AeroTech 3: Part 1 - Introduction and General Discussion

[ColBosch]

What do I care what nonsense the video games do? :D Seriously, that's opening a can of worms I'd rather ignore.

[I am Belch II]

Looks like a nice redo.
I just wish there was a way to make it official.

[Giovanni Blasini]

I suspect that, before you would see a sixth revamp of the rules, including what would be the, what, fourth completely different version of the construction rules (I'm not counting the incremental changes from AT2 to AT2R to TW), I suspect you would instead see aerospace abandoned outside fighters for ground attack and transport DropShips.

[Nebfer]

Well one thing to note is that from 2900 to 3055, their are no real warships in the IS, and from 3080 to present their rare every where, Warships are only really common in the star league era. Out side of that it's dropships as the primary warships.

So one thing should be addressed is are we making this to play with "warships" when currently in universe their a very rare beast, and the majority of the combat ships are Dropships and fighters, would be an odd choice.


As for fuel use I came up with a few alternatives, the simple one is 1/2000th the ships mass is the fuel use at 1G per day (I.e. a 500,000 ton warship would use 250 tons of fuel per day at 1G), the more complex is more like current but with the numbers modified, a few examples would be a 100,000 ton ship only needs 100 tons per day, but a 1,000,000 ton ship needs 600 tons per day. Not realistic, but I do not think we should be too concerned about realism.

I also think the Crews are to small, so I simply would adjust the numbers so a warship would have a crew of 45 + 1 per 2,000 tons of ship, with officers being 1/10th the crew and gunners
Also part of the crew would be the ships cooks (1 per 50, per the ratio found in Tac ops field kitchen), medical personnel, coms crew and a tech team per launch bay door....

I also deal with the armor by upping it's mass by a factor of 25 (amount of points alowed per ship would also change), though this (and the heavier fuel) requires the KF drive to be lighter...

[Red Pins]

Wow.  I can't even keep up with the discussion.  Tell you what, ColBosch, PM me when you need me.  Keep in mind I don't know much about AS, so the best I can do is spell checking, grammar, and offering a fresh viewpoint on the ruleset.

Good luck!

[Daryk]

I like Nebfer's idea of tying fuel consumption directly to mass, and think it would mesh well with a reduced strategic thrust rating for a given tonnage of engine (i.e., ships only get the 0.5G per thrust point on the tactical scale to represent throwing extra reaction mass into the engine, while getting something like 0.1G per thrust point, but vastly reduced fuel consumption, on the strategic scale).

[Daemion]

What do I care what nonsense the video games do? :D Seriously, that's opening a can of worms I'd rather ignore.

It was more of a visual cue reference than something to emulate. Although, if there was a combat intercept near the atmosphere, where it would be most likely to allow for the typical space furball that my group at least tends to play, I imagine the aftermath would look very much like the opening to Mech Commander with the transports turning and prepping for landing.

So, I guess the fiction never really went into how space intercepts work. In transit, droppers and escorts, I imagine, are going really fast, so the best you could do is at either end, right? Might that be one of the reasons space combat isn't very prevalent in the BattleTech setting?

[Daemion]

I take it that 'Alpha Strike Card' is based on current space vessel design and rules?


Okay, back to top down: I'm assuming you want something Alhpa Strike-ish at your high-end fleet level.

Things I would suggest we ask ourselves about that level for each vessel:
- What do we need to keep track of?
- What should we keep track of?
- What all is possible to track?

So, what is a Warship have on it under current BattleTech design?

The reason I bring that up, is if we do keep track of crits, and maybe give them separate armor, I'm thinking that units should be able to pick crits on large ships, but only while attacking at 'point blank range', or inside the same hex.

I'm mentally thinking about a large area of space where combat is normally done beyond visual range. Whether you accept that as the norm for BattleTech or not (someone find some fiction that backs it up?), it's still a very real thing that your weapons will be pointed at a dot on your HUD that you can barely pick out with the Mark 1. Even with sensor input, it's going to take some hefty computing power to pick out certain parts when your best triangulation is by a few meters up to maybe a kilometer.

