be a stationary target, and suffers the relevant defensive modifiers.
Interesting idea. I would make a suggestion, though. Honestly, I look at emplaced as having planted roots, so I don't think stationary should work, but, instead, immobile. Think the Human Artillery tank in Star Craft.
Keep in mind that Artillery does not track whether anything is completely not moving or even waving slightly in the wind. So, the immobile modifier does not apply, even to counter battery fire. The only thing that applies is if you've pre-tagged the hex or you nail it in an attack.
However, it makes a big difference to end-run attacks that happen upon an emplacement, making stopping for a shot risky, and having a defense force for your big guns very important.
As for the flight times, I never understood how something moving at minimum 1000 fps would take at least ten seconds to arrive.
In fact, that's one of the things I generally do to simplify artillery: Flight time is arrival next turn for off-board attacks. Now, I could see making the artillery range for a gun the base for extending flight times.
Now. Something I brought up in the LAMs thread, I would apply the Aerospace thrust system to LAMs in AirMech Mode on the map sheet. Straight hex-for-hex application. If your velocity is 6, you move six hexes, and have to pay thrust to turn at the amounts specified in the appropriate tables.
Still up in the air as to whether there should be any MP increase at all, since I see 5/8 and 6/9 working pretty well on a ground map.
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1. Medium Laser
The Medium Laser is simply one ton too light. At two tons it would fit in with other short range weapons like the SRM and AC20.
2. Engine Rating
The fusion engines go all the way down to half a ton, which is very unrealistic, but worse allows for very light and fast units. For low ratings the engine function is similar to 0,03... ton * Er - 0,5 tons meaning that the engine weight approaches a negative number.
Overall the engine table is approximately (1,009...^ER) -1 ton +0,1..* ER likely rounded down to half ton causing the issue with the negative weight.
3. Vehicle damage effects
All but light vehicles are useless because they are disabled by crew and motive system damage. They are barely worth their Battle Value.
The Savannah Master is the unit that combines all above deficits, it should not be possible.
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I understand what the rules are supposed to do: They make a 100 ton 4 MP Mech barely possible while making it noncompetitive.
The rise in weight for engines above 380 is insane and was likely added by hand and not in the equation that was used to generate lower engine weights. A 410 engine would be 57 tons, giving a 102.5 ton Mech with 4 MP less rest tonnage than a 60 ton Mech of the same speed.
After looking at the table for a long time I would propose these numbers:
Rating Tons
200 8.5t (same)
210 9 (same)
220 10t (same)
230 11t
240 12t
250 13t
260 14.5t
270 15.5t
280 17t
290 18.5t
300 20t
310 21.5t
320 23t
330 25t
340 27t
350 29t
360 31t
370 33t
380 35.5t
390 38t
400 40.5t
410 43t (hypothetical)
Which would be a doubling of the weight for a +33% increase in speed or weight for the given range, still resulting in a sublinear increase in available, remaining tonnage for heavier Mechs. Yes, I am aware that this would allow for a [4/6/0] 100t Mech with additional 13,5 tons of equipment without other changes. This table would still achieve the goal of making Mechs heavier than 100 tons have less not more available tonnage. But unlike the rule it would also make light vehicles slower as engines below 200 would not go to zero weight.
In some later manual they explicitly disallow Mechs below 20 tons, because they ruin the game.
As an engineer I am aware that the issue with a 100 ton Mech would not be the scaling of the engines weight, but the heat, which could be a feature of the game making cooling trucks actually necessary.
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The biggest issue with BattleTech Numbers for things like mass values is there is no formula , it's all out-of-a-hat gutfeel from the 80s/90s.
But as far as house rules goes:
UACs still have the jamming issue, but dispense with the cluster table entirely and simply make two To-Hit rolls. This is the same number of rolls when double tapping, but far more likely to actually hit with the second shot; further, it encourages upping the fire rate at close range, but limiting it at longer ranges - exactly as one might expect when one wants to limit recoil and vibration throwing off your aim at distant targets!
AMS on ground units inflict a flat cluster mod to all missile attacks which pass through any hex adjacent to their arc, regardless of what unit the attack is targeting; each AMS activates only once per turn but affects all missile attacks in the arc. Multiple mounts may stack their effects.attacks of single missiles (EG, Tbolts) are resolved as Total Warfare.
This makes AMS on ground units no look completely useless , and better matches the lore of "I am going to fill this area with so many bullets that there's no way a missile can pass it without hitting one".
Autocannons:
Stock Autocannons are properly designated as Primitive Autocannons, and properly fluffed as being early Age of War tech/Succwars SuckTech. Star League era ACs are /3/5/8/12 tons for the 2/5/10/20 respectively, and the latter two loose two crits each. Heat for Autocannons is also a straight 1/2/3/4 because they're dumping almost all the heat into the brass/cartridge. (Caseless, naturally, then doubles heat generation rather than adding a jam chance.)
All other Autocannon masses and sizes are recalculated based on the above values for production versions; Prototype versions to vary by era.
HVACs do not explode; and universally gain +2/+4/+8 range. They also inflict 1.5/1.25/1x damage. No other changes.
LRMs are reset so the 10, 15 and 20 are not directly inferior to an equivalent stack of 5s, by reducing heat generation further (3 heat for the 10, 5 for the 15, 6 for the 20) and taking the lead weights out so the launchers are all the same mass per tube. NLRMs, ELRMs and Torpedos are all just alt ammo, no separate launcher system. TBolts get most ammo types (Inferno, FASCAM, SG, etc), as do MRMs. MRM launcher mass is slashed to 1/2/3/4 tons so they're actually competitive with SRMs. MMLs have sane tube counts like ATMs do.
ATMs don't have this weird multi ammo thing, instead they just get 9/18/24 range and do 3/2/1 damage per missile.
LAMs get weight savers and can split things that may normally be distributed to multiple locations (EG, Endo Steel) but still can't split weapon crits.
Heavy Gauss/IHGRs may split crits into the arms if desired. They may also be turret mounted in vees greater than 100 tons in mass.
I have more, put them up when I'm less tired.
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The biggest issue with BattleTech Numbers for things like mass values is there is no formula , it's all out-of-a-hat gutfeel from the 80s/90s.
But as far as house rules goes:
UACs still have the jamming issue, but dispense with the cluster table entirely and simply make two To-Hit rolls. This is the same number of rolls when double tapping, but far more likely to actually hit with the second shot; further, it encourages upping the fire rate at close range, but limiting it at longer ranges - exactly as one might expect when one wants to limit recoil and vibration throwing off your aim at distant targets!
AMS on ground units inflict a flat cluster mod to all missile attacks which pass through any hex adjacent to their arc, regardless of what unit the attack is targeting; each AMS activates only once per turn but affects all missile attacks in the arc. Multiple mounts may stack their effects.attacks of single missiles (EG, Tbolts) are resolved as Total Warfare.
This makes AMS on ground units no look completely useless , and better matches the lore of "I am going to fill this area with so many bullets that there's no way a missile can pass it without hitting one".
That is actually how AMS used to operate at one point in the ground game. Currently it does already do the flat modifier but it no longer seems to intercept passing by missiles.
Autocannons:
Stock Autocannons are properly designated as Primitive Autocannons, and properly fluffed as being early Age of War tech/Succwars SuckTech. Star League era ACs are /3/5/8/12 tons for the 2/5/10/20 respectively, and the latter two loose two crits each. Heat for Autocannons is also a straight 1/2/3/4 because they're dumping almost all the heat into the brass/cartridge. (Caseless, naturally, then doubles heat generation rather than adding a jam chance.)
All other Autocannon masses and sizes are recalculated based on the above values for production versions; Prototype versions to vary by era.
HVACs do not explode; and universally gain +2/+4/+8 range. They also inflict 1.5/1.25/1x damage. No other changes.
At one point I was able to alter MegaMek to use 4/6/10/12 mass and 1/3/6/9 crits while also redoing ammo to be 60/24/12/6 and it worked wonders. I keep saying to myself I'll do that again with a more up to date version but I never seem to get around to it.
LRMs are reset so the 10, 15 and 20 are not directly inferior to an equivalent stack of 5s, by reducing heat generation further (3 heat for the 10, 5 for the 15, 6 for the 20) and taking the lead weights out so the launchers are all the same mass per tube. NLRMs, ELRMs and Torpedos are all just alt ammo, no separate launcher system. TBolts get most ammo types (Inferno, FASCAM, SG, etc), as do MRMs. MRM launcher mass is slashed to 1/2/3/4 tons so they're actually competitive with SRMs. MMLs have sane tube counts like ATMs do.
ATMs don't have this weird multi ammo thing, instead they just get 9/18/24 range and do 3/2/1 damage per missile.
15s are already 5 heat and 20s are already 6 heat. But what I was able to do that addressed the problem was re-balance so each tube for LRMs and SRMs were 0.5 tons each and one crit for every five or fraction thereof. This makes LRM-5s 2.5 tons and one crit but LRM-20s 10 tons and four crits, which makes the heat savings and adding of Artemis systems reasonable considerations for one would want one LRM-20 over four LRM-5s.
But back when I did that MMLs and ATMs were still actually kind of new and I didn't really factor them in.
LAMs get weight savers and can split things that may normally be distributed to multiple locations (EG, Endo Steel) but still can't split weapon crits.
The more I deal with LAMs and see LAM threads the more I just think they are more trouble than they are worth to 'get right' and that's largely because there is no good consensus of what people really want out of them.
Heavy Gauss/IHGRs may split crits into the arms if desired. They may also be turret mounted in vees greater than 100 tons in mass.
I have more, put them up when I'm less tired.
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Nah, SRMs and LRMs absolutely should have different tube weights; the only way you get that kind of space equivalency is if SRMs are notably larger diameter missiles. Plus we're handwaving some of the needed fire control, sensor heads, ammo feeds etc as part of the weapon mass.
And poor IS LRMs are already heavy for what they do as it is, they don't need any debuffing.
