Author Topic: AtB Contracts versus clanners- BV craziness  (Read 3469 times)

Vardun Armister

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AtB Contracts versus clanners- BV craziness
« on: 14 October 2018, 09:10:26 »
I'm running a merc unit on a contract against Clan Jade Falcon on Twycross.  I have a scenario of a recon raid as the attacker.  My BV is a little short of 6000, and had 33000 BV of Clanners thrown at me!  Is there any way to adjust the force generation so that it is more in line with the 10-15% rule either way for attacking or defending?
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Hammer

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Re: AtB Contracts versus clanners- BV craziness
« Reply #1 on: 14 October 2018, 12:08:13 »
AtB against the clans is horribly out of balance.  Best option is to delete units in the Megamek lounge prior to starting the game.  Basically delete unit you feel the BV is balanced.  MekHQ won't care about the units during resolution.
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pheonixstorm

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Re: AtB Contracts versus clanners- BV craziness
« Reply #2 on: 14 October 2018, 20:19:16 »
Also this should have been posted in the MegaMek subforum near the bottom of the boards.

Vardun Armister

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Re: AtB Contracts versus clanners- BV craziness
« Reply #3 on: 15 October 2018, 17:27:14 »
Thanks all.....I thought it was more of what you get is what you get.  I didn't think I could delete OpFor until manageable.  Thanks Again!  I'm still practicing on the AtB.  Mek only right now. Hopefully I'll graduate at some point to combined arms.
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Kovax

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Re: AtB Contracts versus clanners- BV craziness
« Reply #4 on: 02 November 2018, 13:42:38 »
Even more important with combined arms, when your light hover lance finds itself facing a "medium" 'Mech lance with 3 heavies and a token medium 'Mech, backed by reinforcements of a mixed medium/heavy vehicle lance....in heavy woods.  But don't worry about not being able to move more than 2 hexes, you've got 10 whole turns to destroy over 50% of the opponents.  Random situations are just that...random.  Sometimes you just have to say "That's stupid" and roll up another mission, or modify the existing one to make it playable, either for yourself or for the AI.

Mech Salvager

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Re: AtB Contracts versus clanners- BV craziness
« Reply #5 on: 01 January 2019, 06:42:28 »
Yeah, I remember something like having a lance put up against a binary, the AtB generator doesn't play fair with the clans.

I've also seen lots of other stupid things, like the time where I had planetary conditions on, and the bot decided to field lots of unsealed vehicles against me...in a vacuum. Instant victory as the game starts, as they all suffocate. Sure it's good for salvage and rather amusing...but it's not much of a challenge.
« Last Edit: 01 January 2019, 06:54:18 by Mech Salvager »

Arkaris

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Re: AtB Contracts versus clanners- BV craziness
« Reply #6 on: 02 February 2019, 21:54:54 »
Sorry to dredge this up from the bottom but I did want to point out how unfair the clan invasion was for the IS.  When AtB was being written the focus was on the invasion period.  The original writer of the rules focused on 2028-the clan invasion due to the best RATs available being Xtol's.  So during that corridor the Clans had massive advantage, having us players going against the bot (even before Princess) at even BV would not replicate that kind of imbalance during the invasion time frame.  A descent player at even units against the bot should win half the time even with the bot having superior tech, unrealistic.

I think it would be a good idea now that the player base has moved beyond Clan invasion time line to implement a change in Clan contracts.  Say after Twycross in the timeline contracts begin to scale back to even against the player in terms of unit numbers.  We would have to have a coder determine how difficult it would be to implement a sliding scale of difficulty. 

But I dislike the idea of the clan invasion time period the player and clan-bot being even on units.... this presents an unrealistic view of the time.  While the player is wiping up clan tech the inner sphere is being consumed... makes for a serious suspension of disbelief (to me). 

Hammer

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Re: AtB Contracts versus clanners- BV craziness
« Reply #7 on: 02 February 2019, 22:42:10 »
But also consider the Clans bid down to balance to the combat.  BV while not perfect attempts to capture this.  Another weakness in the Bot is it's lack of Zell.

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Arkaris

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Re: AtB Contracts versus clanners- BV craziness
« Reply #8 on: 03 February 2019, 22:53:59 »
But also consider the Clans bid down to balance to the combat.  BV while not perfect attempts to capture this.  Another weakness in the Bot is it's lack of Zell.


So during that corridor the Clans had massive advantage, having us players going against the bot (even before Princess) at even BV would not replicate that kind of imbalance during the invasion time frame.  A descent player at even units against the bot should win half the time even with the bot having superior tech, unrealistic.

Kovax

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Re: AtB Contracts versus clanners- BV craziness
« Reply #9 on: 05 February 2019, 11:34:19 »
That BV imbalance could be adjusted upwards slightly for contracts versus the Clans, where they get a +10% or +20 BV edge, on top of the random +/- 25% adjustment to whatever the normal BV balance happens to be for the battle.  Facing 5:1 odds against you isn't an "uphill challenge", it's suicide.  Clan bidding would normally pare that down to a modest advantage, not a tidal wave.

The Clans should NEVER outmatch the IS in terms of tonnage, they've already got better piloting/gunnery skills plus better equipment, plus the 'Bot doesn't suffer from the Clans' biggest tactical limitation: Zellbringen.  If a Clan commander can't expect to win with equal or near-equal tonnage and better skills and tech, or less than a 2:1 advantage in BV, he or she is clearly incompetent or timid, and would soon end up facing challenges to his or her position.  Basically, the force balances in the scenarios need to be reworked in AtB, because far too often it's nonsensical.