With that in mind, I think fighters, small craft, and droppers at the very least should be able to fire into adjacent hexes. Have stat-block damage and keep crit results random that way.

On the larger scale, maybe require a 'target attack' maneuver that requires at least one thrust for units attacking eachother inside the same hex if they want to pick a crit? Again, I'm visualizing strafing runs and directed attacks from larger vessels which require maneuver to happen.

If maneuver by thrust expenditure is important, we may want to revisit how much output droppers and warships normally get. I'm thinking the current values may be too low. It's derived from the newtonian fizzix thing, anyway, where over time slow ships can get up to speed. I'm thinking that as powerful as fusion thrusters can be, they should be able to book and dance pretty regularly. Maybe at the very least, double their thrust stats.

[I am Belch II]

If Aerotech rules and ship construction rules ever get redone, I just hope the thousands of ships that I came up with are not all for not, and have to redesign them.

[Maingunnery]

I like Nebfer's idea of tying fuel consumption directly to mass, and think it would mesh well with a reduced strategic thrust rating for a given tonnage of engine (i.e., ships only get the 0.5G per thrust point on the tactical scale to represent throwing extra reaction mass into the engine, while getting something like 0.1G per thrust point, but vastly reduced fuel consumption, on the strategic scale).

Couldn't we then also abstract the fuel mass as part of the engine? Then bigger/faster engines will automatically have more fuel.

[Daemion]

If Aerotech rules and ship construction rules ever get redone, I just hope the thousands of ships that I came up with are not all for not, and have to redesign them.

Keep in mind this looks like a fan project. So, if you don't like what you see, you don't have to use all of it. That said, it's possible it could go that far.

[ColBosch]

Keep in mind this looks like a fan project. So, if you don't like what you see, you don't have to use all of it. That said, it's possible it could go that far.

It will almost certainly end up in having to redesign any previous units.

But yes, this is purely a fan project.

[Daemion]

Okay. The last TRo I have that has warships in it is 3067. I guess the Powers that be decided to wait on anything newer that's larger than a dropship until they had something to work with construction-wise.


Still, at the highest, least granular level, if you're still tracking effects you have a small list of important stats:
- MP
- Accuracy (gunnery and whatever other modifiers to it)
- Evasion (Depending on how you go, this could be tied to MP expenditure. Under Alpha Strike, units get a base evasion based on their MP which equates to target movement mods in Classic BT)
- Weapons (This will just be a damage value for range under an Alpha-Strike style system. However, if weapon types become important, a secondary stat for class might become one extra thing to check against.)
- Heat/Power usage? (If you put in an arbitrary limitation system, as a ship takes damage, its capacity to use everything can also go down. Lucky engine hit? Crew damage means you can't use as much?)
- Role specific items (Carriers that need to deploy fighters and/or droppers will probably want to keep track of whatever allows them to deploy or take on those symbiotic items. edit: Command vessels and ecm ships might lose their capacity to use these items.)
- Irrelevant stuff (Cargo capacity. Jump Drive if you have it. All these things will be taking up space but will have little effect on combat other than crit padding. This stat should probably be hefty for some vessels, next to weapons.)


No need to track crew because it can be logiked that they are tied to whatever stat is effected.

Two questions come to mind for your high-end fleet level:
1)Do you want options for random potential insta-kill? (Next to power usage, I can see wiping out a large enough portion of crew as an instakill. You also the bridge/CnC of a ship.)

2)Do you want the capacity to effect repairs on the fly? (At this level, I actually imagine enough time can be justified that adhoc repairs can actually have an effect before the conclusion of the battle, since we're probably looking at large fleet encounters. I can see a whole set of tactics involved with rotating ships into and out of small pockets of engagement until they can be made functional enough to head back into the fight.)


