Bidding

[ATN082268]

  I was curious to some aspects of Clan bidding.

  1.  How is the cutdown of a bid calculated?

  2.  How easy it to cheat on your bid and get away with it? Any examples?

  3.  Any good examples of bidding below the cutdown (especially when victorious)?

  4.  Generally isn't bidding wasteful when it is below the cutdown? You'll probably take more damage, casualties, etc. than if it is at or above the cutdown. Can you really show your skills when you are mismatched?

  Thanks.

-Andrew

[Alan Grant]

We had a nice discussion on this going, I think before the forum hack.

1. Lots of theories on this one. Perhaps a commander does it for his subordinates. The roleplaying game uses tactics rolls, whoever wins the roll, wins the bidding. I could have sworn I once saw a bidding system in a book that laid out unit equivilants. So a unit of medium mechs was worth X points, an elemental point was worth X points, and so on. You added up the points to gauge the total value of your force.

2. Cheat? How would you cheat? To me the most common "deception" is likely to be you possessing intel that your opponent does not. Thus giving you an advantage that may effect your perception of the real Cutdown. For example if you learn that the unit you are facing is dealing with a local virus and many of it's troops are ill, that could lower how you perceive the Cutdown to be.

3. Plenty, the assault on Memmingen, during the Clan Invasion, when Natasha Kerensky forced her opponent to go low, and though he won the bid, things did not go as planned and he was forced to call for reinforcements to win the planet. Natasha Kerensky bidding "1 warrior" for Gunzburg and sending Phelan down to negotiate. I'm sure this happens on occasion. You want to win the bid, otherwise your chances of winning honor are about nil. So I'm sure that forces commanders to cut it pretty close.

4. Depends. If you bid below the Cutdown, win the battle, and your casualties weren't that bad, then the honor is duly yours, and all the more impressive given the small force you had available. If you go into the fight and win, but get chewed apart in the process, that might lessen the victory, and the honor. The Khan may not be entirely pleased by your wasteful behavior, poor leadership or poor planning. So it depends entirely on the outcome.

[ATN082268]

<Snip Post>

We had a nice discussion on this going, I think before the forum hack.

2. Cheat? How would you cheat? To me the most common "deception" is likely to be you possessing intel that your opponent does not. Thus giving you an advantage that may effect your perception of the real Cutdown. For example if you learn that the unit you are facing is dealing with a local virus and many of it's troops are ill, that could lower how you perceive the Cutdown to be.

  Bringing more forces into battle than bid, unauthorized missions, etc. I think in the Battletech cartoon, the Jade Falcon warrior with a patch got caught on an unauthorized mission by her Galaxy Commander.

-Andrew

[Fatebringer]

1.  How is the cutdown of a bid calculated?

There is no calculation that I know. To me, the cut down is simply what it is supposed to be, the point at which I feel we can no longer win.

2.  How easy it to cheat on your bid and get away with it? Any examples?

"Cheating" is always frowned upon. It depends on the system your usuing and your cunning. Each system has loopholes, while things are "Technically" considered higher or lower value then they should be, every warrior who knows their machines knows when they are being hosed.

Another method is planned deception. I designed one scenario where a Bid force was hiding to start the game and an open force was guarding the dropships as part of the "Circle of Equals." The mechs there were in the same make of omnis, but with different configs. The point was to try and get the challenger to shoot the wrong people, thus allowing any of them to join. Of course proper challenges would had have to be answered by the pilot in the matching hiding mech.

The only reason I came up with this scenario was to showcase some good camo I did ;) Not exactly honorable, but <<Shrug>> you do what you need to do.

3.  Any good examples of bidding below the cutdown (especially when victorious)?

Bidding below a cut down involves strategy, if you do not have a plan to win with, you have no chance, but lets say I see the enemy has bid slow assault mech without jump jets and there is a wide shallow body of water... I might cut down by adding in protomechs instead of regular mechs. Ambush them in the water where their legs are exposed and they can not hit the Protos. This is just an example of course. But even then, you will not know if your victorius until after the fight is won.

4.  Generally isn't bidding wasteful when it is below the cutdown? You'll probably take more damage, casualties, etc. than if it is at or above the cutdown. Can you really show your skills when you are mismatched?

YES! Here is an example of something that happened to me. The Star Adders were bidding below what I established as my cut down and instead of allowing them to continue to bid to a point where we could not succeed, I challenged them to a Trial of Refusal over their bid in the middle of bidding.

If they won, I would withdraw my previous bid so they would be able to use the bid before mine and have more forces with wich to proceed on the Trial. If they lost, they had to remove their final bid and would be out of the bidding and I would have the best bid.