If anything, they need a buff, specifically, to make Indirect Fire without Semi-guided less punishing. For a start,
Everything with IF capability can indirect fire at a detectable unit, spotter or no spotter. The latter slaps you with a -2 Cluster mod as you get more misses. Regular spotting drops that to -1, TAG, Recon Cameras, or equivalent (Something something C3) removes it entirely.
Of the Movement and Gunnery mods, choose the least favorable values (rather than compounding them), EG if the firing platform is Gun 2 and the spotter is Gun 4 you would assume Gun 4 for To-Hit rolls, etc, though the spotter shooting things still slaps an extra +1 To-Hit for multiple targets (TAG and other TAG phase spotting need not apply)
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Movement heat should be a significant part of resource allocation. Running up and down the heat scale should be part of the game, rather than functionally ignored.
One point of heat per hex of all movement with changes to dissipation and heat scale as necessary.
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Holy hell that would destroy fast movers
If you want Maximum TurretTech all the time, all day every day, throwing per hex move heat would be fine
Otherwise...
And how the heck would you handle vees?
But yeah I don't see any way to implement that which would not either involve more bookkeeping (Which is bad since BT is heavy on that front as it is) or be totally against the lore on how mechs work (as that would encourage 1/2 mechs with guns out the knees and any fast movers to be vees with no movement heat- pretty much the opposite of BT lore) so uh.
It's... Also really not trivial to get too hot? Managing heat is a pretty important part of the game, it's just that most designs that are considered good do that at the construction stage, with the installation of appropriate heat sinking for what they're carrying.
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Running up and down the heat scale is de rigueur for 3025 play... ;)
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Could technically be done but the adjustments to the heat scaling of other actions (think Jump Jets) and weapon firing would be an immense amount of effort to make everything balanced while also not causing vanilla Locusts to roast themselves just by running.
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Could technically be done but the adjustments to the heat scaling of other actions (think Jump Jets) and weapon firing would be an immense amount of effort to make everything balanced while also not causing vanilla Locusts to roast themselves just by running.
A big issue with the idea would be the required extension of the heat scale, which would make tracking heat require more difficult math thereby increasing bookkeeping (bad).
If anything, movement heat is honestly a little weird, since mechs are literally the only unit type to have it; and of all the expected loads that would definitely be one, so it might even be worth considering going the opposite direction and just not having any at all.
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If anything, movement heat is honestly a little weird, since mechs are literally the only unit type to have it; and of all the expected loads that would definitely be one, so it might even be worth considering going the opposite direction and just not having any at all.
Honestly, Walking and Running Heat build up is fine where it's at. It's enough to be a little aware of if you're truly running the Heat Scale, but when compared to what you're shooting, it's pretty much a non-problem.
Jumping is where Heat usually becomes a problem, particularly with the lighter 'Mechs who don't have DHS, can't fit a lot of SHS, and a huge Jump capacity. Most of the 6/9/6 and faster crowd falls in to this category in Introtech (and a few Renaissance 'Mechs). The Phoenix Hawk and the Firestarter are most notable in these cases in my memory as I tend to run them the most.
However, I'm fine with this, as it creates an opportunity cost for the mobility involved. Being able to just ignore hills, woods, or buildings that are in your way is incredibly powerful.
That 'Mechs are the only ones that have this, I do find a little odd. As a former owner of several cars that would overheat at stop signs in the Phoenix, Arizona, summer heat, I can attest that Vehicles can have Heating problems. Still, these military vehicles were probably better maintained due to a dedicated mechanic on staff.
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The art doesnt really match for missiles. Id have not had reloadable missile bullets like we have now, but one use missiles.
An srm tube would be .75 tons per tube and an LRM would be .6 per tube. A missile launcher shot would be the same average damage per 12 turns, but would be pretty front loaded. So an SRM2 normally deals 2-4 damage, now it would deal 16 damage per SRM, with an SRM2 generating 12 heat, a srm4 generating 9 heat, and the 6 generating 8 heat. So the larger launchers deal with heat better, clusters of smaller launchers can shoot faster. It would make the SRM2 on units scary, like when that assassin gets behind you, you dont have to play 12 turns of backstabbing to land some damage. And the LRM20 would only be 4 heat thanks to the large launch system for that 8 damage LRM missile, while the small LRM5 on a shadowhawk would overflow 5 heat per shot, at 12 tons for the 20 and 3 tons for the lrm5.
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That is actually how AMS used to operate at one point in the ground game. Currently it does already do the flat modifier but it no longer seems to intercept passing by missiles.
Please expand on this because it's never been how I've seen the system work. I remember when introduced, after all missile attacks were declared against the target unit, the owner chose one volley and reduced it by 1d6 missiles; if that killed all the missiles in a volley, it couldn't hit, natch. Then attack rolls were made and if the reduced volley hit, you adjusted which standard column you rolled on for the clusters based on how close your were to adjacent columns. For example, an LRM 15 reduced by 2 missiles would still roll on the 15 table with a maximum result of 13, but a third missile killed would drop it to the 10 column with 11 or 12 missiles still having a maximum of 10 cluster hits. A separate d6 is rolled and twice that result is the number of shots expended shooting down the volley. I am unaware of an interim version of AMS between this and the current "volley hots, -4 to the cluster roll, 1 shot expended" version we have now though an optional rule may have allowed a volley in line of sight attacking a target at X range to be targeted.
As for my changes, they must be built around balancing scenarios by weight unless I want to "retcon" BV2 back to 1984 or totally revise how mech weights and classes are presented. But there are a couple of things I'd like to see that would work within the weight as the balancing factor paradigm.
- MGs do not deal damage to mechs or CVs and have ranges on par with the AC5 with no minimum range.
- LRMs carry a number of missiles equal to their class. Each missile deals 5 points of damage and the launcher can fire one per critical slot per attack. Roll on the appropriate cluster table to see how many hit. If a slot is destroyed, it's an ammo explosion based on the number of missiles still loaded.
- All armor is a variation of BAR with the actual defeat number being a function of how many pips the facing has, in the same way as ASFs (this one is questionable, balance-wise)
- Retain squad deployment of BD in BT/CT
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Seems the ability to protect other units was an interpretation of the original TRO 2750 rules before they got codified in the Compendium.
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A very creative one indeed....
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been a bit and not sure I answered this one before but...
Initiative: Asymmetric forces
in initiative order when one force outnumbers the other, two units (*or more) from the larger force are moved for each unit of the smaller force in the movement phase until parity of one-for-one can be reached. THis inverts the present rule, and more accurately reflects the fact that it's more difficult to get larger groups of people moving coherently than to move smaller groups of people, when all other factors remain roughly in parity.
Artillery Damage vs. Airstrikes
I would revert the damage diagram and splash distances for artillery munitions to that which they had under BMR(r), and give the present dinner plate damage diagrams to air-dropped bombs. This one should be obvious, really, 2000KG is heavier and larger than 250 kg, and in baseline 'bomb' form vs. HE shell, the bomb dropped off the wing of an airplane doesn't have to account for propellant, while a missile, rocket, or artillery shell has to do that too.
Giving Ballistics a Role
If your ballistic weapon (autocannon) exceeds 10% of the armor (round down) of your target, every hit is a roll for a critical, and if there's a 'roll again' in the box (due to whatever factor, TSM, Endosteel, whatever) you mark the internal structure in that area off by one point in addition to the armor damage.
This does not apply to energy weapons, only to balistic weapons such as Autocannons, Gauss Rifles, or machine guns.
(Reason: at present, all-energy builds, including pulse laser builds, are viewed as automatically superior due to better range on the high damage models, lack of ammunition bomb, and damage concentration, as well as not being limited by ammunition carriage-aka a PPC can fire all day, does 10 points of damage at AC/5 ranges, and the only heat penalty can be absorbed by the base heat sinks in the engine).
This change makes the AC/2 much more dangerous to light 'mechs and tanks, which in turn justifies the heavy investment into designs like the Jagermech, Blackjack, etc that we see in the actual setting's fluff.
This also means we can eliminate the "AP" specialty round from the list, which saves space on tables.
This change does not apply to LBX cluster, missile systems, or energy weapons. (cluster trades penetration for area coverage and anti-infantry/vehicle disablement) nor to indirectly fired artillery (the damage is area effect and not engineered for penetration).
VTOL Rotor hits
The VTOL rotor hit nerf was created to make slow VTOLs less of a joke, and the vehicle critical hits were done to make tanks play more like 'mechs.
that is, make it take longer to take them out. fine...whatever...we'll do that...but!!
Rotorcraft rely on balancing forces on the rotor structure. turning, and forward movement, rely on shifting that balance point.
with me so far?
Hits to the Rotor, even downgraded to 1/10th damage, impose an immediate psr check, failing this, roll 1D6. That's the direction you're going to move, and now, roll 2D6: that's how far you're going to go while losing 1D6/2 altitude levels and suffering a -1 PSR check (that compounds) until the chopper can be landed and repaired at a base (and -1 MP).
Reason: a Rotor should not be functioning as a 50 point immunity shield for over 30% of the hit location table.
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Movement heat should be a significant part of resource allocation. Running up and down the heat scale should be part of the game, rather than functionally ignored.
An easier method might just be a larger part of the Heat chart that has no effect. I.e. the Mech's heat scale could go from -20 to 50 (the standard heat chart is 0-30, and there is an extended heat chart that goes up to 50).
This lets the player run up and down the heat in the -20 to 0 range, but if they try to push the limit they get into the 5+ range of heat where side effects start happening. So you get some Mechs that can dart out for a shot then pop back next turn, while less maneuverable Mechs can install tonnage to extend that negative region in order to lay down some serious firepower.
A full reset would be changing the -20 to 50 heat chart into a 0-70 heat chart.
Protomechs can be battery-powered, but they need Power Amplifiers and lose a lot of endurance compared to a fusion reactor-equipped Protomech. The advantage is that you don't need to fit the pilot around the fusion reactor, meaning you can use Battlearmor style piloting systems and the interior doesn't need to be as cramped.