Some other ideas for this large scale RE: Fighters and Small Craft

Fighter Squadrons should be treated as BT infantry platoons. Each point of damage is simply taking out a plane.
- You might simply want to apply a damage divisor/multiplier based on overall composition, like light fighter squadrons take double damage, standard squadrons take normal damage, heavy squadrons take half damage.
- At the very least, consider a defensive movement option that allows squadrons to force the damage to be randomized. You could make it a standard thing with them, if you want, but I see it as an unnecessary complication that should be by choice.

Attack shuttle squadrons can then be light battle armor squads.

Dropship squadrons could be heavy battle armor squad equivalents - or protomech equivalents.

If you go with the BattleArmor squad approach, this leads to a question: Do you want to strictly track hit-points? Or do you think you can get by with a damage threshold value that has to be overcome before a dropship becomes a casualty? Or a mix of both? My reasoning is at this level, anything could go wrong for a dropper or small craft for it to become irrelevant to the fight, even though it might be salvageable or repairable later. Simply checking to see if it took some sort of potentially lethal effect would keep a player from having to track the stats I listed above if you're treating them as a BattleArmor formation.

At this level, if someone wants to track damage effects for such small craft, they should be playing at a more granular level - which I hope you plan on doing. Let's make this scale-able, like they've been doing with standard BT.

With that in mind, one final question:
How strictly do you want to scale damage from one level to the next? As I see it, it doesn't have to be a strict multiplier by level. At a fleet level engagement, damage can represent something that is completely random at the next granular scale of game. Sure, your warship took some weapon damage. How many of the smaller weapons does that mean was lost? Was the Naval Class weaponry equally effected?

So, the elimination of a ship might not mean its complete and utter destruction. Go to the next level of detail to find out for sure.

If that's the case, we can go so far as to have really divergent damage stats. You have the standard damage which hurts large vessels, and then you can have the 'anti-infantry' attacks for the smaller stuff which allows for more damage against them. (Hence the random damage idea above.)

So, an example would be that All fighter squadrons do 1 standard damage, but get their HP in Anti-Fighter damage. Dropships and small craft would do one damage per vessel, but get a set of Anti-Fighter damage values. And, then warships will have blocks of standard damage and blocks of Anti-Fighter damage.

Bomber squadrons could get a one-shot Missile attack which allows for 1 point of standard damage per remaining fighter/attack shuttle.

Those are some of my ideas. How closely do they match yours?

[Maingunnery]

On WarShips I would abstract the anti-fighter and point defense values into single 360 degree values.

[Lord Cameron]

As I've mentioned in a couple of other threads, I've been kicking around the idea of redesigning BattleTech's space systems from the ground up. I don't feel the current rules sets - from design to combat - work well. I can't blame the developers, as they've been trying to reverse-engineer rules from the earliest days, when FASA published ship statistics without an actual design system in place.

My goals are simple: to produce a design system that is simpler to use and consistent across 'Ship types, and to produce a fun, fast-playing set of combat rules that can handle everything from dogfights to massive fleet engagements.

Are you thinking of expanding the 2-D current rules to include 3D combat?
That's been one of the biggest failings of the combat system IMO, a simple yet dynamic three dimensional system would really make things interesting

[ColBosch]

Are you thinking of expanding the 2-D current rules to include 3D combat?
That's been one of the biggest failings of the combat system IMO, a simple yet dynamic three dimensional system would really make things interesting

No, I am not. I have tried several "simple" 3D systems, and none of them really live up to that word. Most people just can't intuitively envision 3D systems on a 2D map.

[Vition2]

Okay. The last TRo I have that has warships in it is 3067. I guess the Powers that be decided to wait on anything newer that's larger than a dropship until they had something to work with construction-wise.

Just so you're not taken completely unawares, 3075 has a few (four), and the most recently released one is in XTRO: Republic III (just one the Leviathan III, but this is the most recent in either the TRO or XTRO series).

