Any Rules for Factory Building?

[kuttsinister7]

Hey Guys,

I am climbing back into the itch of wanting to run a more modern game of Succession Wars and was looking for Factory Building Rules. So before I am showered with the fire of answers I love to read let me give the criteria.

1) Nothing uber complicated.
2) How long would it to build one mech in a bay with a full team and parts.
3) I read the old Objective Raids and various resources and they listed the logistics issue, never really gave a ball park figure for one mech on a full line without the fluff.
4) For Example, LAW (Luthien Armor Works) before the Nuking, how many mechs could a line push out in a good week?

Those are the questions and answers I am looking for! Thank you in Advance!

[guardiandashi]

if all the parts are on site and available ... the fastest estimate I would have is look at strategic operations repair and refit rules, or you could also estimate something like the bv in hours and you probabally would be close to the minimum time

the marauder II factory in objective raids was building like 4 marauders simultaniously, and turned out 12/year so it was taking ~3 months to build/assemble each one, but they might stagger them by 2-3 weeks IE start mech in bay 1, wait 2-3 weeks and start mech in bay 2 2-3 weeks later start on the mech in bay 3 and 2-3 weeks later start on the mech in bay 4.

now if you want to have a really "fun" idea there what if its the same team that starts each chassis? then that would imply that the gm factory has 1 "chassis" team (in the sense of say building the Internal structure) possibly including wiring it up,  another team that mounts the engine, gyro builds the cockpit ... etc another team that does the myomer (and possibly actuator work) etc  and the process is setup so the teams do their part then move on to the next chassis and by the time the 4th mech is striding out of the bay, the team is ready to start building the 5th mech for the year in the 1st bay

[wellspring]

Numerous "ask the developers" and "rules questions" forums posts have asked about just this. The short answer is that there aren't and probably won't ever be rules for this. For a number of reasons explored on other threads here.

You can probably use guardiandashi's idea to hack together something that will work for your purposes.

[Starmage21]

Numerous "ask the developers" and "rules questions" forums posts have asked about just this. The short answer is that there aren't and probably won't ever be rules for this. For a number of reasons explored on other threads here.

You can probably use guardiandashi's idea to hack together something that will work for your purposes.

There need to be. I've come across instances before where campaign players wanted to have "from the ground up" customs, including myself, or modifications so deep so as to be effectively custom.  A system in place to at least facilitate prototyping a working custom mech. You can start with a 100% custom mech from character creation too. Such a system would also help explain that.

[wellspring]

There need to be. I've come across instances before where campaign players wanted to have "from the ground up" customs, including myself, or modifications so deep so as to be effectively custom.  A system in place to at least facilitate prototyping a working custom mech. You can start with a 100% custom mech from character creation too. Such a system would also help explain that.

Well, you don't need factory rules for custom mechs. You can adapt the refit and FrankenMech rules to cover the mechanics of a one-off custom or prototype mech for player characters. That's already in Strat Ops, as GuardianDaishi points out. And it actually fits better for building a one-off in a repair bay.

The problems come in when the mech is supposed to be in mass production. But then it's like any other factory-built mech. As GM, you handwave production rates to fit the needs of your plot.

[St.George]

As one of two GM's in my local group,we tend to refer to ComOp's (ISiF) rules for factorys,,,or fluff it up to fit the game,,,"keep em droolin' for more".Just dont  over do it to the point where everyone gets mad and points out "how unrealistic" that is,,,tends to waste game time.  O0

[jbaird1]

I actually asked a similar question a couple of days ago.  I posted my question on the General Discussion boards titled Factory Production?.  I got a lot of responses.  One was very helpful to me.  It was a post by Revanche.  An entire rule book has been put together on factories with information like;  the cost to construct a factory, what kind of building it would need to be in, Factory worker payroll, research for new types of mechs, etc.  This rulebook basically sets up a framework so you can decide how many mechs you want to put out a week.  The more mechs the bigger and more expensive the factory needs to be.  Check out the discussion on the above mentioned board and download the PDF file of The Industrial Tycoon's Handbook (BattleTech Industrial Rules).