Musings on a hypothetical BattleTech rules reboot/edition

[Aotrs Commander]

Sometimes, I wake up with rules-things and I have to write them down.

In this case, this morning my mind went to what I would do if I was theorhetically going to overhaul BattleTech from scratch (at a level which would involve Changing The Record Sheets, the thing that CGL has sworn to never require) - something that has occasionally occurred to be before but this morning, my semi-awake mind started Doing Numbers, so I had to follow through. It's all hypothetical, since it would require more work than even I am prepared to spend on my hosuerules (and I've changed the damage to standard ACs as below already!)

But having spent, like, four hours or something mucking around with the ideas, if I'm not even going to make use of it myself properly-like, I figured, sod it, might as well spend a few minutes typing a post up and put it on here for the sake of hypothetical debate or something.

Mostly today it was looking over the ballistic weapons (ACs and MGs) and some of the missile weapons which aren't terribly well implemented, in my opinion, and how I would approach fixing them at the grass-roots level if I was, like Doing A Rules Reboot, or like, BattleTech Second Edition or something.

Make of this what you will; hopefully it will provoke some likewise idle thoughts...!


Theorhetical BattleTech RebootTech Changes

All BVs for weapon recalced accordingly to range/damage changes.

Ammunition:
Standardised across the board to 120/ weapons damage (round down) per ton. Half tons of any type of ammo allowed, but note that each half ton of ammo requires a separate critical slot.

Autocannons/MGs:
To make esecially the lighter ACs not completely outclassed by energy weapons:
AC 2, 5 and 10 (including Light, Ultra and LB X ACs) become AC 5, 8 and 11 (ammunition adjusted accordingly). AC 2 and 5 (and derivatives) lose 1 ton of weight and any minimum ranges, with an increase of 3  and 6 hexes to maximum range (arguably this could even be 6 and 9)  and commensurate increases to SR/MR. (Arugably it should be 2 tons, but then it would be more difficult to do a straight swap “old” to “new”, which in most cases would be straight replacement of weapon +1 ton ammo (retaining closer to original ammo counts); possibly to further accommodate back-loading mech designs, AC 5/8s could drop a crit slot.

RACs remain unchanged (aside from the damage increase and ammunition per ton; they’re more more dangerous, but have less ammo.)

Ultra ACs and RACs make two separate attacks if firing twice, else use the cluster table, and if firing 2 or more shots, may jam, which requires an action/piloting check to unjam.

Protomech ACs become deprecated, instead being functionally replaced by standard Clan ACs (5/8/11) ala Clan LRMs (same stats but half weight and half, round down, crit slots (so 1/2/3); conversion of old stats becomes mostly fiddling with half a ton of ammo plus or minus in most cases.

HVACs: Updated to 5/8/11; no longer explode; tonnage of new 2/5s reduced to 7 (consistent with  same tonnage as 1 AC larger) new HVAC /2 uses new AC 2/5 tonnage (5); crit slots changed to AC +1 (they make no sense currently, HVAC 2 is triple tonnage and twice crit slots, HVAC 10 is +2 tons and one LESS crit slot). Ranges changed to double base ACs (of current standard; no minimum; long range specialist weapons should have long range, especially if they are paying extra tonnage for it.) May use specialist ammunition. (Generation of smoke possibly retained, since a somewhat neutral function. Actually worth having now, at least not a non-viable tonnage waste. Will require all units carrying to be revised in this case.

Current Machine Guns get split up into two weapons, which would get picked on a mech-by-mech basis.

AC 2: MG becomes the new AC 2, with current weights (0.5/0.25 ton), but proportionate range characteristics (like real machine guns), perhaps not as much as new Ac 2/5 but still significant. Now only 60 shots a ton and no rapid-fire mode or increased effectiveness against infantry.

(BT’s MG being short range never made any sense even to itself; it’s not how real MGs work and its not even consistent with BT’s own “lighter weapons shoot further.” This also fills a niche that BT desperately needed, a proper light, long-range weapon.)

No required change to existing mechs. MG arrays in this case replaced by half a ton of ammo or an additional AC 2 (or two if Clan).

MG: A different weapon more specifically intended to deal with soft targets (but with much better range bands, say 3 – 4 times what current machine guns are, so closer to the real thing).  (A “shot” from an MG is explictly stated NOT to be a single shot, but a large-rapid fire burst of ten to scores.)

Light MGs become introtech; they weigh 0.5/0.25 tons, but now their specified tonnage includes an inherent 60 rounds (they are considered to deal 0.5 damage for the purposes of ammunition explosions); ie., they do NOT need a ton/half ton of ammo (though they can have it as additional ammo).