[worktroll]

No, I am not. I have tried several "simple" 3D systems, and none of them really live up to that word. Most people just can't intuitively envision 3D systems on a 2D map.

Totally agreeing here. I've tried a number - the most "intuitive" was BattleFleet Mars, from SPI, which had an XY map and an XZ map, and still caused headaches. I agree that there's an untapped market for realistic 3D vector space games, once holotables are commercially viable.

(I did, some decades ago, come up with a game idea based on combat in close orbit of a black hole, using the old AT1 gravity vector method as a basis. Even in 2D, even orbital dynamics are horribly intuitive. From the playtesting we did back then, combat close around a black hole is ... very, very, nervous.)

[Scotty]

What about a simple "altitude" measurement, as is used by VTOLs in the ground game?  With the obvious exception that the levels could be negative.  It would not affect range (or affect range insignificantly to avoid extra math), but would allow for some more freedom in maneuverability.

What it would do is add a ventral and dorsal location, though.  At least, that's what I'd do.  This would make combat inherently more tactical by adding more arcs for a ship to roll through to present fresh armor, and it would invite different angles of approach to get shots on/from a different location than merely front/broadside for most engagements.

Something simple, though.  Like... if (altitude/range) is 1 or greater, shots may hit the dorsal location and vice versa.  If (altitude/range) is -1 or less, shots may hit the ventral location and vice versa.

[Maingunnery]

I would avoid 3D systems, doing it right would eventually lead to orbital mechanics......

[Scotty]

I would avoid 3D systems, doing it right would eventually lead to orbital mechanics......

Doing it right eventually leads to wherever you're going to stop anyway.  There is no mythical obligation to continue a ruleset to its illogical conclusion.

[worktroll]

And this is why it's important to nail down the "playability vs. realism" values early on. Levs, for example, deliberately went for a 3 rating (1=totally playable, 10=total realism) on that scale - not because of the implausibility of flying battleships, but for producing the ability to have relatively quick games with multiple units per side.

3D automatically adds about 3-4 on that scale, and - in some cases - has pushed games out past a value of 10, IMHO ;)

At this point, the factor seems to be hunting in the range 3 to 6, with no clear concensus.

***

In the interests of transparency, I'm looking for a game which
- works in 2D
- individual JS/WS/DS, squadrons of ASF
- movement speeds in the range 1-5 typically, with room for speedy outliers
- has weapon ranges out to 10 hexes
- allows for varieties of weapons- eg. beam, shell, missile, point defence - with different properties
- has some ship properties - armour & IS, front/flanks/read, with different weapon values allowable on these
- provides some positional advantages (eg. weaker rear arc, initiative bonus to being "in their six", etc)
- has no more than say 6 attack roles per facing for big ships
- has enough chrome - engine hits, command criticals, rolling over, deliberate ramming - to allow the same game to play out differently from time to time

That's my shopping list.

W.

[ColBosch]

The main problem with 3D-on-2D maps is that, because people can't intuitively visualize it, it slows gameplay down. Yes, I will admit that the simulation aspect is diminished by staying at 2D, but it greatly streamlines the actual game. This leaves more room and time for other things.

Worktroll, you mentioned you want no more than 6 rolls per facing? I'd like fewer than that.

[Scotty]

I'm on board with most of that, but I think that:

