What rules do you use to improve the QS experience?

[Son of Kerenski]

Hello all,

Recent discoverer of the Quick Strike rules for Battletech & I'm really enjoying having the option of playing large battles in a short amount of time while 'preserving' the essence of Battletech.

One thing that doesn't totally satisfy is the way initiative works - it always seems to come down to a gang bang/wolf pack mentality where if you win your forces cluster in range of one unit & pummel it to death (out of range of the other enemy units often enough) or you phalanx up your forces to try to prevent such tactics if you lose.  Granted one could argue that this is how it is in vanilla Battletech, but I'm am curious as to see if there is another way around this.

We've played it the way its written and also moving one lance at a time. Are there any other options that people have tried that provide a more satisfactory experience? We are going to be trying out orders soon so that might be OK.

Also any other suggestions that improve on any other areas of the game?

[jasper_ward]

Adding Aero and LAMS makes things a bit more interesting, we keep lams simple, AERO mode= Aero, and Mech mode=mech no inbetween, and Medron Pryde's cards work great, Artillery, IF#, and a few other abilities can make a city fight, or other terrain types interesting as well... if the same units are played all the time, it does tend to get repetitive

[Weirdo]

I would add artillery to your games. BForce/QS artillery loses the blast radius of Battletech-scale arty, but the increase in proportionate damage means that nobody wants to be in the hex that a Long Tom or Sniper salvo lands in. If your enemy starts clumping up, just target the center of his clump. Between the raw damamge and the randomness of drift, he'll either spread his forces out, or take a LOT of hurt.

[nckestrel]

I would add artillery to your games. BForce/QS artillery loses the blast radius of Battletech-scale arty, but the increase in proportionate damage means that nobody wants to be in the hex that a Long Tom or Sniper salvo lands in. If your enemy starts clumping up, just target the center of his clump. Between the raw damamge and the randomness of drift, he'll either spread his forces out, or take a LOT of hurt.

BF: All Artillery hit everything in the hex, so if there's a lance there it will hit every element ('mech/tank/platoon) in the lance.  If there's lances stacked in the hex, it will hit every member of every lance.  In addition, Long Toms and most cruise missiles reach adjacent hexes as well. 

QS: I don't think QS says anything about artillery.  For area of effect, you could use BF ranges x 2" (hit everything in 2" circle, if LT or most cruise missiles, do splash damage to everything outside 2" but within 4").  However, I think I would invoke the p409 Special Abilities rule where "for any abilities that use ranges, players should use Total Warfare ranges instead, multiplying by 2, to get the ranges in inches"  and count any band it can only do 1 damage as 0.  (So the 5's and 10s would do 1 BF damage.  The 15s and 20s would do 2).  R0 would be a 2" circle (LTs 3, Snipers, Thumpers, Arrow IV non-homing would do 2).  R1 would be a 4" circle (Arrow IV non-homing, Snipers and Thumpers would do 1 damage at 4".  LTs would do 2.).  R2 would be a 6" circle (Long Toms would do 1 BF at 6").
You'd also need a way of targeting (since you can specify a hex).  For the game at Gencon last year, we declared an X,Y coordinates from one edge of the map.  We had some measuring tape or yard sticks(?) along the edges of the map.  Sometimes they stayed in place.

[Son of Kerenski]

Cheers for the tips guys! Artillery sounds like a nice deterrent.  >:D

We are also going to try out the orders system next time we play, so it will be interesting to see who that turns out. Anyone else tried the orders system? How did it go?

[Adrian Gideon]

QS: <cut>

You're on the right track sir.  O0

[Crimson_Langur_1970]

Just curious, are folks using the house-rule damage table in their QS games now?  The one where you roll a third dice with your attack dice and it helps determine how much of your damage actually gets inflicted. 

I am planning a game this weekend and debating on whether or not to try this.  Seems like it will add some more "meat" to the game's bones.

Thoughts? 

[Weirdo]

First I've heard of this house rule. How's it work?

[Crimson_Langur_1970]

First I've heard of this house rule. How's it work?

There's a cool table I cribbed from a thread last week. I am sure someone will be along to provide a link. I don't have it, alas. I just imported the table image into a Word doc and printed it out, then tucked it into my QS binder.

[Weirdo]

The rule is that there is a table... ???

Do I throw this table at my opponent? Doesn't seem very sportsmanlike, unless we're talking about a dollhouse-scaled table.

[Crimson_Langur_1970]

I don't have my rules handy, and I don't have a digital copy handy to throw into this thread.

The way it works is that you roll three dice on attack rolls. The third dice is a different color, let's say red for example's sake.

If you hit, the result on the Red dice gets compared to the table, which has your damage potential running along the top and the dice result running along the vertical axis.  It dictates how much damage gets through.  This models a 'Mech wit lots of weapons shooting and hitting with some of them.

On a miss, a roll of a "6" on the Red dice can cause damage if your damage potential is high enough.  So units that would do 5 or 6 still might do 1 pt. of damage on a 6 on the red dice.

Hope this makes sense! 

[Weirdo]

So it's essentially a cluster roll, like Battletech scale missile racks and whatnot. Makes sense.

But I'll skip it. I'm happy with the base damage rules.

[Crimson_Langur_1970]

Here is the the thread, if you're curious:

http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,7897.0.html

[Sartris]

So it's essentially a cluster roll, like Battletech scale missile racks and whatnot. Makes sense.

But I'll skip it. I'm happy with the base damage rules.

Yeah, the appeal for me of quickstrike is that I don't have to consult as many tables.