These do all the things machine guns currently do to infantry (i.e. D6), but only deal 1 point of damage (or D6 in rapid fire) to other targets (and IS?) but only half damage to (BAR 10+) armour (totalled for a salvo, round up, in 5 point clusters.) However, rapid fire mode now only generates 2 heat instead of D6 (effectively halved like the damage 3.5=>2).

(Light MGs are the new “default” MG.)

A hit to an MG crit slot disables the machine guns, but does NOT cause an ammunition explosion unless the crit slot it hit a second time; essentially, the MGs act as an armoured component (above and beyond an actual armoured component). (This stops MGs from being, even with lower damage per space (60/ton for 2 Light MGs instead of 400/ton for two plus one ton of ammo) being triggered more than the one/half ton single slot than before, in theory balancing it out a bit.)

Medium MGs become 1/0.5 tons (Clan) and take up one crit slot and have 60 inhernet slots/MG (1 damage for shot for ammo explosion). These deal 3D6 to infantry, 2 points of damage (2D6 rapid fire), to other targets but do only half damage to BAR 10+ (but do not have different range); rapid fire is 4 heat (7=>4).

Effectively, Medium MGs are are just a “double fire” version of the light MG, used to fundementally replace the tonnage of an old MG plus half-ton ammo (quarter-ton for clans) in a single unit, which is easier than mounting two light MGs in the same slot or something which is what I started with.

Heavy MGs become 1.5/1 tons and take up one slot and have 60 inhernet slots/MG (1.5 damage for shot for ammo explosion). These deal 3D6 to infantry, 3 points of damage (2D6+2 rapid fire) to other targets but do only half damage to BAR 10+ (but do not have different range); rapid fire is 5 heat (9=>5).

One full/half ton of additional ammo for any type of MG is 120/60 (240/120 for Clan MGs).

Conversion to these types of MG for a BattleMech (or battle armour) is as simple as replacing the MG ammo tonnage with additional MGs or just adding additional MG ammo tonnage. (MGs on non-BattleMech things are now allowed to use rapid-fire, too.)

(Piranhas thus likely lose effectiveness against BattleMechs (but that was a suicidal move anyway), but are less likely to kill themselves (24 heat for 6D6 (5-point clusters) instead of average 42 (12 separate D6 locations.) They remain as effective at killing soft targets, but now do so at greater range.)

MG arrays changed functionality: they now ensure all MGs fired from that array fire on a single attack roll and if they hit, they all hit the same location (i.e., each MG array is treated as a separate weapon and not divided into 5-point clusters).

Light MGs as a new late tech for long-ranged machine guns are deprecated (no longer necessary).

Old short range MG space eliminated entirely (use a small laser) as nonsensical by BT’s own internal standards. The extensive use of rapid fire for a cheap short-range damage boost was sufficiently borderline abusive that lots of rules had to be put in place to stop it being used anyway, so this should mitigate the worst of the really a bit meta-gamey “rapid-fire MG suicide” abuse. MG for anti-armour are now what AC 2 should have been; dedicated anti-infantry weapons are now not great against armour (like they shouldn’t be). LCV-1Vs are now either more of a holy terror on infantry (having now two Medium MGs in each arm and no CT bomb (or four light MGs, though there would be little point by design, since it’s cluster damage and the same range) or two AC 2s for running around at longer ranges picking at mechs; and in neither case does it need to get quite so close where it can be easily murdered…

Missiles:
Will require all units carrying items to be revised in this case.

One Shot missiles changed to be half (round up to nearest half ton) the base launcher. The tonnage for ammo is consider negligible (tonnage for a single shot of even an MRM 40 is not even a half-ton) and is assumed to be subsumed in the weight of the launcher (sans its ammo feeding mechanisms, as it can now just be a simple set of tubes.) This still leaves room for rocket launchers vrs OS IS missles to be viable, if very only pays-your-money-takes-your-choice differences (clan OS are simply strictly better all round), with the differences now more cost (in BV and C-Bills) and the slight differences in range/accuracy etc. i-OS deprecated and unnecessary. Conversion likely fairly straight forward, given new versions are less tonnage/slots allowing more OS weapons to be mounted; units using a lot will require more extensive revisions.

NLRMs entirely changed to be a half-way house between IS and Clam LRMs, with tonnages between them (round up to nearest half-ton so 1.5/4/5.5/7.5) and crit slots as standard IS. (As they stood, they were a laughable weapon considering all they offered was a 3-point drop in minimum range for +50% tonnage and double the crit slots.)

ELRMs Ranges changed to be triple LRM (minimum left (10/21/42/63)); potentially ought to be 2.5 or x 3. Tonnages reduced to +50% IS (so 3,7.5,10.5,15), slots reduced to LRM +1 (so 2/3/4/6). (Long range specialist weapons should be REALLY long range, especially if they are going to be bigger.) Ammo remains set as new standard.