- 3D, if implemented simply, as described above (not without tweaks if something I mentioned is untenable) would be an excellent addition
- I do not know enough about Warships to rule on how fast they should be moving (is 5/8 average for small things, is it fast as hell, is it slow?), but 1-3/4 for warships and 1-6 for fighters.  I know there's at least one dropship that can manage a 14 max thrust, which would have been a 5 on my scale.
- Weapons have to reach farther than 10 hexes.  Imagine playing BattleTech and everything was limited to AC/20s, SRMs, and Medium Lasers.  No thanks.
- Agreed on weapon types having distinct feels.
- Agreed on ship properties with variance between ship locations.  I submit that Front/(Broad)side/Rear/Ventral/Dorsal should be enough.  Condense big ships to a single side arc, rather than the three side arcs each Warship has now.
- Positional advantage yes.  I think by and large these advantages should be a result of design decisions, rather than an inherent benefit for being in front of/along side a target, with the singular exception that rear arcs should be more vulnerable).
- Number of attack roles must vary by ship and type.  I'm all for a Dropship getting one or two, but a Leviathan III had better be throwing enough dice to make something blush, even at a reduced-from-standard-level scale.
- Critical hits should be possible, but not automatic unless certain conditions are met.  Unlike ground scale BattleTech, I don't think the miraculous occasion of rolling a 12 should be that condition; at the very least, keep multi-dozen-billion c-bill warships from the possibility of being destroyed/crippled by such lucky hits at the start of the game.

That's mine.

EDIT: oh, and one more.  A mechanism (I don't care how) to immediately resolve any stupid "Equal tonnage/BV of fighters would do it better!" arguments before they happen.

EDIT 2: I think I could be salved in the '(not) throwing buckets of dice' category by having an attack roll for each kind of weapon in those arcs (capital energy, capital ballistic, capital missile, standard).  That's probably the bare minimum, and that's only if there's a way to differentiate weapons in such a way that one doesn't become the de-facto standard by being simply more efficient than the others.

[worktroll]

I think we're close to agreement on the dice-rolling. All bays of the same type with the same range should roll as one "hit" - eg. the Leviathan doesn't just damage you, it pokes a hole all the way through.

Splitting fire may exist as some sort of optional rule, reflecting fire control issues? Eg. "Ship may split fire - at 2 targets, each attack is made at 1/3 full strength, round up" or something cheap like that.

W.

[Vition2]

I'll throw my vote in for a 2D system, but perhaps with optional rules that increase the complexity to 3D.  If it hasn't been obvious in this and other posts, I strongly support the base system being pretty basic, but have a multitude of optional rules which increase realism and complexity.

As others are doing it, here's what I'm looking for in the game:
- lasts less than 2 hours for those who are familiar with the rules, optional rules can increase this significantly
- works in 2D, with an option for 3D if that's workable within the system
- movement speeds for WS/DS typically in the 1-8 range with some faster outliers, and ASF almost always being higher, and stations having 0 effective movement.
- weapon ranges out to 12, 16, or 20 hexes and using energy, kinetic, explosive, and point defense as different weapon types
-- energy are the longest ranged direct fire weapons
-- kinetic are the shortest ranged but the highest damage
-- explosive are very heavy munitions that are semi-guided and treated similarly to ASF once they've left the ship (ie. can be targeted in a similar way)
- some ship properties - what worktroll said
- no more than 3 attack rolls per facing for big ship (basically one per weapon type, torpedoes would be additional attack rolls but not really based on facing); options for more attack rolls
- chrome - what worktroll said

[ColBosch]

I'm going to nip this in the bud: 3D is off the table, period.

[worktroll]

Okay, let's do some gedankenexperiment ;) Assume standard movement is equal to AT2 standard thrust MP - so a Black Lion moves 6MP, a Mjolinr pulls 4MP, and a Sovetskii Soyuz 2MP.

- Ignore overthrust for now. If weapons range from (say) 2 for NAC, and (depending on type) 5-10 for beams, what ends up looking broken? What's the fastest WarShip or DropShip out there? If one can move more than 10MP, is this "broken" - remembering that the ship isn't "outrunning" a laserbeam, as much as leaving the targetting/tracking envelope?
- Related question, how fast should missiles go? 6/9/12/+ MP per turn?

- Now as above, but add overthrust. So the Mjolnir can move up to 6MP, the Black Lion 10MP. Assume something like a limited number of "overburns" - eg. 6 per scenario. Given the greater movement rates, do we get bigger issues when the MP approach those range limits?

Short form, how balanced does that feel?