It is part of the progression of:
human has their limbs inside all of the suit's limbs (battlearmor)
(something_1)
human can only fit completely in the torso (current Protomechs)
(something_2)
human is only in the head (Battlemechs)
something_1 would be the pilot having some of their limbs inside the suit, and others in the suit's limbs. For example from Rifts we have the Triax X-535 Hunter, where the trooper has their legs inside the suit's legs, but the trooper's arms are inside the torso. As the suit gets bigger it makes more sense to put all of the pilot in the torso so you don't have to move the metal structure around the weak human. One example of this would be the Rottweiler or other quad battlearmor, where the pilot lies down inside the suit instead of using their own limbs.
something_2 would be where internal equipment keeps needing space, so they have to move the trooper up and out. An example item that would need space and separation from the pilot is a fusion reactor.
Alternate tech idea:
Anti-personnel Gauss Rifle ammo. Designed with pre-made stress fractures, the shot is designed to turn into a giant ball of shrapnel when hitting a hard target. Damage vs Mechs is 2-3 pts damage, but its AI damage is 20-30 pts. If the shot hits a building, then it only does 2-3 pts to the building and 2-3 pts AI to the infantry inside.
Space Stations and Satellites
Satellites can be built up to 300 tons, and Space Stations can be built down to 2000 tons. This means the only space-capable items that are 301-1999 tons are Dropships.
Proposal: merge Space Stations and satellites to have the same mass range (0.1 tons to 2,500,000 tons).
Satellite: does not provide an isolated environment for onboard items. As a result all onboard items needing an isolated environment (i.e. living quarters) will cost much more than if they were put on a space station.
Space Station: provides an isolated environment for all onboard items. Costs more per ton than a Satellite.
So you could have a 5000 ton satellite that has a few expensive living quarters on board and a lot of stuff that doesn't need a dedicated environment. You could also have a 420 ton Space Station that has a shirtsleeve environment for the people on board.
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I'd like to see fewer scales, personally. Right now, we have infantry, Battle Armor, Protomechs, 'Mechs/Combat Vehicles/ASFs, Small Craft, DropShips, JumpShpis, WarShips and Space Stations.
The AP vs. BAR system can simplify everything from 'Mechs on down for armor. Weapons just need to be consolidated so you don't have THREE different versions below 'Mech scale.
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Artemis IV/V. To make use of it, you need a 1-ton/1.5 ton unit for each missile launcher, and you need a specific compatible ammunition type, and you need direct line-of-sight to the target, and you need to avoid any ECM effects your opponent may have. For Artemis IV, the reward for jumping through all these hoops is a meager +2 to your cluster hit roll (Art V is quite a bit more useful with +3 cluster bonus and -1 to hit bonus, though the restrictions are the same). If you don't (or can't) jump through all of these hoops, your Artemis upgrades are dead weight.
I don't think all of these restrictions should be relaxed, but having all of them at the same time is rather rough for what is ultimately a meager average damage bonus (for IV at least; V is another can of worms). I've increasingly found that the opportunity cost isn't worth it and I'm scrapping the Art IV upgrade for more ammo, more armor, or sometimes more launchers.
I think the problem is the Art IV is a minor buff to damage to a system you don't usually take just for their raw damage. If you just want damage, medium lasers are more efficient than SRM launchers, but medium lasers can't douse infantry in fire via inferno rounds. If you want long-ranged firepower, Gauss Rifles and ERPPCs are very competitive and actually have slightly better range than LRMs while having shorter (or no) minimum range, but only the LRMs can hit something on the other side of an apartment complex with the help of a spotter. So the Art IV slightly increases raw damage in a relatively narrow set of scenarios, without improving their utility functions, which is really a big reason why you might want missiles over other weapons.
I'd probably start by scrapping the Artemis-compatible ammo: Your Artemis launcher bestows the cluster buffs with any missile types. Frag missiles get the bonus, infernos get the bonus, and so on. That way, Artemis IV can even enhance some of the specialty ammo, instead of being mutually exclusive with it.
If that's not enough, then I'd look into making Artemis systems work in indirect fire too. They'd need to be refluffed, since the beam-based target designators and transmitters obviously wouldn't work without a line of sight.
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Artemis IV/V. To make use of it, you need a 1-ton/1.5 ton unit for each missile launcher, and you need a specific compatible ammunition type, and you need direct line-of-sight to the target, and you need to avoid any ECM effects your opponent may have. For Artemis IV, the reward for jumping through all these hoops is a meager +2 to your cluster hit roll (Art V is quite a bit more useful with +3 cluster bonus and -1 to hit bonus, though the restrictions are the same). If you don't (or can't) jump through all of these hoops, your Artemis upgrades are dead weight.
I don't think all of these restrictions should be relaxed, but having all of them at the same time is rather rough for what is ultimately a meager average damage bonus (for IV at least; V is another can of worms). I've increasingly found that the opportunity cost isn't worth it and I'm scrapping the Art IV upgrade for more ammo, more armor, or sometimes more launchers.
I think the problem is the Art IV is a minor buff to damage to a system you don't usually take just for their raw damage. If you just want damage, medium lasers are more efficient than SRM launchers, but medium lasers can't douse infantry in fire via inferno rounds. If you want long-ranged firepower, Gauss Rifles and ERPPCs are very competitive and actually have slightly better range than LRMs while having shorter (or no) minimum range, but only the LRMs can hit something on the other side of an apartment complex with the help of a spotter. So the Art IV slightly increases raw damage in a relatively narrow set of scenarios, without improving their utility functions, which is really a big reason why you might want missiles over other weapons.
I'd probably start by scrapping the Artemis-compatible ammo: Your Artemis launcher bestows the cluster buffs with any missile types. Frag missiles get the bonus, infernos get the bonus, and so on. That way, Artemis IV can even enhance some of the specialty ammo, instead of being mutually exclusive with it.
If that's not enough, then I'd look into making Artemis systems work in indirect fire too. They'd need to be refluffed, since the beam-based target designators and transmitters obviously wouldn't work without a line of sight.
I mean, given the fluff I should think that it would actually be easier to rule that Artemis ammo gets some of the same bonuses as Semi-guided, since they're supposed to be cousin technologies. Maybe like, if the target was TAG'd, the cluster mod gets a flat+2 regardless of fire mode on top of the normal DF mod, and it ignores spotter penalties which still applies even when you're shooting it out of a normal launcher.
Also probably easy the restrictions to just launchers that share ammo rather than every launcher which can have it must have it if you carry it at all.
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Another thought I had.
AC/AC Ammo: All ACs fire the same ammo, the rating is just how many shots they fire per attack. Each bin holds 90 shots. Recoil, etc., then becomes the rationale for larger guns with shorter range. This allows the future introduction of the Multi-Timed Autocannon or Variably-Timed Autocannon (MTAC or VTAC, whichever sounds cooler) that can operate in any mode up to its rating. A VTAC/10 could thus operate as an AC/2, AC/5, or AC/10 expending 2, 5, or 10 shots in the attack at the appropriate range bands.
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That's begging for even more variability, i.e., any number from 1-10 for your example. Not that that would be a bad thing...
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That's begging for even more variability, i.e., any number from 1-10 for your example. Not that that would be a bad thing...
The problem comes from the interaction of damage and range. Ultras fire at a higher rate, yet they GAIN effective range, this is contrary to the performance in the proposed idea-which is that the drop in range is because of the higher firing rate. (Something you can actually, if you live in a place where you're allowed to own firearms you can test by comparing the benchrest range of a semi-auto firing slowly, with one firing quickly. the bullets go down range the same distance whether you're cycling the action one-at-a-time, or have stuck a crank handle on the side to emulate a gattling gun.)
so no, Autocannon ammo has to be functionally different depending on class, because bullets' don't pop a parachute and land gently past the point your sights are no longer effective for predicting the general outcome. (a 9mm fired at 45 degrees is lethal out quite a lot further than one fired using regular sights. Accidents can happen out to a mile away using .22 rimfire, a much milder load. when you get into 'rifle calibers' it can get absurd quickly).
Recommended Reading: "Hatcher's Notebook" (I have no idea how many printings that reference has had, my oldest copy dates to the 1960s and my newest to sometime in the 1990s, and it's still commonly referenced for firearms experimenters, handloaders, and competitors.)
A more 'rational' reasont o account for the range differences between AC 2 and AC20 might be to consider all Autocannon ammunition must fit into a specific length to feed, and that that length is decided by how big an opening you can have through the shoulder and elbow joints of a battlemech.
AC/2 can therefore have more propellant relative to the payload delivered on the other end with a better ballistic coefficient-which explains the longer range, within the same total, loaded, cartridge length (and maybe diameter) when compared to 5, 10, and 20 classes.
Hence the longer effective range for lighter autocannons-they can push a shell with more propellant, and the shell can be better shaped to pass through atmosphere (ballistic coefficient) while your 'big bores' are fiting big, blunt objects that lose energy in atmosphere more quickly and start with less of it to begin with vs. their inertia.
for real-world comparison, a 5.7x28 is going to have a longer effective range than a 9x21 or 9x19 cartridge that can pass through the same magazine opening in the frame. (or fit the same cylinder if you like revolvers)
a 'mech's arm is a complex jointed structure, there's limits to what, and how much, opening you can put into that joint before you can't feed something through it.
We actually see this with .50 Beowulf vs. .223-both fit the magazine well of an AR-pattern rifle, one has absurd energy transfer at close range and no long range performance, the other has long range performance and good accuracy.
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If the gun isn't properly compensated, effective range for point targets (which BattleTech cares about) drops. Full stop.
The proposed rule posits that the technology does not properly compensate for rapid firing. 20 shots within the available engagement envelope of a 10 second round throws off a gun's aim more than 2 shots. Hence, range is diminished. UACs and RACs may not develop under this system (the proposition in this thread is these proposals are how the rules were written in 1984) in favor of the variable timed variants (hi and lo rates on the Bradley's panel, for example).