Alternatively, replace ELRMs and NLRMS with new types of specialist munition for LRMs (retain C-Bill costs; NLRMs have no change in ammo (changes on ammo BV and C-Bills alone, unless ¾ or 2/3 ammo/ton is desired (neither is neat, being 18/9/6/4.5 or 16/8/5.33’/4). ELRMs become ½ shots/ton, but have double range plus min 10 (10/14/28/42) and failure to arm below 10 as before.

[AlphaMirage]

Why not make the AC/10 increase be to 12 so you can get a number divisible by 120? Otherwise mostly agree

[Aotrs Commander]

Why not make the AC/10 increase be to 12 so you can get a number divisible by 120? Otherwise mostly agree

Very simply, because either UrbanMechs become headcappers, else you have to add an extra point of armour to all BattleMech heads (since we can't take HBS' option and add 1/10 of a box...!) and increase the damage for Blazers/Bombast lasers to 13 (to keep them being headcappers) and also deprecate stuff like the low-tonnage TSM punch-headcappers.

Ideally, 12 would indeed be the better number, I agree, but it's not without ramifications.

If I was re-doing it all, I might be more inclined to make AC 12s a thing, admittedly, as the solution which is neatest and which has the less impact outside of ACs themselves.  It's definitely a debatable point of elegance verses... Well, being headcapped by an UrbanMech/Centurion et al.

[idea weenie]

How about making a set of Autocannons that have longer range and more damage?

I.e. an AC/2 would have ranges of (0) 3/6/9 and be 2 tons, while and AC/20 would do 20 pts of damage, have ranges of (4) 8/16/24, and be ~30 tons?

Autocannons would be balanced vs energy weapons at ~20 rounds of fire in them, so if you only expect a single & short firefight then Autocannons are the way to go.  But if you expect a longer fight then energy weaponss are the way to go.



Missile Launchers would be set up so larger launchers are more efficient in terms of missiles per ton being launched, but multiple smaller launchers can be fit into more locations and are more resistant vs critical hits.  Here is a rough chart:

Category	Heat	Tons	Criticals
LRM-5	1	1.5	2
LRM-10	2	2.5	3
LRM-15	3	3.5	4
LRM-20	4	4.5	5

I'd want Protomechs to be able to use Batteries, at the expense of endurance.  So a Protomech with a full-size fusion reactor would have the piloting difficulties due to the pilot needing to straddle a fusion reactor, but would also have plenty of endurance.  A Battery-powered Protomech would not have the piloting penalties as the Batteries can be squeezed anywhere convenient, but their endurance is much more limited.  Protomechs would essentially be a transition between Battle armor and Mechs.

You might even have a Mech powered by batteries, but its endurance would be similarly horrible.

[Cannonshop]

Very simply, because either UrbanMechs become headcappers, else you have to add an extra point of armour to all BattleMech heads (since we can't take HBS' option and add 1/10 of a box...!) and increase the damage for Blazers/Bombast lasers to 13 (to keep them being headcappers) and also deprecate stuff like the low-tonnage TSM punch-headcappers.

Ideally, 12 would indeed be the better number, I agree, but it's not without ramifications.

If I was re-doing it all, I might be more inclined to make AC 12s a thing, admittedly, as the solution which is neatest and which has the less impact outside of ACs themselves.  It's definitely a debatable point of elegance verses... Well, being headcapped by an UrbanMech/Centurion et al.

I honestly don't see a problem with Urbies headcapping, it makes up for the waddle maneuvering and makes them more than a joke/meme 'mech.

[Daryk]

Urbies ARE headcappers for Stingers, Wasps, Phoenix Hawks, and Riflemen at least...  8)

[Speedbump]

So here's a fairly big one, what if mech armour value had diminishing returns rather than a hard tonnage cut off? The argument against this is that it makes it extremely difficult to design a mech with pencil and paper without using a calculator, but with MML, SSW, Mech Factory, et al. and smartphones in (all but) every pocket a hypothetical new edition of battletech doesn't necessarily need to worry so much about that. Common wisdom seems to be that to make a good mech you either max or just under max your armour in all cases, but if armour up to your structure was lighter than armour up to twice your structure and more armour beyond that was allowed at steeper costs I think you could make the decision alot less automatic if you were careful.

Edit: The first step of designing a personal edition would be to determine what absolutely must be kept for the game to still be Battletech to you. So for me ancestral mechs are such a key part of the setting that I imediately rebelled at VanVelding's last bullet point below, but I can certainly understand that it isn't important to other people that you be able to pit 26th century mechs against 32nd century mechs. No one expects a historical wargame to cover what happens when a you fire a stone bombard at an interwar tank after all.