Totally separate point: I'm choosing to limit NAC ranges severely based on "time of flight". However, it is (I think) allowing for other characteristics for NACs:

1) Use for planetary bombardment. Should NACs be better than beams - possibly allowing for nuc or guided warloads?
2) Use against stationary/non-maneuvering targets - NACs should be able to be used against orbiting stations, or the like, at considerable ranges, under conditions (eg firing ship not maneuvering that turn)

Thoughts?

[Daemion]

I never really worried about something being able to move the same distance as or further than the operational range of a weapon. For one, the movement phase will probably be the one that takes up the majority of a turn's in-universe time, suggesting that it's taking far longer to reach that distance than the actual attack. Secondly, I don't view a weapon's effective range as it's actual final range, but merely what is effective against targets that are armored and/or defensively mobile to BattleTech standards making those ranges necessary.

When it comes to movement values, is this merely a reskin of the ground game - where you pay MP to move, and maybe in some instances gain attack or defense bonuses? If so, then the higher MP values make sense.

As to that comment someone made about AC/20s, medium lasers, and SRMs, don't forget that you'll also have machine guns, small lasers of all sorts, and A-Pods and B-Pods of sorts filling in the gaps. ;)

I don't mind the idea of 9 to 12 being the height of range for the high-end fleet game. The only thing that should probably have better range are weapons that effectively become their own space craft (Torpedos/Missiles).

[worktroll]

As I think I said upstream, I like the idea of missiles having a two-turn life - maybe 12MP, and having some negatives to hit on the second turn (diminished fuel load?)

I do confess a fondness for David Weber's Starfire books; while the idea of flushing off scads of externally-mounted missiles has its appeal, though, I'd like to avoid excessive MMS ;)

Thought experiment - here, I'm just playing with existing AT2 stats - not considering the badly-needed construction re-write. But for the sake of argument, let's run a Star League Whirlwind destroyer through the blender. Half a million tons, ho!

Okay, it's 2G/3G, so base MP 4, overthrust 6.
Armour - let's for argument's sake divide by 10. So I get front 5pt, sides (adding fore & aft before division) 6.5, round to 7; aft 4
Internal structure: again, for argument, SI/10 - here 55/10, or 6 points

Weapons: okay, remember all ground-scale weapons become point defence vs. fighters/missiles. Ballistics all get range 1, except for those with extreme range, which get 2. Beams with long get range 6, extreme 10.

So nose has
- four NAC-50s. That's 20 points out to range 1 (excepting against stationary targets, if we swing that way).
- 1 light N-gauss - one 15 becomes 2 points out to range 2.
- 2 LRM-20s, 8 ERLL, 4 SL - that's 110 total BT scale, therefore 11 in point-defence

Flanks have:
- 4 NL45s, which get 27 points damage in AT2 total? So that's a 3 out to range 10
- a light N-Gauss, for 2 out to range 2
- a light NPPC, for 1 (7/10, round up) out to 6
- 4 LPL, 6 SSRM-6, for (112/10) or 11 points point-defence

Rear has:
- three NAC-35s, for 11 points to range 1
- two LRM-20s, for 4 points point-defence

So let's see what this looks like, as a notional AT3 record-sheet:



Now this actually looks like something I could play a game with. There are some things I don't quite get - eg. two NAC-50s do 100 points capital damage (which I reduce to 10), but 4 NL-45s only do 27 damage. That's direct from p134 of TRO:3057R, mind you.

Apart from those massive (if point-blank) NAC batteries, it looks OK. PD damage is given at maximum TW damage/10, not the capital values whicch are /10 and then /10 again. But use of capital weapons against "snub fighters" is not what I'm expecting. I'd allow capital damage to be dosed out in 5-point chunks, while PD can be rolled on the cluster hits table, then maybe rolled out in 3-point hits.

Possible changes as a result of this: let long-range TW weapons have range 1, and increase ballistic ranges from 1-2 to 2-4?