All BattleTech ranges are ridiculously short and nonsensically scaled to other weapons because the game was built around balance using tonnage rather than the later CV and BV. Bigger guns have shorter ranges because they deal more damage, that's it. There is no simulationist adaptation formula or the like. So unless adding BV is part of the rule, I'm trying to keep things balanced in the same way.
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If the gun isn't properly compensated, effective range for point targets (which BattleTech cares about) drops. Full stop.
The proposed rule posits that the technology does not properly compensate for rapid firing. 20 shots within the available engagement envelope of a 10 second round throws off a gun's aim more than 2 shots. Hence, range is diminished. UACs and RACs may not develop under this system (the proposition in this thread is these proposals are how the rules were written in 1984) in favor of the variable timed variants (hi and lo rates on the Bradley's panel, for example).
All BattleTech ranges are ridiculously short and nonsensically scaled to other weapons because the game was built around balance using tonnage rather than the later CV and BV. Bigger guns have shorter ranges because they deal more damage, that's it. There is no simulationist adaptation formula or the like. So unless adding BV is part of the rule, I'm trying to keep things balanced in the same way.
Let me ask you something, then... These are supremely expensive weapons on supremely expensive platforms developed by entities whose budget on paperclips dwarfs the GDP of all of North America combined.
do you really think they're going to field point-shooting combat weapons without adequate compensation? that they're going to develop anything past the toolroom prototype that can't hold zero? or that they'd retain it for centuries without correcting the zeroing problem?
My explanation has the benefit of not requiring literally centuries of engineers being incompetent-there's a fixed, you-can't-fit it in easier explanation for the difference in performance, yours, assumes nobody ever thought of stabilizing the barrel or developing compensation for recoil.
which way do you think requires MORE suspension of disbelief?
admittedly, Battletech works on FasaFizikz, not Physics, but still...
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do you really think they're going to field point-shooting combat weapons without adequate compensation?
Given the game design choices made in how the extant weapon stats work? Yes, I absolutely believe that.
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Mmmkay. So. Couple things.
First: Autocannons are not specific weapons. They are a class of weapon performance. why is this important? Simple! It means there can be no mechanical difference between an AC 2, and an AC 20, other than additional recoil compensation and higher fire rate on the latter.
Two; consider the nature of an Autocannon: this is a tank gun, that fires as fast as a machine gun, and can reliably put an entire burst onto a sub-meter diameter target, while both the firing platform and target are moving in excess of, sometimes, hundreds of kilometers per hour. Think about what that means, in terms of stabilization, recoil compensation and so on; for example the AC 20 on the Hetzer combat vehicle is stated to be a 150mm cannon firing ten round bursts. the fact that it can't reliably hit something more than a few hundred meters away is completely understandable!
Three, the Tabletop ranges are a representation of effective range - that is, the ranges at which you actually have a chance to hit things which are actively evading, which you yourself are doing so, with less than ten seconds to aim, in an environment of such comprehensive jamming that even pure optical systems are not reliable.For example, TAGs have to use some kind of random rotation multifrequency witchcraft to keep from being spoofed, and their lore specifically notes that older more conventional laser-designators are completely useless against the integrated EW suite of even the meanest, chepest, most bargain basement tanks.
Edit: I suppose I should also mention that there are rules for firing beyond your normal "maximum" range, and rules for tracking missed shots, in TacOps.
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Yeah, I mean when you look at game performance and lore, autocannons and missiles are reversed.
Autocannons, if they are clusters of shells, should roll on the cluster table. Thats not far fetched I think. But the game rules have them as single impact weapons, whose range is separate from their damage (so not a KE round, but an explosive of some variety). The only rule I have ever seen that treats ACs as something other then a single shot weapon is the rule in tac ops where you can split the AC damage in half, for exactly 2 instances of damage on 2 nearby mechs.
Meanwhile, the art of missiles is large, single firing missiles, but the game treats them as clusters of missiles that spread over a target. An SRM is a far better stand in for a rapid fire 120mm then an AC5. And the AC5, with the minimum range, is a better stand in for a medium range missile with a single impact damage. I often point out the art is very magnified, as the Dougram missiles on the wolverine and such were all single shot, 1 missile at a time weapons. Battletech kept the art, but the rules have each missile only a tiny fraction of the size of the launcher. All 20 LRM launch tubes can fit in the space around a single launch tube in the art... The twin LRM20s on an archer, in scale, would look like 20 imperceptibly small holes where missile 1 goes, with the rest of that space being flat. An SRM6 would look more like a revolver or gattling cannon, with how small the missiles actually are and how fast they are loaded.
The gun art is also off from fluff, again cause everything is too large. The gun on top of the marauder is supposed to be a 120mm firing 3 round clips... thats fine, BUT... the actual size of that gun is massive. Way bigger then a 120, and no clip feed or clips at all. The inner barrel diameter is roughly 1/22 the height (someone else feel free to take a picture of theirs for a better measurement, I just used the pixel length in paint to divide the height in pixels with the width, but imprecisely), so if it was a 12 meter tall marauder then that barrel is 530 mm. So since art influences so much of the game and how its perceived, ill just leave it at that haha.
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Construction rules for Aerospace units.
Everything from ASFs to warships. Everything must go.
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Construction rules for Aerospace units.
Everything from ASFs to warships. Everything must go.
Easily in my top 3.
How much the construction rules influence the aerospace game in the current incarnation is just ridiculous.
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Easily in my top 3.
How much the construction rules influence the aerospace game in the current incarnation is just ridiculous.
Right?
ASFs are just plain broken. An ASF will carry more armor and armament than a mech of equivalent tonnage.... Which I'm pretty sure breaks the core tenet of the setting, that of mechs being king.
Small Craft and Dropship construction rules are mostly fine, and agree a lot. One is clearly a scaled down version of the other. The only issue is that Small Craft carry too much less armament and armor per unit thrust compared to ASFs. So probably tweak them to narrow the gap. And I'm pretty sure nobody's come up yet with construction rules for life boats.
Then there's the really big stuff: space stations, jumpships and warships. Jumpships and space stations being limited to an SI of 1 makes no sense. Anything fitted with station keeping thrusters instead of full on maneuver drives being limited to an SI of 1 makes even less sense.
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Small Craft not being able to use Infantry Bay quarters should definitely be fixed. Imposing full on crew quarters on orbit to surface landing craft is crazy.
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Right?
ASFs are just plain broken. An ASF will carry more armor and armament than a mech of equivalent tonnage.... Which I'm pretty sure breaks the core tenet of the setting, that of mechs being king.
Small Craft and Dropship construction rules are mostly fine, and agree a lot. One is clearly a scaled down version of the other. The only issue is that Small Craft carry too much less armament and armor per unit thrust compared to ASFs. So probably tweak them to narrow the gap. And I'm pretty sure nobody's come up yet with construction rules for life boats.
Then there's the really big stuff: space stations, jumpships and warships. Jumpships and space stations being limited to an SI of 1 makes no sense. Anything fitted with station keeping thrusters instead of full on maneuver drives being limited to an SI of 1 makes even less sense.
Point of order there; ASF hav this flaw called "Threshold" which 'mechs don't have, and lack most of the exposed hinges and ball joints that 'mechs DO have.
Basically an airframe is 99% rigid structure with some small moving panels and a big ass nozzle at the back, but the ablatie armor doesn't protect them NEARLY as well.
More Armor mass? sure, Less Protection from incoming fire? Yeah, you bet.
THAT isn't the problem with the construction rules (Which actually work pretty well for ASF)
I mean, consider this: I shoot your 'mech, with 50 points of armor on the centr torso location, and how many internals do I get to check for, if I don't roll '2' and I'm using a medium laser?
Now, shoot an ASF with 50 points of armor on the facing, with a medium laser.
How many crtical chances do I get, on an average to-hit roll (say, 8) when it hits?
yeah.
THAT isn't what makes them 'broken'.
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Mmmkay. So. Couple things.
First: Autocannons are not specific weapons. They are a class of weapon performance. why is this important? Simple! It means there can be no mechanical difference between an AC 2, and an AC 20, other than additional recoil compensation and higher fire rate on the latter.
Two; consider the nature of an Autocannon: this is a tank gun, that fires as fast as a machine gun, and can reliably put an entire burst onto a sub-meter diameter target, while both the firing platform and target are moving in excess of, sometimes, hundreds of kilometers per hour. Think about what that means, in terms of stabilization, recoil compensation and so on; for example the AC 20 on the Hetzer combat vehicle is stated to be a 150mm cannon firing ten round bursts. the fact that it can't reliably hit something more than a few hundred meters away is completely understandable!
Three, the Tabletop ranges are a representation of effective range - that is, the ranges at which you actually have a chance to hit things which are actively evading, which you yourself are doing so, with less than ten seconds to aim, in an environment of such comprehensive jamming that even pure optical systems are not reliable.For example, TAGs have to use some kind of random rotation multifrequency witchcraft to keep from being spoofed, and their lore specifically notes that older more conventional laser-designators are completely useless against the integrated EW suite of even the meanest, chepest, most bargain basement tanks.
Edit: I suppose I should also mention that there are rules for firing beyond your normal "maximum" range, and rules for tracking missed shots, in TacOps.
Some of that used to be so, at least in the fluff.
In the appendices of the German version of the older BT novels, the Shadow Hawk is said to have a 90mm autocannon, while the Marauder is said to have a 120mm autocannon - although both have an AC/5. They also state that LRM, for example, have a maximum range of several kilometers, but can only hit over a much shorter range.
Can´t say I´ve ever read either in any English language source, but I kinda doubt the translators or German language editors just made that up on their own.
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No DHS in the engine.
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I think I would compromise on that to be honest.
Instead of it being always flat # of heat sinks I'd make it critical slots of heat sinks.
So for example a 300 rated engine would only be able to house 4 IS DHS and 6 Clan DHS.
That was Compact Heat Sinks would suddenly have a purpose because you could hide 24 of those suckers in the same engine.
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I took a different approach: https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,62762.0.html
I made "prototype" DHS half ton, one heat each (and two crits), and continued to limit them to 10 in the engine.
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I think I would compromise on that to be honest.