[VanVelding]

Making AC2's and 5's good instead of niche, anti-non-mech weapons is good. Integrating machine guns into that paradigm seems reasonable.

I'm not sure about using both multiple attack rolls and the cluster hits table. I'm a fan of The Big Red Die, but Alpha Strike has an optional rule of rolling 1D6 per point damage and only a 4+ has that point of damage hit. You could do something similar with cluster weapons, but on a 3+ instead of 4+.

I like half-tons allowed for all weapon ammo, but fractional accounting includes that. I'd expand fractional accounting to include things like what Speedbump was saying about armor efficiency, structure, 'mech tonnages, non-standard missile rack sizes, etc. But then, no one would be interested in that.

My take on Battletech 2 has been:

• Weapons which get more efficient as they get bigger instead of juggling marginal efficiencies with missile racks and spamming medium lasers. It would also produce appropriately-scaled weapons for superheavy 'mechs, dropships, and mobile structures.
• Margins of success/failure playing a role in hitting faster units for less damage and penetrating armor to push crits. Speeds up games, allows faster units without spending turns completely missing, utilizes the BAR system, and allows better aiming at specific locations, which characters can canonically do in the fiction and which I can do in Mechwarrior.
• Consolidated scanning/targeting/spotting/stealth systems.
• Huge bonuses--no, BIGGER--to damage against non-armored units (basic structures, terrain, infantry).
• If we're going to have construction rules for infantry, protomechs, and battle armor, I'd start power, armor, and weapon scaling at the kg range from the bottom up.
• Consolidated missile/payload/guidance systems so that you don't have MRMs with ammo efficiencies that imply 50% of an LRM warhead is guidance while also declaring there's no way MRMs can carry the same specialty munitions. Plus whatever is up with Deadfire Missiles since allegedly, MRMs are 'missile with no guid--
• Scale equipment and 'mech lists per era waaay back. Sure, older stuff can show up, but in the Civil War era you often gotta use a ****** Garm instead of a Panther or Vindicator.

[Daryk]

Fully committing to the AP vs. BAR system from AToW as the base for damage would go a long way toward addressing many long standing complaints.  Granted, it takes scaling up (WAY up) to get to the TW level, but the improved consistency would shake some of the worst out of the existing system.  It would drastically reduce the damage infantry can do to BAR 10 armor, enough that it might enable simply removing the cluster roll for that.

[Retry]

Very simply, because either UrbanMechs become headcappers, else you have to add an extra point of armour to all BattleMech heads (since we can't take HBS' option and add 1/10 of a box...!) and increase the damage for Blazers/Bombast lasers to 13 (to keep them being headcappers) and also deprecate stuff like the low-tonnage TSM punch-headcappers.

Ideally, 12 would indeed be the better number, I agree, but it's not without ramifications.

If I was re-doing it all, I might be more inclined to make AC 12s a thing, admittedly, as the solution which is neatest and which has the less impact outside of ACs themselves.  It's definitely a debatable point of elegance verses... Well, being headcapped by an UrbanMech/Centurion et al.

Any particular reason that headcapping Urbies are undesirable?  Canon ones already exist (the admittedly kinda crappy AC/20 version, the Arrow IV version is a de facto headcapper with Homing Arrows), and field conversions to headcapping variants is fairly trivial depending on tech year & availability (IS ERPPC-> Clan ERPPC, or IS AC10 -> Clan Gauss as two easy examples).

So unless the easily-accessed headcappers like cERPPCs and Gausses are getting seriously nerfed in this hypothetical reboot, then the AC10/12/11 thing seems to be mainly a compromise of aesthetics: That an AC/10 analogue "shouldn't" be headcap-capable?

As for depreciating TSM Headcappers, those aren't actually viable in the first place outside of Solaris-style fights in a phone-booth sized field (granted, most of the Tabletop games are like that due to time & space & sanity constraints, but still).  Without such restrictions you basically need a permissive opponent to get that close through overlapping fields of fire even at lance-level, much less company-scale and above.  Dramatically improving the performance of the Autocannon series definitely makes any TSM Puncher's job even more difficult than before.

(Also, is there an 11 column on the Cluster Hit table for the LB-X variant?)

[DevianID]

Battletech math/numbers are near and dear to my heart.  So I enjoy looking at threads like these.

Off the bat, these arnt core rule changes but variant weapons.  The theme seems to be a stated goal to balance these weapons by tonnage.  I won't get into why balancing by tonnage is bad here, other then to say that you can't balance by both tonnage and BV.