They faced me in the refusal with the same percentage of troops that their cut down consisted of. I had a clear advantage, but I lost. (Lucky crit to ammo, which exploded more ammo and killed the pilot :P) Anyway, the point was they proved they could win with their cut down, and then won the other Trial.

As much as I did not like losing, especially at those odds, I had to respect their skill.

[Fatebringer]

I have yet to be in a game where people establish a Cut Down ahead of time or enforce one. I chose to act to prevent the silliness from continuing. There was a lot at stake with that trial and someone needed to win.

[Guardsman]

I have yet to be in a game where people establish a Cut Down ahead of time or enforce one. I chose to act to prevent the silliness from continuing. There was a lot at stake with that trial and someone needed to win.

Bare in mind, the circle of equals are there, ready to intervene if necessary, though there will be a significant loss of honour for the warrior who calls in the reinforcements. Just saying, it is an option.

[Iron Mongoose]

My sense is that there's typicaly a senior officer presiding over the bid.  In most canon fights, its the Galaxy Commander or Star Colonal of the unit in qustion.  In one instance , Leo Showers had be brought in to referee a bid because only the ilKhan is senior to Khans when they bid against one another.  I think Fate's example shows why.  You don't want unsavory practices, you don't want fights thrown, you don't want bids that are made out of spite, to tank the thing and cause dishonor to the Clan.  And you don't want the affair held up by me needing to beat some Ravens down  8) (like he said, its better to be lucky than good, sometimes)

In a lot of games, you can just look at BV as a cutdown of sorts.  Though the Clans are known to have a sort of system like that from the Kingfisher fluff, its not clear exactly how it works, if at all.  But one imagines that if the components of an elite unit were fighting to assualt a green one, the cutdown would be set much below 100% of the enemy force, perhaps as low as 50%. 

[Fatebringer]

Well, from what I read, inter-clan fights take a while to set up. I find that we abbreviate the process for game sake.

[Guardsman]

Well, from what I read, inter-clan fights take a while to set up. I find that we abbreviate the process for game sake.

It's certainly a long discussion, even if it can be done in a few hours of universe time.

[Southern Coyote]

A question that goes along with the OP:

How do you employ deceptive bidding tactics?  The Mandrills are accused of this when bidding for both the omnimech and the elemental.  How exactly can you be deceptive when bidding?

[Guardsman]

A question that goes along with the OP:

How do you employ deceptive bidding tactics?  The Mandrills are accused of this when bidding for both the omnimech and the elemental.  How exactly can you be deceptive when bidding?

When you misrepresent your forces? For example, you can designate a force as a Cluster, but your Cluster and their Cluster don’t have to include the same number of BattleMechs. It would be deceptive if you did what you could to lure the other guy into thinking you were talking apples against apples. It would be dishonourable, to create a new unit for the purpose of this trial. As long as it existed long before the trial, you’re laughing.

[Iron Mongoose]

You can also play around with battle histories.  The Dracs did this at Wolcot (and seemingly got away with it) by bidding the green and untested "Blue Wave" regements or some such as that, which were really the Genyosha regements, the best they had to offer.  The Jags under estimated their forces, and bid low.  When the Genyosha proved not only to be elite troops but also well entrenched in a swamp, the Jag commander knew he was beat and threw in the towel.

I think the Mandrill Smyth Jewels did something like this as well.  When planning a joint attack with the Paynes, they handled all the bidding, and they over stated the Payne force while understating their own.  Since the over all bid was on the money, they managed to skate on offical charges, but they won their side of the fight easily, while the Paynes had a very hard time (I don't remember if they won or lost).  as a resualt, the Paynes and Coyotes were pretty cheesed off.  when they latered pulled a similar stunt on the Horses, they pretty much sealed their fate.

[Hellraiser]

  1.  How is the cutdown of a bid calculated?

The Cut down is nothing more than an ESTIMATE, based on INTEL.
One of the reasons the D-Sharks are so good at bidding is there merchants visit worlds very often.
So this means they see things more frequently and more fully than a unit from off world would.
So they might know of a unit being under/over strength or having just been in combat, or how well entrenched the defenders are.... etc etc etc.
Its the equivalent of having good recon ahead of time.
V/S... a unit just jumping in system and taking what the defenders "say" is their force at face value.

For example, IIRC, Phelan was able to fill in Ulric on much more detail of certain FRR worlds from his time just prior to the invasion in the FRR, things like the Flu from the Tropics in Rasalhague etc etc.
So Ulric was able to bid lower for the target v/s the G-Bear Khan because he knew that given time, a good portion of the defending forces would be tossing cookies instead of being in fighting shape.