Instead of it being always flat # of heat sinks I'd make it critical slots of heat sinks.
So for example a 300 rated engine would only be able to house 4 IS DHS and 6 Clan DHS.
That was Compact Heat Sinks would suddenly have a purpose because you could hide 24 of those suckers in the same engine.
Thats a cool rule. I can see light mechs like a stinger that wanted endo/ferro using compact sinks to get 10 dissipation with as few crit spots as possible, versus 20 with doubles but needing to compromise ferro to be able to fit, as with this change a 120 engine could only hold 1 IS double sink, leaving 9x3 to be allocated.
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Mmmkay. So. Couple things.
First: Autocannons are not specific weapons. They are a class of weapon performance. why is this important? Simple! It means there can be no mechanical difference between an AC 2, and an AC 20, other than additional recoil compensation and higher fire rate on the latter.
Two; consider the nature of an Autocannon: this is a tank gun, that fires as fast as a machine gun, and can reliably put an entire burst onto a sub-meter diameter target, while both the firing platform and target are moving in excess of, sometimes, hundreds of kilometers per hour.
Actually I'd put these more in the vein of modern naval guns like the Oto Melara.
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Actually I'd put these more in the vein of modern naval guns like the Oto Melara.
My headcannon on autocannons is exactly that. A 57mm AC5 at 8 tons, and the 8 ton Bofors 57mm firing the naval grade 6.5kg shells in 8 shell racks are roughly the same, but the AC5 is a 2250 year invention that can be fired from less then a 3000 ton ship without an ocean of water to keep cool. Same with the oto melara 76mm, also 7.5 tons like the Bofors, firing massive 12.5kg shells in 4 round clips for 50kg of shell per trigger pull. These are big shells, bigger then the 76mm on the older tanks, and the 200+ years of advancement needed is to get these autocannons mountable on something as tiny as a tank, and also vastly lower heat for space operations. An ac5 does 1 heat, meanwhile the oto melara pumps seawater and flushes with fresh water constantly to keep the barrels cool. Both are 4-5 meter barrels, which is close to what we see on the shadowhawk and sentinel. The wolverine with that snub nose 80mm is some HE/recoilless thing, as the ac5s visual design are too different between the longer barrel shadowhawk/ marauder, and snub nose wolverine.
Since rifles cant be used in space and autocannons can, it made sense to me that whatever the autocannon is doing, its with vastly less heat then the current naval ACs so you arnt melting the barrels after 30 seconds in the absence of air to assist cooling. Like, 1 heat is pretty impressive considering, its the one part about autocannons we actually like with their stats.
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Since rifles cant be used in space
Wait, what? Even if you're talking about lo-tech rifled cannon, wait, what? :shocked:
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Rifle/cannons/light/medium/heavy cant be used on the space map. Im pretty sure im not making that up i think?
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Game Rules: Rifles lack the power to function effectively at normal space-to-space ranges, but may be employed by aerospace units operating in
atmosphere and their ground-based counterparts, where they function as normal direct-fire ballistic weapons. However, because they lack the armorpenetrating power of modern autocannons, rifles of all sizes must subtract 3 points of damage (to a minimum of 0) for successful attacks against any
unit except for conventional infantry, battle armor, ’Mechs using Commercial Armor, or Support Vehicles with a BAR rating below 8.
Which makes it sound like it isn't a heating/cooling issue but a lack of penetrating power and shell velocity that keeps them from being effective.
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I think it's important to consider that Autocannons by default are firing HEAT rounds, typically in large bursts, because BT armor is basically immune to the "classic" penetrator rods and whatnot. Additionally, while we have no data on caliber or fire rate for a lot of stuff, we do know that the "Machine Gun" on the Scorpion tank is a 20mm rotary cannon (likely a Space Future M61), and the Hetzer's AC 20 is a 150mm canon that fires ten-round bursts. It is thus likely that the Rifles fire single projectiles rather than spamming bursts like a machine gun, making them less effective.
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I think it's important to consider that Autocannons by default are firing HEAT rounds, typically in large bursts, because BT armor is basically immune to the "classic" penetrator rods and whatnot. Additionally, while we have no data on caliber or fire rate for a lot of stuff, we do know that the "Machine Gun" on the Scorpion tank is a 20mm rotary cannon (likely a Space Future M61), and the Hetzer's AC 20 is a 150mm canon that fires ten-round bursts. It is thus likely that the Rifles fire single projectiles rather than spamming bursts like a machine gun, making them less effective.
Except we have specific mentions of ACs firing depleted uranium rounds before there were AP specialty ammunition rules.
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And HEAT is problematic below ~70mm projectiles.
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And HEAT is problematic below ~70mm projectiles.
Considering that the lowest caliber we have directly stated is 90mm (for an AC 5, no less), this would hardly seem an issue; the lore for Autocannons does, however, directly state that the standard ammunition type is high explosive anti tank. (To say nothing about the fact that they're probably using the same metallique as LRMs/SRMs etc, because why would you not, so materials based limits like that are fundamentally unknowable on account of our limited perspective.)
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Would reclassifying the Mech weights for each category count as rewritten rules?
Because Takiro made a good post over on OBT that seemed pretty interesting.
20s would fall into a new Ultra-Light Category where they'd serve as auxiliaries (support roles, training, logistics, militia at first and then even out of there) at best, basically non-combatants.
Lights would now range from 25 to 40 tons (25, 30, 35, 40) and like all other categories there would be four integers of 5 ton design in each.
Medium would be 45 to 60 tons (45, 50, 55, 60).
Heavy would be 65 to 80 tons (65, 70, 75, 80).
Assaults would be 85 to 100 tons (85, 90, 95, 100).
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Considering the lightest mechs can be 10 tons per the original conception of the game, yes, it would both be a re-written rule and one that writes out the original potentials.
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Yeah, I mean when you look at game performance and lore, autocannons and missiles are reversed.
Autocannons, if they are clusters of shells, should roll on the cluster table. Thats not far fetched I think. But the game rules have them as single impact weapons, whose range is separate from their damage (so not a KE round, but an explosive of some variety). The only rule I have ever seen that treats ACs as something other then a single shot weapon is the rule in tac ops where you can split the AC damage in half, for exactly 2 instances of damage on 2 nearby mechs.
Meanwhile, the art of missiles is large, single firing missiles, but the game treats them as clusters of missiles that spread over a target. An SRM is a far better stand in for a rapid fire 120mm then an AC5. And the AC5, with the minimum range, is a better stand in for a medium range missile with a single impact damage. I often point out the art is very magnified, as the Dougram missiles on the wolverine and such were all single shot, 1 missile at a time weapons. Battletech kept the art, but the rules have each missile only a tiny fraction of the size of the launcher. All 20 LRM launch tubes can fit in the space around a single launch tube in the art... The twin LRM20s on an archer, in scale, would look like 20 imperceptibly small holes where missile 1 goes, with the rest of that space being flat. An SRM6 would look more like a revolver or gattling cannon, with how small the missiles actually are and how fast they are loaded.
The gun art is also off from fluff, again cause everything is too large. The gun on top of the marauder is supposed to be a 120mm firing 3 round clips... thats fine, BUT... the actual size of that gun is massive. Way bigger then a 120, and no clip feed or clips at all. The inner barrel diameter is roughly 1/22 the height (someone else feel free to take a picture of theirs for a better measurement, I just used the pixel length in paint to divide the height in pixels with the width, but imprecisely), so if it was a 12 meter tall marauder then that barrel is 530 mm. So since art influences so much of the game and how its perceived, ill just leave it at that haha.
This is why I think that AC munitions have a bit of homing capacity in them, which is the basis for the advanced Precision Ammo you get in the 3060s.
What most people are describing are the modern dead-fire rounds. They go where the gun is pointing at the time of firing. Homing better explains the grouping of standard, ultra, and even Rotary ACs.
So, as such, I don't see a problem with implementing dumb-fire munitions as an alternate ammo type that requires rolling on the cluster chart to figure out how much damage you're doing before you roll a single damage location.
And, the VSAC concept can simply be its own class of weapon. Treat it as tech, rather than a hard rule, and then you can have the best of both worlds.
I'm also looking at implementing a style of autocannon that rolls a number of attacks equal to its rating, each one doing a single point of damage, to represent older AC technologies which use dumb-fire cannon munitions. If the cannon is braced, the shots which hit all group in one spot. If it isn't they go random.
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So, I'm looking at what the Alpha Strike handling of AeroSpace ground attacks, and I'm thinking it wouldn't take much to implement them to standard.
My group already allows ground units to attack anywhere along the declared path of travel instead of the weird aiming at the center of the map rule. Never made sense. To hear that was implemented in AS is kinda cool.
And, because we are now on a ground map, Aero units must now use individual ground ranges and receive the appropriate to-hit modifiers, including the 2 hex per altitude level addition to the final range value that ground units face. If it isn't that way already, I would have the fighters roll and attack roll for each weapon in an attack much like ground units, to keep the system matching.
That's a start.
For playing on the low altitude map, I would allow grounded dropships to act as Anti-Aircraft platforms, being able to engage and be engaged by aircraft at the low-altitude ranges. It's a benefit and drawback to being big armored buildings. And, that would be how I would treat any unit or installation that has an Anti-Aircraft quirk or ability. They get to engage at Low-Altitude range bands. And, then we can implement AA Arrow IV and artillery batteries. Of course, LoS would be an issue if there is terrain tall enough.
So the Jag and the Rifleman and the Aesir and the Partyvan could be participants in air battles on the low altitude map. If they're doing this while also in the middle of a firefight on the ground (a ground game) they would not be able to dedicate fire to anything in the game. I'm sure there could be some way to work out whether they can move and do this and implement the appropriate modifiers to their attacks, or not. It would be easier to require they are stationary.
I'll give it some extra thought, but I'm thinking that they may either have to be immobile while performing AA work, allowing Aircraft to shoot back at them, or they're immune to Aero range fire, forcing Aircraft to make an attack pass on them to take them out.