HBS a.c. values made sense in that game because they balance by tonnage in that game.  Further, LOS is 12 hexes and maps also block a lot of LOS.  So you need spotters or a unit losing a turn to see further with sensors, and you only get 4 units.  So 6 tons on an ac that can't shoot far without help needed to do more damage in that game.  They also use % instead of the 2d6 curve so having better short range brackets basically change nothing on the to hit.  Anyway it didn't sound like you were changing any rules like this so the rebalanced ACs you suggest arnt needed.  The ac2 and ac5 honestly are fine weapons in a BV balanced game.  But if you hate them you hate them.

Same with the other missile launchers.  OS launchers suck, I agree.  But trying to fix them is a lost cause, as I think 3 units use them?  I don't think you will ever fix the OS quickdraw as its numerous flaws are kinda a defining feature.  Devoting energy to this dead end weapon isn't super productive.

Anyway, my tl;Dr is that instead of a retcon so far, these look more like "ilclan ac5" or "ilclan ac12".  Strict upgrades of old tech for upgrades sake.  Otherwise you just made the jagermech deal 26+ instead of 14 damage for nothing, meaning the flavor of the original is lost.  If you are diminishing the flavor of all the old units there needs to be a reason, at least in my opinion.  Unless these are ilclan or RISC weapons meant for a new timeline with new units.  If so that's much more palatable.

[DevianID]

For some constructive, BV balanced solutions:

Rapid fire and RAC acs dont get compensated for jam chance.  So a rule change can fix this instead of changing the BV or tonnage.  For ultra ACs, if you decide to keep the jam rule, then -1 bonus to hit but a -1 on the cluster roll (like apollo) when combined with the jam chance over 5 turns is mathematically the same as just removing the jam rule.

For RACs firing 6 shots they get more bonus to hit as befits the penalty of jamming on a 4 when shooting 6 shots.  Over 5 turns the RAC firing 6 shells at a time has a 40 percent chance to shoot without jamming.  So -2 to hit (when shooting all 6 shots) with no cluster penalty puts a 6 shot RAC back to its full BV more or less.  Or, remove the jam rule.  Either way for those weapons a special rule is cutting into the BV balance so a bonus rule or removing the negative will fix it.

For machine guns, I like using expanded extreme and LOS range band rules.  These rules allow weapons to shoot farther at the cost of damage.  So the machine gun gets "fixed" with these rules.  My proposed change was instead of no LOS range if your ballistic weapon has less then 13 range, you just take a further damage penalty.  So instead of a ballistic weapon doing half damage at LOS range, it does 1/3rd damage like a pulse weapon if it has less the 13 hexes of long range.  Since 2 /3 rounded down is less then 1, this means a machine gun can't hurt a mech at LOS ranges, but it still does up to 4 damage to infantry!  A heavy machine gun at 3 damage does 1 damage at LOS ranges and up to 6 damage to infantry at LOS ranges, making it quite useful after all.  Plus, modifying how LOS range works doesnt impact weapon BV or tonnage, all it does is fix both the issue of mguns only going 90 meters, and mguns hurting mechs. 

[Daryk]

The biggest disconnect in the jamming rules is that you can smack a RAC an clear it but an Ultra needs a full tech team after the battle.

[Aotrs Commander]

Any particular reason that headcapping Urbies are undesirable?  Canon ones already exist (the admittedly kinda crappy AC/20 version, the Arrow IV version is a de facto headcapper with Homing Arrows), and field conversions to headcapping variants is fairly trivial depending on tech year & availability (IS ERPPC-> Clan ERPPC, or IS AC10 -> Clan Gauss as two easy examples).

You can argue either way, really, but I was more going off what I had adapted from my houserules there ala HBS, where they had added that effective extra 0.1 hit box to prevent it, so I figured there must have been some logic.

(Also, is there an 11 column on the Cluster Hit table for the LB-X variant?)

I see 2-30 and 40 on my cluster hits table (which I cribbed out of probably TacOps, because I know I didn't make it up myself, I'd check, but it's quicker to just open my word doc than dind the PDF). Even if there wasn't, you'd just make one.

(It's not been a problem in my house rules because I flat changed all 1-clusters to make them have to be in twos because I simply can't be arsed to roll that many dice, sod the crit-seeking mechanic. Actually, heresy, I flat don't agree with RNG-favouring-based mechanics like that period, but that was an arguement that I washn't got to makie other than this aside, since I am apparently the only person in the world that doesn't actually like RNG.)

So here's a fairly big one, what if mech armour value had diminishing returns rather than a hard tonnage cut off? The argument against this is that it makes it extremely difficult to design a mech with pencil and paper without using a calculator, but with MML, SSW, Mech Factory, et al. and smartphones in (all but) every pocket a hypothetical new edition of battletech doesn't necessarily need to worry so much about that. Common wisdom seems to be that to make a good mech you either max or just under max your armour in all cases, but if armour up to your structure was lighter than armour up to twice your structure and more armour beyond that was allowed at steeper costs I think you could make the decision alot less automatic if you were careful.