  2.  How easy it to cheat on your bid and get away with it? Any examples?

The most common way I think I've seen is misrepresenting your forces.
We've seen examples in Canon of calling a unit Green v/s Elite.
There is also the size issue.
Big difference between a Trinary of 15 mechs and a Trinary of 2 Novas of mechs & elementals & a 3rd star of Fighters..............15 Mechs  v/s  10 Mechs, 50 Elementals, 10 Fighters.......
Both are a Trinary but I know which one I'm thinking of as tactically superior.

  3.  Any good examples of bidding below the cutdown (especially when victorious)?

Plenty in canon,  Rasalhague as I mentioned above.
Gunzberg where Natasha sent in just Phelan.
The Cutdown is an "opinion", based on Intel as I said above.
So the more Intel you have the more accurate you can bid.
If you don't know about an extra wing of fighters you might go in w/o enough support and loose droppers full of mechs just trying to get to the target.

  4.  Generally isn't bidding wasteful when it is below the cutdown? You'll probably take more damage, casualties, etc. than if it is at or above the cutdown. Can you really show your skills when you are mismatched?

Nobody said the clans are smart.
But, remember, there is more to a mission than Damage taken in the actual fight.
Things like Fuel, food, oil, spareparts, wear & tear........ Think about the modern US-Army......do you really want to ship an entire brigade over seas if a battalion will get the job done.

The clans aren't looking to loose so much as they don't want a walkover, they want a hard fight to let the truly excellent shine and to weed out the weak.

[Guardsman]

The Cut down is nothing more than an ESTIMATE, based on INTEL.
One of the reasons the D-Sharks are so good at bidding is there merchants visit worlds very often.
So this means they see things more frequently and more fully than a unit from off world would.
So they might know of a unit being under/over strength or having just been in combat, or how well entrenched the defenders are.... etc etc etc.
Its the equivalent of having good recon ahead of time.
V/S... a unit just jumping in system and taking what the defenders "say" is their force at face value.

For example, IIRC, Phelan was able to fill in Ulric on much more detail of certain FRR worlds from his time just prior to the invasion in the FRR, things like the Flu from the Tropics in Rasalhague etc etc.
So Ulric was able to bid lower for the target v/s the G-Bear Khan because he knew that given time, a good portion of the defending forces would be tossing cookies instead of being in fighting shape.

The most common way I think I've seen is misrepresenting your forces.
We've seen examples in Canon of calling a unit Green v/s Elite.
There is also the size issue.
Big difference between a Trinary of 15 mechs and a Trinary of 2 Novas of mechs & elementals & a 3rd star of Fighters..............15 Mechs  v/s  10 Mechs, 50 Elementals, 10 Fighters.......
Both are a Trinary but I know which one I'm thinking of as tactically superior.

Plenty in canon,  Rasalhague as I mentioned above.
Gunzberg where Natasha sent in just Phelan.
The Cutdown is an "opinion", based on Intel as I said above.
So the more Intel you have the more accurate you can bid.
If you don't know about an extra wing of fighters you might go in w/o enough support and loose droppers full of mechs just trying to get to the target.

Nobody said the clans are smart.
But, remember, there is more to a mission than Damage taken in the actual fight.
Things like Fuel, food, oil, spareparts, wear & tear........ Think about the modern US-Army......do you really want to ship an entire brigade over seas if a battalion will get the job done.

The clans aren't looking to loose so much as they don't want a walkover, they want a hard fight to let the truly excellent shine and to weed out the weak.

Very nicely put, Hellraiser.

[Shockwave]

In regards to "cheating", though it is not actually cheating.

The person who won the bid can change the size of his force mid Trial. They are allowed to bring in reinforcements that put their total force used equal to that of the last bid made by their opponent in the Batchel.

Example for clarity.
Star Captain Smith's last bid was Star of Omnimechs plus a Star of Elementals
Star Captain Jones wins with a bid of Star of Omnimechs.

During the Trial Star Captain Jones is struggling and is in need of some house clearing or he might fail to win, he is allowed (Without question and with only a small loss of honour) to call in up to a Star of Elementals, as this would put him equal to the bid of Star Captain Smith.

The loss of Honour in this case I presume is only small due to the fact that it is admitting that the smallest force to win with was your opponents bid, but since you won with their bid it shows that you are at least as good as they are.

Star Captain Jones is also allowed to call in significantly more reinforcements, but only with the permission of Star Captain Smith.