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Yeah, I mean when you look at game performance and lore, autocannons and missiles are reversed.
Autocannons, if they are clusters of shells, should roll on the cluster table. Thats not far fetched I think. But the game rules have them as single impact weapons, whose range is separate from their damage (so not a KE round, but an explosive of some variety). The only rule I have ever seen that treats ACs as something other then a single shot weapon is the rule in tac ops where you can split the AC damage in half, for exactly 2 instances of damage on 2 nearby mechs.
Meanwhile, the art of missiles is large, single firing missiles, but the game treats them as clusters of missiles that spread over a target. An SRM is a far better stand in for a rapid fire 120mm then an AC5. And the AC5, with the minimum range, is a better stand in for a medium range missile with a single impact damage. I often point out the art is very magnified, as the Dougram missiles on the wolverine and such were all single shot, 1 missile at a time weapons. Battletech kept the art, but the rules have each missile only a tiny fraction of the size of the launcher. All 20 LRM launch tubes can fit in the space around a single launch tube in the art... The twin LRM20s on an archer, in scale, would look like 20 imperceptibly small holes where missile 1 goes, with the rest of that space being flat. An SRM6 would look more like a revolver or gattling cannon, with how small the missiles actually are and how fast they are loaded.
The gun art is also off from fluff, again cause everything is too large. The gun on top of the marauder is supposed to be a 120mm firing 3 round clips... thats fine, BUT... the actual size of that gun is massive. Way bigger then a 120, and no clip feed or clips at all. The inner barrel diameter is roughly 1/22 the height (someone else feel free to take a picture of theirs for a better measurement, I just used the pixel length in paint to divide the height in pixels with the width, but imprecisely), so if it was a 12 meter tall marauder then that barrel is 530 mm. So since art influences so much of the game and how its perceived, ill just leave it at that haha.
Note that missile lore states they're a third the length of previous missiles (as they no longer have separate payload and propellent) and so can be presumed to be of similar diameter to existing circa 1980s missile systems like, for example, the Hellfire; while I definitely agree that much of the art and model sculpts are significantly out of scale to various degrees, it is often a lot less than you might think,
I do, however, agree that Autocannons have a bit of a disconnect between their lore and mechanical implementation, but frankly unless you drastically reduced their mass changing them to a cluster weapon would remove the only real reason to bring them at all
(And while lore does state Autocannons usually have high fire rates and (relatively) modest calibers, there are a few here and there which are just single shot (in the context of a ten second turn) weapons with comically enormous bore diameters, so it would make all that a little awkward.)
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Note that missile lore states they're a third the length of previous missiles (as they no longer have separate payload and propellent)
I have heard the 'missiles look like coke bottles' thing before, but the propellent/payload thing isnt real is it? A missile that hits at shorter range doesnt do more damage.
Now, if the missile is actually a gyrojet, or recoilles rifle, both are 'coke bottle' shaped that has an odd propellent system. It turns SRMs into RPGs with limited guidance. While Im not opposed to such, as most missiles have exhaust vents on all the new art, im pretty sure we have seen missiles in the art looking like traditional long missiles--though the art is 'heroicly' scaled so its hard to base anything on it anymore.
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I have heard the 'missiles look like coke bottles' thing before, but the propellent/payload thing isnt real is it? A missile that hits at shorter range doesnt do more damage.
As far as coke can missiles, this is where the game came from
(https://www.macross2.net/m3/sdfmacross/destroid-spartan/destroid-spartan-lineart.png)
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Overruns in Aerospace ACS map should use the Tactical Value rather than size of the Unit.
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As far as coke can missiles, this is where the game came from
That makes me want a 2 SRM6 archer in place of the LRM20, with a head mounted flamer. Figures the coke bottle missiles came from macross haha.
Im more familiar with this art:
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a1/AGM-65_Maverick_MG_1382.jpg/330px-AGM-65_Maverick_MG_1382.jpg)
(https://cfw.sarna.net/news/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/lrm.gif)
EDIT: The first is the 2.5 meter long maverick missile, and the second is the LRM5 with what appears to be a maverick derivative. The art missile is clearly super oversized being based on the 250ish KG maverick, same with the launch tubes on the mechs being far too wide. If the missiles are micro missiles, which they could be, then all 5 of those launch ports would fit in the same space of 1 LRM tube on the existing models (and would be almost imperceptible at the mini scale instead of the wide missiles we have now).
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That second illo seems to be based on the Phoenix, but fins like either of those are a hard sell in a tube launched munition.
Edits for pics
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Phoenix_missile_at_Grumman_Memorial_Park.jpg)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/AIM-54C_350px.png)
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The Phoenix chops the front of the Maverick's fins off... the illustration doesn't...
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The Phoenix chops the front of the Maverick's fins off... the illustration doesn't...
More accurately, the Maverick extends the slopes of the Phoenix's wings fins, but, regardless, I guess you're saying the square front of the wings fins makes it totally impossible that the artist could have taken inspiration from a different missile. Only Maverick is possible :rolleyes:
edit: wings? :headbang:
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Either way, the missiles the art uses are massive if they are maverick or phoenix missile proportions like in the art. And like, I get it, you want to see the missile tubes on the mech, but the art and mini supports single fired large missiles and the rules support small rockets or RPG warhead clusters.
It would be a different feeling, but an SRM6 mounting 6 total missiles, dealing 20 damage and 10 heat per launch, instead of 8 damage, 4 heat, and 15 shots, would match the massive missiles in the mini/art and keep the total damage/heat in parity, but would frontload the damage to get the games done a bit sooner. Also, the srm2 on a shadowhawk wouldnt be a joke haha.
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That makes me want a 2 SRM6 archer in place of the LRM20, with a head mounted flamer. Figures the coke bottle missiles came from macross haha.
Im more familiar with this art:
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a1/AGM-65_Maverick_MG_1382.jpg/330px-AGM-65_Maverick_MG_1382.jpg)
(https://cfw.sarna.net/news/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/lrm.gif)
EDIT: The first is the 2.5 meter long maverick missile, and the second is the LRM5 with what appears to be a maverick derivative. The art missile is clearly super oversized being based on the 250ish KG maverick, same with the launch tubes on the mechs being far too wide. If the missiles are micro missiles, which they could be, then all 5 of those launch ports would fit in the same space of 1 LRM tube on the existing models (and would be almost imperceptible at the mini scale instead of the wide missiles we have now).
Ah. I see.
You are confusing the Arrow IV Artillery System - which is what that art is for - with the LRM 5 (which has not to my knowledge been given art, ever, besides the various TROs/model sculpts.)
All is made clear!
But yeah, they're not necessarily blunt cylinders, because aerodynamics, but the lore is pretty explicit that they do not have separate payload and propellent, this being the big advance that makes BT Missile Launchers practical vis a vis ammunition.
So BT missiles would likely still look... Basically like a modern missile, but be like, maybe a foot and a half long for something the power of a Hellfire.h
Edit: though given how aerodynamics works, I suspect that most "actually" sort of split the difference, and are smaller in diameter while being only *somewhat* shorter, just because forward cross-sectional area has a much greater impact on aerodynamic efficiency than length!
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Another one:
Infantry Ranges (that is, ranges of weapons relative to unit types they're pointed at.)
The common justification for the short-short-short range of battletech weapons, is Battlmech armors. ATOW gives significantly longer ranges for rifles and machineguns and the like vs. human beings, than the base ranges in TM or standard Battletech.
For heavy anti-infantry weapons with a significant anti-infantry bonus, specifically laser or ballistic weapons, increase range by three on the battletech map, when firing at conventional infantry.
Thus a Machinegun has a short range of 3, and a long range of 9, when firing at conventional infantry, but still has a short of 1 and a long of 3 when firing at battlearmor, other 'mechs, vehicles, "Mechanized" infantry (TW) etc.
CF, Hard Cover, etc.
When firing at infantry forted up in bunkers or fortified positions (or indoors), the CF of the structure reduces infantry casualties by the CF in question. (a CF of 5 on a structure reduces damage by 5 casualties), never to go below 1. (aka if you get a hit on infantry under cover, and that cover exceeds your 2d6 dice roll with your machinegun, they still take ONE casualty minimum. the reason? there's always some dumbass who sticks his head up when he needs to be ducking.)
Digging in; Infantry digging into a position gain one CF per turn spent digging in, up to 5 CF on open terrain. Rubbled hexes grant one CF of cover base, but multiply this effort by two. (maximum Ten CF for infantry dug in) Note: while digging in, the platoon or squad in question may not move from that hex, fire at opposing units, or spot for artillery. Doing so locks the CF of the dug in hex at whatever it was the previous turn, until reduced by incoming fire, or other clearing efforts.
Specific combat-engineering units may double the maximum.
Spotter Effects: Artillery
one Artillery spotter enables indirect fire, two reduces indirect fire's scatter by one hex, three by two hexes, four by three hexes to a minimum distance of one hex. These spotters may not engage in other activities while spotting unless the artillery unit has...
C3M/Command console/Command Post active (Present on the board/map)
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I'd probably also require the spotters to have Recon Cameras (at least) to allow them to do something else while spotting.
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Like the mass vs armor points idea . Also I like any anti missile system or method if it reduces cluster number below 2 all missile shot down or destroyed
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I'd probably also require the spotters to have Recon Cameras (at least) to allow them to do something else while spotting.
hmm...it would give 'gear' certain advantages, now wouldn't it?
Recon Camera; allows a unit to 'spot' while moving.
C3 slave: Permits units in the same network to both fire, and move.
(C3M would grant the same FDC function that a command console does, on top of the other functions)
'Drop' sensors; Act as a spotter for the hex they're in.
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Also I like any anti missile system or method if it reduces cluster number below 2 all missile shot down or destroyed
The original iteration made you declare which volley you were engaging before rolls are made to hit and you reduce the volley by 1d6 missiles. If you don't reduce the volley to zero and the volley subsequently hits, you roll on the smaller cluster table closest to how many missiles are left.