Edit: The first step of designing a personal edition would be to determine what absolutely must be kept for the game to still be Battletech to you. So for me ancestral mechs are such a key part of the setting that I imediately rebelled at VanVelding's last bullet point below, but I can certainly understand that it isn't important to other people that you be able to pit 26th century mechs against 32nd century mechs. No one expects a historical wargame to cover what happens when a you fire a stone bombard at an interwar tank after all.

Missile Launchers would be set up so larger launchers are more efficient in terms of missiles per ton being launched, but multiple smaller launchers can be fit into more locations and are more resistant vs critical hits.

To both: it would depend ho much you want to mjake it diverge totally from what currently exists. I would (and almost said) be inclined to scrap the current engine weigh system totally and create something smoother and more granular. (I don't know if there was ever any maths to how the engine weights were decided, but it's not very evident and I would lay strong odds that there wasn't a formula.)

But that level of change would mean that you would almost certainly not be able to build mechs in the new system the same as the old one, so you run a risk of mechs just not being able to be equipped with what they used to at all, instead of being as close as you can.

I'm currently playing Aurora 4X for the first time, and the problem with that level of increasing coplexity is that it starts to only appeal to the really sad people like me.

I would say, incidently, EXACTLY the same about my own starships rules Accelerate and Attack! Aeons of War. The ship design system was predicated on being able to do it by hand (I mean, I ended up making a spreadsheet, but I have 1500 starships (because I take starships Seriously, not like the casual game like BT where I only have 310 mechs ad 20 pages of houserules...) If I were to build AccAtt for a non-table top environment, I would entirely change the granularity, and even the way it was lensed. As it is, like BT, you pick a "tonnage" and then stuff takes up a proportion of that (like engines). But it would be better, I think, to - like Auroa 4X - have it so the "tonnage" of the ship depends on what you put on it, not what you "spend" out of an allocated "allotement." (And stuff like Compact Technology, which is "half 'tonnage'" would be made much more granular. But there's a limit to what you can do on the table top where people have to mark record sheets and do the maths. You would get better results out of both BT and AccAtt if everything had ten times the hit points, because you would have a lot more granularity... But BT takes long enough as it is to mark the hit boxes off.

So it would be a case of You Could, But Would You Want To?

There is, after all, a big difference between front-end changes which change the context (like replacing the round sequence) and changing some weapons (requiring some fiddling) on existing models, and in having to completely re-design thousands of mechs from scratch. (Which is, of course, why reasonably CGL have their stance on Don't Change Anything That will Change The Record Sheets.)

Battletech math/numbers are near and dear to my heart.  So I enjoy looking at threads like these.

Off the bat, these arnt core rule changes but variant weapons. 

I mean, I believe you have seen what I have done to the round sequence (and the horribly murder on the 2D6 probabilites because I personally think multiple-die-bell-curves-with-linear-flat-modifiers is not good maths) in the Bleakbane Ruins BattleTech thread for that sort of see-change compared to what I wrote yesterday.

I don't play on mapsheets, so there is always a lot more room for long-range weapons - and they serve a purpose in covering gaps. (Which is what real fixed-line  machine guns do, insidently.)

The other ground game I play (Manouvre Group, from which BRBT liberally steals, for the rest of the audience) is explictly intended as a real-world tactics simulator and one of the things it has taught me is to look around me at the real world and notice how easy it is to hide a tank in the real world. By the same token, it EXTREMELY difficult to find a place where you could potentially hide a 12m tall BattleMech; on the map scale BT it's even more implausible. This problem is exascerbated by BattleTech's fundamentally laughable ranges. (That they had to bend over backwards to lampshade the ranges for the parody World War 2 TRO really illustrates this.) A range of 63 BT hexes is short, only 1890m. Now, you can argue that most tank battles FUNCTIONALLY happen over about 1500 yards or so... But, as stated, a tank at little more than 3 metres to the top of its machine gun is a lot easier to break LOS than something three times as tall. (The excuse that Stuff Is Just Bigger in BT is really just that - and excuse to support the genre convention. And I'm only prepared to meet that so far.)

Actually, if there are no mapsheets with open spaces that suggests that the mapsheet themselves may be a problem, in that they'e too RELATIVELY small for the granularity of the units. You see this with competition ancients - armies which take up the entire breadth of the board and thus negate all maneouvre. To get a game that properly is about maneouver, you need a) a large board relative to unit count and b) more than the traditional "unit moves 6" a turn" that all too many wargames do. BT is WAY better than than most. And, let me, because I'm sounding very negative here, re-iterate that BT is heads-and-away far above most of the competion as a rules set; I can't think of any other game than Manouvre Group which actually HAS rules for dead ground). But it is, in my opinion, to paraphrase a famous mechanoids scholar, not quite more better enough.