Additionally, hovertanks should never be required to deploy on a heavily wooded map (I had one battle where there weren't enough clear hexes to even deploy), nor should wheeled or tracked vehicles be forced to fight in a swamp, especially a "break through to the opposite edge" mission when there are NO clear paths across.  Odds are, you can't complete the mission even if nobody is shooting at you, and far too often I've seen the 'bot simply park because there's no way through.  At least the human player can sometimes clear a path by razing the forests or setting them on fire and waiting until the fires burn out.  Basically, for the commander running those units (whether player or 'bot), you know in advance that you simply can't go there, so why are your units fighting there?  Reloading a previous save takes far too long, and having to do so 5-10 times in a row to get a mission or battle that's even playable gets old in a hurry.

On the other hand, if the map generation algorithms are tweaked, with a configuration option to force at least one traversable path across the map, it might solve a few of the problems for combined arms forces.
« Last Edit: 05 February 2019, 11:40:08 by Kovax »

NickAragua

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Re: AtB Contracts versus clanners- BV craziness
« Reply #10 on: 05 February 2019, 11:47:34 »
That BV imbalance could be adjusted upwards slightly for contracts versus the Clans, where they get a +10% or +20 BV edge, on top of the random +/- 25% adjustment to whatever the normal BV balance happens to be for the battle.  Facing 5:1 odds against you isn't an "uphill challenge", it's suicide.  Clan bidding would normally pare that down to a modest advantage, not a tidal wave.

The Clans should NEVER outmatch the IS in terms of tonnage, they've already got better piloting/gunnery skills plus better equipment, plus the 'Bot doesn't suffer from the Clans' biggest tactical limitation: Zellbringen.  If a Clan commander can't expect to win with equal or near-equal tonnage and better skills and tech, or less than a 2:1 advantage in BV, he or she is clearly incompetent or timid, and would soon end up facing challenges to his or her position.  Basically, the force balances in the scenarios need to be reworked in AtB, because far too often it's nonsensical.

Additionally, hovertanks should never be required to deploy on a heavily wooded map (I had one battle where there weren't enough clear hexes to even deploy), nor should wheeled or tracked vehicles be forced to fight in a swamp, especially a "break through to the opposite edge" mission when there are NO clear paths across.  Odds are, you can't complete the mission even if nobody is shooting at you.  Basically, if you're running those units, you know in advance that you simply can't go there, so why are your units fighting there?  Reloading takes far too long, and having to do so 5-10 times in a row to get a mission or battle that's even playable gets old in a hurry.

On the other hand, if the map generation algorithms are tweaked, with a configuration option to force at least one traversable path across the map, it might solve a few of the problems for combined arms forces.

You've hit upon a couple of points that I'm working to address as time allows. I'd like to eventually improve the bot's pathfinding so that it a) avoids getting stuck in cul-de-sacs and humping walls and b) attempts to clear impassable terrain/buildings. I believe it is also doable to force at least one passable route through the map, although it'll take some effort to make sure it works right. There's also some work being done on limiting the BV imbalance between the generated bot forces and player force (which will become especially important after pathfinding is improved).

That being said, due to the nature of using RNG to generate opposing forces and terrain, there are always going to be "unfair" scenarios where it'll be better to simply take the contract score ding and retreat.

Kovax

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Re: AtB Contracts versus clanners- BV craziness
« Reply #11 on: 06 February 2019, 12:27:08 »
You've hit upon a couple of points that I'm working to address as time allows.
I'm very happy to hear that.  I've had a love/hate relationship with the AtB rules and campaigns, but reigning in the more drastic imbalances a bit and making more of the random maps at least "playable" would go a long way toward lowering the "hate" side of it.

Arkaris

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Re: AtB Contracts versus clanners- BV craziness
« Reply #12 on: 06 February 2019, 20:51:08 »
Agreed.  AtB was never perfected (and I do not think with current tech could be perfect there are just too many factors and too much randomness).  There would need to possibly be millions of if...then... statements for variations in the random tables.  The original project had a GM be the factor in determining if a random set of rolls was actually a playable scenario.  If a randomly created scenario was playable and was just a lost cause it was often an option to deploy and meet the minimum requirements to retreat and take the contract hit.  That was always left up to another human being if a scenario was playable.  With the ruleset being implemented in to MMHQ it sort of took away that human factor of scrapping the ridiculous.  Sadly the history of Battletech includes what we often see as ridiculous, an attack coming out of a category 4 hurricane in a moonless operation at the dead of midnight, things no sane player would do because the Battletech classic rules are just punishing.

Simon Landmine

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Re: AtB Contracts versus clanners- BV craziness
« Reply #13 on: 11 February 2019, 12:20:15 »
You've hit upon a couple of points that I'm working to address as time allows. I'd like to eventually improve the bot's pathfinding so that it a) avoids getting stuck in cul-de-sacs and humping walls and b) attempts to clear impassable terrain/buildings. I believe it is also doable to force at least one passable route through the map, although it'll take some effort to make sure it works right. There's also some work being done on limiting the BV imbalance between the generated bot forces and player force (which will become especially important after pathfinding is improved).

I'd just like to recognise just how damned awesome you are! Cheers!
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