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I gotta admit that I really like the application to the cluster table approach. One thing we tried as a bridge was to roll a d3 for primitive AMSs and a D6 for clan, and the value is applied to the cluster roll.
Also, it seems to me that an AMS should be able to engage any and all clusters from a target unit, but at the expense of heat and/or ammo (in the case of Laser AMS, no ammo). One per use, effectively. It would help bring back the unpredictability of heat and ammo expenditure of the BMR and older systems, but a little more functionality.
As for the missile art, I've decided in my own Head canon that some of the fresh launch depictions we see in art are a 'shot cannister' that contains the individual munitions which will burst out of it at some point in the flight. So, when an LRM-5 shoots its '5 missiles' it launches them packed in a large cannister, and then once past minimum, they burst out and continue their trajectory as individual missiles. This goes against the lore of the RPGs, of course, but, I can live with that.
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Another one:
Infantry Ranges (that is, ranges of weapons relative to unit types they're pointed at.)
The common justification for the short-short-short range of battletech weapons, is Battlmech armors. ATOW gives significantly longer ranges for rifles and machineguns and the like vs. human beings, than the base ranges in TM or standard Battletech.
For heavy anti-infantry weapons with a significant anti-infantry bonus, specifically laser or ballistic weapons, increase range by three on the battletech map, when firing at conventional infantry.
It's elegant enough and it roughly fits the ranges the support weapons get in AToW from what I've seen that I'm gonna use this. It makes generating stats for the support weapons for these BA Squad Style sheets (https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=84571.msg2001799#msg2001799) easier.
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You are confusing the Arrow IV Artillery System - which is what that art is for - with the LRM 5 (which has not to my knowledge been given art, ever, besides the various TROs/model sculpts.)
looks like the sarna article my image used of the LRM is a flipped arrow launcher then. I blame sarna haha.
I looked thought techmanual and tacops, and this is the only image I see for an LRM in that book, specifically the thunder LRM. The SRM has more illustrations, and the SRM is pretty short and wide, kinda like an RPG/recoilless round that doesnt taper down, or a short/wide Javelin.
(https://cfw.sarna.net/wiki/images/5/5c/Thunder_LRM.jpg?timestamp=20150531053929)
There is also the old Mad Cat cutaway showing pretty massive LRMs with the launcher. The Mad Cat with the 200 mm garret arsenal missiles, which are massive. They also only had 15 launch tubes in the OG art. Those massive missiles are kinda why I would have written the missiles to be individual, art matching missiles like I mention above. So that 200 mm LRM would be an 8 damage single shot missile costing 4 heat per launch, so if you have an LRM15 you have 15 8 damage missiles generating 4 heat per launch. So an LRM5 would weigh 2.5 tons (1.5 tons clan), with 5 shots max, for 40 potential damage, instead of 3 damage at 12 shots like a normal LRM5 with half an ammo bin.
But yeah, they're not necessarily blunt cylinders, because aerodynamics, but the lore is pretty explicit that they do not have separate payload and propellent
I have seen others say this. Is this like some old fluff? It makes no sense, and I didnt see it mentioned in the techmanual. Even in the very first Gray Death novel, the SRM had a normal payload or an inferno payload--and inferno fuel wasnt described as rocket fuel. There is a ton of different payloads missiles have, isnt it impossible the propellent and payload are the same? Also, never has an LRM done more damage at short range, which we presume would happen if it had more propellent acting as payload.
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The biggest issue with BattleTech Numbers for things like mass values is there is no formula, it's all out-of-a-hat gutfeel from the 80s/90s.
That is definitely not the situation. There was a formula. The engine rating table was generated most definitely from an exponential equation. I tried to fit polynomials and they would not fit.
And that is the issue I have with it: The weights are too low for small engines and too high for large engines.
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That is definitely not the situation. There was a formula. The engine rating table was generated most definitely from an exponential equation. I tried to fit polynomials and they would not fit.
And that is the issue I have with it: The weights are too low for small engines and too high for large engines.
Square/cube law issues?? Problem I can see immediately with your statement, is that nobody's ever actually BUILT a fusion reactor that generated more energy than it took to get it going and takes to keep it going.
Why is that important? because it could be that while the power increases linearly, the shit needed to keep it running is exponentially heavier to take the strain.
This isn't like your V8 engine here. the mass increasing exponentially might actually be, within the magic physics of teh setting, absolutely necessary to handle the process and keep it going. We can't apply real-world physics here, because we've been 20 years from working fusion power for the last sixty, which puts it firmly in the 'magic system' category-the numbers balance in the setting because it's one of the fantasy elements of the science fantasy.
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Engine weights and power output are not linked, using base game rules and comparing to physics. AKA, a 40 ton mech moving 8/12 uses a 320 engine. An 80 ton mech moving 4/6 uses the same engine. However, engine power needed for speed/acceleration isnt linear to mass IRL. If I take a car and remove half of the non-drivetrain weight, so its an engine sled, it wouldnt have double the acceleration and top speed.
If the engine weights were linear, but your engine rating was tonnage*speed^2, we would get a much better curve. As it is, the 10 ton mechs and 5 ton vehicles are just FAR too fast, as the engine scaling, like Nerdi points out, are not properly scaled.
As for the engines themselves, a 10 rated engine in game, in like a trailer, can power infinite medium lasers, until the weight of the trailer and cooling system, not the output of the engine, is the limiting factor. So even the smallest engine has 'infinite' output, its the other stuff like transmission, drive train/myomere, ect, that should be a majority of engine weight. Bigger engines have more efficient cooling, but only by a little bit.
Like, if the engine formula was .5 * tonnage * walk^2, a cicada would have a 1280 engine and a zeus would have a 640. The Cicada engine would be 2x as strong, which makes more sense as it goes twice as fast, for a 4x energy cost, at half the weight.
It also would mean the joke speeds on things like savanah masters would get tonned WAY the heck down, into a much more gameplay friendly space. instead of 15/23 being the lightest possible engine, it would be close to as heavy as a 45 ton mech's engine moving 5/8--forcing those too fast units to have more reasonable speeds.
Edit: to be fair, if we switched to a more energy correct engine/drivetrain weight, we would need exponential structure and armor costs. Like how a cicada's engine should require more then a Zeus, the Zeus's structure and armor, point for point, should cost more then the cicadas. 4 tons of structure supporting 40 tons means an 80 ton unit would need 16 tons of structure, since support scales in cross section area while weight scales in volume. At a certain point big things bones are not wide enough to support the weight due to this scaling issue.
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If the engine weights were linear, but your engine rating was tonnage*speed^2, we would get a much better curve. As it is, the 10 ton mechs and 5 ton vehicles are just FAR too fast, as the engine scaling, like Nerdi points out, are not properly scaled.
...
It also would mean the joke speeds on things like savanah masters would get tonned WAY the heck down, into a much more gameplay friendly space. instead of 15/23 being the lightest possible engine, it would be close to as heavy as a 45 ton mech's engine moving 5/8--forcing those too fast units to have more reasonable speeds.
Edit: to be fair, if we switched to a more energy correct engine/drivetrain weight, we would need exponential structure and armor costs. Like how a cicada's engine should require more then a Zeus, the Zeus's structure and armor, point for point, should cost more then the cicadas. 4 tons of structure supporting 40 tons means an 80 ton unit would need 16 tons of structure, since support scales in cross section area while weight scales in volume. At a certain point big things bones are not wide enough to support the weight due to this scaling issue.
The Savannah Master is the unit that combines all above deficits, it should not be possible.
It's a game in a fictional universe so it only has to work as such.
Fusion engines must not be as light as they can be by the rules.
Using the engine for the scaling of the units is fine as long as it is done right. And I think it isn't right at the bottom end. That one can not build a useful 100t Mech in the Lostech age is good. Third order scaling with a minimum weight could have achieved the same. In my second post I provided an example that is similar to the original table.
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And, that supports the idea that the actual, physical power plant in a Mech isn't that heavy as the 'rating' would have you believe. It really is extra Myomer beyond the base IS to get the MP for Mechs, and probably means more power plug-in slots to the reactor itself.
But, the power train of a modern vehicle isn't the same as more Myomer and more signal boosters to get the contractions at higher speeds, or raw strength to move heavier weights.
However, if that's really the case, then the physical damage that Mechs should be able to do should probably also be based on the engine rating and not on pure tonnage, as well.
So, a Cicada should be kicking as hard as An Awesome with a 320 Power (Engine) Rating.
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Should I point out that the power plant needed to run weapons in buildings/turrets is based on the Damage those weapons do?
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Im not familiar with those building rules. Techmanual?
I only know about the trailer of any size using a 10 rated engine if it doesn't want to hook up to a parent vehicle.
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The only building emplacement rules I'm familiar with happen to be out of the BattleTech Manual and the BMR. And, when powering the weapons, the rating was based equipment tonnage, I think. Been a while since I looked, though.
No, I derived my conclusion from, of all things, the cost calculation of actuators, which was based not on the Internals, but the Engine Rating.
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The only building emplacement rules I'm familiar with happen to be out of the BattleTech Manual and the BMR. And, when powering the weapons, the rating was based equipment tonnage, I think. Been a while since I looked, though.
They're in Tactical Operations: Advanced Rules now. It may not have been Damage, but Tonnage. Let me check... *scrambles for backpack*...
Power Systems and Amplifiers is on pg 129, but for independent power systems, they refer you to Power Generators.
Power Generators starts on pg 131, with construction on the next page. This is added to 10% of the Heavy Energy Weapons in the building, which is then multiplied by the generator type.
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I wouldn't be surprised if things have changed between the BMR and Tac Ops.
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They put that in AR, not AUE? WTF? ???
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They put that in AR, not AUE? WTF? ???
Artillery rules, too. I guess if it's not in a mobile unit (or a mobile unit), it's not worthy of AUE.
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Sigh... it is what it is..
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And, thus the call for a rules reorganization. ;)
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Power amps go hand in hand with regular construction of most units that don't have a fusion engine but have weapons or equipment that require extra power. It shouldn't be in AUE imo since it is a baseline part for most CV's and construction rules. Weights are based on weapon tonnage.