Come to that, never mind the board-share proportions of range (which in BT are small enough that I had to double the scale to 2" to 30m and have lots more movement to start to ge anything like real tactics), the actual range scale of current BTs weapons stretches my credulity almost to breaking point. (No, that it is giant stompy robots doesn't matter. I made my own stuff with literal magical space liches which still plays really quite hard, so that's not an excuse that flies with me.) 630m (LRM range) is, granted, more than the usual effective range of a rifle team (subject to some debate). Machine guns have ranges of over a kilometre. BT's 90m is not the very worst I've ever seen, since I did play D&D 4E once, where the range of a bow was limited to about, what a hundred feet Maybe two? But it's close.

But frankly, if I was in a position to do so, I'd be inclined to scrap the current range scale entirely and factor them up by at least four or five and the ground scale to match. I shouldn't firing at 6mm over ranges shorter on the board (and in terms of "real" units than my armies at twice that size do.

The theme seems to be a stated goal to balance these weapons by tonnage.  I won't get into why balancing by tonnage is bad here, other then to say that you can't balance by both tonnage and BV.

Except that by it snature BattleTech pretty much explictly excludes having a Swarm of Locusts or something (Savanna Masters?) due to play time and that it has basically pretty much rigidly defined unit structures. (You can't even say that those ave the excuse of being like real-world armour platoon sizes, because then it would three threes and fours, not fours to sevens...)

It also does't chance the fact BV is a metagame construct - and in a game like BattleTech also even less able to handle the problems, even as complex as it is than it is in the aforementioned AccAtt which being in space has little terrain to complerely obivate any kind of balance as it doesn't factor into it. Having spent literally a decade and a half arsing about with AccAtt's PV system in the much easier environment... You just can't rely on one factor to do the veay lifting. AccAtt's PV gets away with it a bit more because AccAtt has slightly less moving parts (far less weapons, since it abstracts and expects you to flavour yourself and no really tech "gimmicks"), but ultimately, that game is decided on how good a player you are. (Manouvre Group doesn't even make a pretense of having a PV balancing system.)

The ac2 and ac5 honestly are fine weapons in a BV balanced game. 

The legions of threads of house-rules fixes, not to mention the analysis of many players outside it, even confined to just canon rules, indicates that they are, generally, not.

The ac2 and ac5 honestly are fine weapons in a BV balanced game.  Same with the other missile launchers.  OS launchers suck, I agree.  But trying to fix them is a lost cause, as I think 3 units use them?  I don't think you will ever fix the OS quickdraw as its numerous flaws are kinda a defining feature.  Devoting energy to this dead end weapon isn't super productive.

This entire thread isn't super productive.

But? I've already made the AC damages changes to my own houserules (If I'd have though about it at the time, I might have done the tonnage/ammo ones as well, but I didn't until yesterday). Which yes, meant going through all the 1682 mech variants in HeavyMetalPro pertaining to the mechs I personally own to change them over (and also to make -2 variants of everything which has a rear-firing gun because its very notable that literally none of the computer games use them, because I suspect the truth is they actually WOULSN'T work, but that's another story...) (HMP because at the moment, as far as i'm aware, I can't add custom weapons to eithe rof the other two options and I'm not modder enough to faff with things outside of maybe Notepad files.)

Hell, my D&D rules are currently a 3.5/Pathfinder 1 hybrid that at 1500+ pages functional its own edition.

If I hadn't fundamentally reached the limitations of HMP, if I could be arsed, I probably WOULD consider implementing all these changes. (I mean, most of the time, now, I literally don't have anythng better to do. Kludging mech variants from MML to HMP killed a far bit of time over lockdown, which for me has never really ended.)

Basically, if I don't like something, I change it, ultimately. I can look you in the eye and say sincerly since I started gaming in 1990, there has NEVER been a single wargame or roleplaying system I have ever played in anger that has no had moderate to severe houserules, for HeroQuest (that started it), through Rolemaster and AD&D, D&D 3.0/3.5/PF1, Warhammer FRPG to Full Thrust, De Bellis Multitudinis and to BattleTech. (Actually, the MORE I like a system, the more likely it is to get a severe going over, see D&D 3.Aotrs and/or Rolemaster...!) Hell, even AccAtt, which I wrote myself, has some houserules...