I've played around with the idea of replacing cluster rolls with polyhedral dice to speed things up.  If you've got a dice collection, it may be a way to speed up rolling.

[Son of Kerenski]

Well we used a homebrew rule for artillery in our last game and it proved to be a decent enough deterent to stop clustering up in single adjacent hexes.

Next weekend, orders!

[Papabees]

Just curious, are folks using the house-rule damage table in their QS games now?  The one where you roll a third dice with your attack dice and it helps determine how much of your damage actually gets inflicted. 

I am planning a game this weekend and debating on whether or not to try this.  Seems like it will add some more "meat" to the game's bones.

Thoughts?

When I play we roll 2d6 for each potential damage point. Any hits cause a point of damage. If my attack is a 4 then I roll 4 sets of 2d6 vs. the to hit number. Takes away from the gang bang feel.

[epic]

When I play we roll 2d6 for each potential damage point. Any hits cause a point of damage. If my attack is a 4 then I roll 4 sets of 2d6 vs. the to hit number. Takes away from the gang bang feel.

No offence, but doesn't that really slow it down?

[Cambo]

Son of Kerenski and I played our game with Commands (and artillery) though we didn't use the variable damage rules you guys suggested... the after action report is here.

[Papabees]

No offence, but doesn't that really slow it down?

Yes and No. The rolls don't take any longer because we used matched sets of dice. Whether I roll 1 set of 2d6 or 4 sets it is still one roll so the attack resolution doesn't take any longer. However, you are not dropping mechs quite as quickly because you don't get the large chunks of damage that are normally seen. That being said, it feels more like Battletech to me. YMMV. 

I'm actually toying with a hybrid of the two (Btech/Quickstrike) that has weapon damage/5, armor/15 but rolls for individual weapons and using the standard Btech rules but the quickstrike damage resolution. Still thinking it through.

[uhrhammer]

We use a house rule that allows units to use a weapon and a physical attack in the same turn. It makes the game highly destructive and players can't wait to close. Hmmm, standing off and sniping at range for 2pts when I can run in and cause six. Where do I sign.

[BARNESGN]

I'm with Uhrhammer ....I use the 2 attack rule to give the melee bashers more flare.

[judgedoug]

regarding variable damage; how about you cause one point of damage if you roll exactly what you need, and one additional point (up to max damage) per number rolled over what you needed.

for example, a mech that causes 3 damage at a particular range band, and needs 8 to hit.
roll a 7 or less, miss like normal.
roll 8, one damage.
roll 9, two damage.
roll 10 or higher, three damage.

[Frantic Pryde]

We use a house rule that allows units to use a weapon and a physical attack in the same turn. It makes the game highly destructive and players can't wait to close. Hmmm, standing off and sniping at range for 2pts when I can run in and cause six. Where do I sign.

We do the same thing. Charging and DFA still can't fire that turn of course. We also give pure clan tech forces 3 gunners since they had a real hard time winning games before we did that. As a compromise, the clan mechs can't engage in physical attack at all. Keep it canon w/o the clans being at such a major disadvantage.

[William J. Pennington]

I looked at that table, interesting. My concersn would be speed of play, and a few other issues.

Speed of play is the most important to me, but already dealt with by others, so moving on...

Another concern is randomness to damage.  The random d6 to determine damage isn't influenced by the skill of the player, the skill of the pilot, or any situational modifier--just pure randonmess, and the player has already went through that factor to get a hit roll.  It seems that the easier the to hit roll is (4+ versus 10+), the more likely you should be to score to the upper end of the damage scale. But this is a flat random roll--you are just as likely to score maximum damage with a to hit number of 12+ as you are with a to hit number of 2+.

Then there are some unintended effects of the rule  that could impact 'mechs with high defensive movement modifiers, most seriously hurting the fastest and lightest units.

Elements with 4 or more damage, effectively, always do some damage on a roll of 6.  For Light mechs that live on speed, and keeping target numbers high, this reduces their survival rate, because your chance to do some damage to such a target is, at worst, 16.66% after missing your to hit roll.

Given a targeted element that has a +4 DMM, medium range, and partial cover, (or long range in the open) thats usually  12+(2.78 %)  for a 4 gunner, 11+ (8.34%) for a 3 gunner and a 10+ (16.67%) chance for a 2 gunner.

So, effectively, versus fast moving mechs, that ability grants a 2 point bump in gunnery skill to a regular pilot.  The fact you only do 1-3 points of damage isnt that helpful as many of those lightsweights only have a combined armor and structure of 2-3 points.

Another side effect:

For units that get most of the bang for their buck from one large weapon, this random damage distribution seems to take away form their capabilities. Lets say you have a unit only armed with an AC 20. When it hits in battletech 20 damage, no randomness in the damage done, translates to 2 in QS/BF. But in this system, that unit has its damage reduced 50% of the time.

It seems the units that do less damage on average get more dependable damage performance for successful to hit rolls.

Averaging the results (adding up the damage results of all rolls 1-6, then divding by 6), then expressing the average done as a percentage of the maximum damage

Base Damage       1      2      3        4        5         6       7      8         9         10
Average Damage  1      1.5     2      2.5     3.33      4      4.5     5       5.83      6.5
                      100%  75%  67%   63%    67%    67%  64%   63%   65%     65%

The average damage result Favors the 1 and 2 damage dealing units by far in terms out output. 4, 7, and 8 points of damage come out as the leats performing numbers. after 3, 5 and 6 damage returns the best average results for those dealing significant damage (3+).

I just wanted to point out the mechanic has some effects on aspects of play worth noting.