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Power amps go hand in hand with regular construction of most units that don't have a fusion engine but have weapons or equipment that require extra power. It shouldn't be in AUE imo since it is a baseline part for most CV's and construction rules. Weights are based on weapon tonnage.
But those construction rules aren't in Advanced Rules, and it's usually a good idea for completion to have them there, so people don't think they need to incorporate them. It's not like that paragraph fundamentally changes the page count of the book, after all.
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Another one:
Infantry Ranges (that is, ranges of weapons relative to unit types they're pointed at.)
The common justification for the short-short-short range of battletech weapons, is Battlmech armors. ATOW gives significantly longer ranges for rifles and machineguns and the like vs. human beings, than the base ranges in TM or standard Battletech.
Armor and Sensor jamming, among some other potentials.
I apologize, but I want to take a moment to play temporary devil's advocate for moment about a concept.
People complain about the Napoleonic formations and the fact that Conventional Infantry get the same benefits of armored targets when it comes to ranges. I happen to be one of them.
But, I recall that some of the writers have professed to adhering to the idea of ambient ECM and sensor jamming being a large factor behind the ranges. It's possible to envision that the Conventional Infantry have to deploy in platoons so that their miniscule sensor jamming packages which comes with their standard gear is more powerful and effective when they're in large numbers, close together. This allows them to march up in clear line of sight and not have to worry about getting sniped at Line of Sight ranges by something which relies heavily on sensors to fire a laser with pinpoint accuracy.
This has never been officially declared as the case. But, if they were to do so, I might be able to work with it.
However, it does create it's own conceptual problems. For instance, what happens when you start to weaken the field when troopers start dropping? Also, if they're able to network sensor jamming across multiple bodies, how come they can't do the same with sensor packages to help get the ranges for their heavy anti-armor weapons to reach the same ranges as what's found on Combat Vehicles like tanks, mechs and power armor?
And, it fails when you realize that it doesn't effect the Mark 1 eyeball or general cameras. (And, what is the mk 1 eyeball but a gelatinous camera?) The only way to jam that is to a) overpower it with light and blind it, or b) change how it perceives the data, which can include camouflage or actively hacking and rewriting the interpretive subroutines.
[/Devil's Advocate]
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Armor and Sensor jamming, among some other potentials.
I apologize, but I want to take a moment to play temporary devil's advocate for moment about a concept.
People complain about the Napoleonic formations and the fact that Conventional Infantry get the same benefits of armored targets when it comes to ranges. I happen to be one of them.
But, I recall that some of the writers have professed to adhering to the idea of ambient ECM and sensor jamming being a large factor behind the ranges. It's possible to envision that the Conventional Infantry have to deploy in platoons so that their miniscule sensor jamming packages which comes with their standard gear is more powerful and effective when they're in large numbers, close together. This allows them to march up in clear line of sight and not have to worry about getting sniped at Line of Sight ranges by something which relies heavily on sensors to fire a laser with pinpoint accuracy.
This has never been officially declared as the case. But, if they were to do so, I might be able to work with it.
However, it does create it's own conceptual problems. For instance, what happens when you start to weaken the field when troopers start dropping? Also, if they're able to network sensor jamming across multiple bodies, how come they can't do the same with sensor packages to help get the ranges for their heavy anti-armor weapons to reach the same ranges as what's found on Combat Vehicles like tanks, mechs and power armor?
And, it fails when you realize that it doesn't effect the Mark 1 eyeball or general cameras. (And, what is the mk 1 eyeball but a gelatinous camera?) The only way to jam that is to a) overpower it with light and blind it, or b) change how it perceives the data, which can include camouflage or actively hacking and rewriting the interpretive subroutines.
[/Devil's Advocate]
Not to mention, an ECM field that strong is going to absolutely ****** up a human being's body. We used to have to sweep dead birds off the radar, it's not hard to imagine what an ECM/Jamming field strong enough to overcome eyeballs will do to troops, wildlife, plants...
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Which does bring up another obvious counter to the ECM argument: Last I checked trees don't generate ECM fields.
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And, that supports the idea that the actual, physical power plant in a Mech isn't that heavy as the 'rating' would have you believe. It really is extra Myomer beyond the base IS to get the MP for Mechs, and probably means more power plug-in slots to the reactor itself.
But, the power train of a modern vehicle isn't the same as more Myomer and more signal boosters to get the contractions at higher speeds, or raw strength to move heavier weights.
However, if that's really the case, then the physical damage that Mechs should be able to do should probably also be based on the engine rating and not on pure tonnage, as well.
So, a Cicada should be kicking as hard as An Awesome with a 320 Power (Engine) Rating.
It would also be covering the extra structural material to handle the higher accelerations. Stronger bones, stronger suspensions, etc.
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Which does bring up another obvious counter to the ECM argument: Last I checked trees don't generate ECM fields.
You must be talking about terrain modification and targeting. Well, that also brings into question the argument about armor, too.
But, in all honesty, the trees are probably getting the benefit of active fields produced by the combatants. Once there aren't enemy combatants on the field, you're no longer in combat, and I bet you could shoot to the edge of the solar system without problems.
Edit: If you want an old school rules loop to show what I mean, there's the firing beyond long range rules in the BMR. It was usually for generating heat and wasting ammo. But, the target would automatically be missed, ie no damage. However, what happens when you miss a target in woods? You can accidentally set those woods on fire. Still needed to happen on a roll of 11 or 12.
And, if you go back a rules iteration or two, there was accidentally clearing those woods on a roll of 2 or 3.
But, yeah, I kinda agree that clearing woods shouldn't be dependent on range if you want to really show off the power of Future Tech.
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One thing I would write differently is that the Front-line Clan Warriors don't use Targeting Computers.
A Targeting Computer is essentially a tonnage penalty used to augment the accuracy of the Mechwarrior. This essentially says that the Warrior needs help to be that accurate, plus is an amount of material that could be put to use elsewhere if the Warrior was better skilled.
Second-Line, Solahma, or dezgra Clan units might have a Targeting Computer, but Front-Line Warriors would not use it.
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That's not the only use for a Targeting Computer, as they can do Called Shots on locations without Immobilizing the target.
Still, if that was the only reason to have such a device (and it being a bit lighter as a result), it would make sense.
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That's not the only use for a Targeting Computer, as they can do Called Shots on locations without Immobilizing the target.
Still, if that was the only reason to have such a device (and it being a bit lighter as a result), it would make sense.
That would be a nice way to separate them. Halve their tonnages and you get:
- Clan Targeting Computer - only used to make Called Shots (so 0.5 tons per 5 tons of direct-fire weapons)
- Inner Sphere Targeting Computer - version only for general accuracy is 1 ton per 8 tons of direct-fire weapons, version only for called shots is also 1 ton per 8 tons of direct-fire weapons. Can put both on the same Mech.
Clanners are going around the battlefield try to damage specific components both to prove their skill and to ensure a good supply of parts (i.e. instead of only destroying left legs, they split the destruction 50-50)
The Inner Sphere pilots are hoping they can get enough accuracy bonus to return fire vs the Clan invaders.
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I'd cut the ECCM rules entirely, and I did heavily contribute to the current rules. Pages of dross covering all sorts of edge cases, with examples and diagrams, that nobody would ever use.
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That's not the only use for a Targeting Computer, as they can do Called Shots on locations without Immobilizing the target.
Still, if that was the only reason to have such a device (and it being a bit lighter as a result), it would make sense.
That's not the only use for a Targeting Computer, as they can do Called Shots on locations without Immobilizing the target.
Still, if that was the only reason to have such a device (and it being a bit lighter as a result), it would make sense.
Actually, if you allow SPAs, you don't need to dedicate tonnage at all to get the Called Shot ability. Maximum Tech had the 'Bull's-eye Marksman' advanced pilot ability which granted the pilot the same ability with some strict restrictions. (Stationary and can only be done with one weapon and no other weapons fire from the pilot that turn.)
I imagine they ported that over to the current batch of SPAs. It would give Trueborn pilots something to really set them apart if they're granted one SPA like this as part of their generation at the start of a game.
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I'd cut the ECCM rules entirely, and I did heavily contribute to the current rules. Pages of dross covering all sorts of edge cases, with examples and diagrams, that nobody would ever use.
I...might've done it differently. ECM? Meet Active Probe. They cancel each other out, done.
In some ways, harder to do, but in so MANY ways tabletop, easier if the hard counter is exactly that.
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I...might've done it differently. ECM? Meet Active Probe. They cancel each other out, done.
In some ways, harder to do, but in so MANY ways tabletop, easier if the hard counter is exactly that.
My job was to incorporate the errata, not to make editorial changes, but given my druthers I absolutely would've greatly simplified the whole gamut of electronic warfare and stealth equipment.
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Actually, if you allow SPAs, you don't need to dedicate tonnage at all to get the Called Shot ability. Maximum Tech had the 'Bull's-eye Marksman' advanced pilot ability which granted the pilot the same ability with some strict restrictions. (Stationary and can only be done with one weapon and no other weapons fire from the pilot that turn.)
I imagine they ported that over to the current batch of SPAs. It would give Trueborn pilots something to really set them apart if they're granted one SPA like this as part of their generation at the start of a game.
It is, twice. One is Marksman, and the other is Sharpshooter. It's expensive even before the "1 Weapon & Can't Move" costs are incorporated. Basically it costs the same as Jumping Jack (Jumping AMM is +1) and Range Master (Swap Short Range Modifier with either Medium or Long). Sharpshooter adds an auto-crit to the function. It's not so bad with a Kit Fox or a Shadow Cat. It tends to suck with units that tend to carry a few heavy weapons like the Nova Cat.
Guess what I can do with a Targeting Computer that you can't do with Marksman? Move and do Called Shots with multiple guns. Which works great with Mechs that have a lot of heavy guns like the Warhawk, or need to move and scoot to survive.
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MoS modifiers? Please explain.
Edit: Crap. Once again mistook a post on the first page for a current one.