Anyway, my tl;Dr is that instead of a retcon so far, these look more like "ilclan ac5" or "ilclan ac12".  Strict upgrades of old tech for upgrades sake.  Otherwise you just made the jagermech deal 26+ instead of 14 damage for nothing, meaning the flavor of the original is lost.  If you are diminishing the flavor of all the old units there needs to be a reason, at least in my opinion.  Unless these are ilclan or RISC weapons meant for a new timeline with new units.  If so that's much more palatable.

I have no loyalty to bad mechanics.

Flavour doesn't matter if its just an excuse for bad mechanics. I haven't touched AD&D since 2000 because AD&D was, frankly, a really crap set of mechanical rules. I won't dismiess its historical impact, but by the same token I'm not playing Pong or driving the original Ford (when forced to drive). I don't care if people defend it and say they had fun with it; you can have fun with almost anything (I didn't have rules at all when playingg with my toys), but that doesn't make it a GOOD or desirable system. Nor just because it was there at the start doesn't make it worth preserving for anything other than historical interest, and rules mechanics don't even need that unless the Rules Police come around to confiscates people's stuff.

AC 2 and 5 and MGs are just bad weapons crap rules design. They always have been. The flavour of the JagerMech and the BlackJack (or I dunno, the Malice) being crap becuase the AC design was frankly dreadful is not flavour worth saving; the ACs make no sense really even in-universe, because they're just that bad in comparison to the other options. They are light weapons you can't put on light units.

• Huge bonuses--no, BIGGER--to damage against non-armored units (basic structures, terrain, infantry).
• If we're going to have construction rules for infantry, protomechs, and battle armor, I'd start power, armor, and weapon scaling at the kg range from the bottom up.

I would completely revise infantry. For a start, I would, as been noted before, re-contextualise the existing stat blocks so that 1 man =/= 1 hit point, so that a 28-man platoon becomes a 7 man platoon and that at 0 hit points, the unit is not dead, just combat ineffective. (Again, this is stealing a lot from MG, but BT doesn't even have the excuse than a lot of people at larger scales like to make about actively wanting to take the dead figures off.) I'd also make them a LOT more dangerous, because even BattleMechs ought ot be worried about walking around a city unsupported. But that mandates actively having to have units in play where you don't see the models until they Do Things.

(Sidenote: I say this because some people have objections to hidden units that are not predicated on the complexity of any rules, but because they mean they don't put their figures on the table. The MG author encountered one of those, who said "hidden unit rules don't work," to which he said "they do, we use them all the time," to which the reply was - slightly staggeringly "they do't work because that means my models aren't on the table!" So, um, yeah. That is a thing that happened.)

• Scale equipment and 'mech lists per era waaay back. Sure, older stuff can show up, but in the Civil War era you often gotta use a ****** Garm instead of a Panther or Vindicator.

The problem with that is a restriction of which of my toys I can play with. I want to be able to play with whatever of my toys I want when I actually get the chance to play with them at all.



Right, wow, I've really rambled on (to the pont I've no even had breakfast), so I ought to stop there and actually do something useful with the rest of the day, like hoover the house and then play Aurora 4X and/or MechWarrior 5...

[Cannonshop]

The biggest disconnect in the jamming rules is that you can smack a RAC an clear it but an Ultra needs a full tech team after the battle.

which was designed first?  Here's what I see: the RAC was someone trying to solve the "gotta take it apart to clear the jam" problem, and stumbling on the "variable speeds to fire" solution.  The addendum of "Rotary" is because of open architecture and heavier components required vs. an Ultra, which in turn also explains why they cut the barrels shorter (and thus, reduced the range) to get it back down to a weight that is practical.

(Which also handles explaining why you can't apply the same fix to the Ultra series, as the RAC is a redesign that ends up needing a much heavier breech assembly to work.)

[DevianID]

On the point of ac2s and 5s being unliked, you are right.  Since they have bad damage to tonnage balance people don't like them.  But the issue is we dont, and shouldn't, balance based in tonnage.  HBS has an artificial 400 ton 4 unit meta.  It's a great game but its not the board game.   We have a case here where people THINK the ac2 is too weak but, when playing bv, those people are just wrong.  Using that flawed logic, we must raise all weapons to clan standards, and all weapons would have exactly equal damageXrange/tonnage.  However, thanks to BV, we can have the wonderful variety of asymmetric weapons and units.

Your counter point though.  If we don't balance by tonnage, we have unit count creep issues.  These arnt compatible though.  You rightly point out that savanah masters and locust swarms are a problem for game play reasons, but TONNAGE isn't the issue there.  It's unit count.  If the ac2 does 20 or 8 or 5 damage instead of 2 that rebalance doesn't impact the savanah swarm in any way.  Different problems, different solutions.  Reasonable unit counts, reasonable gameplay sizes, reasonable time needed to play a game.  If you play 4v4 on 30 mapsheets, you have an unreasonable setup regardless of the rules.  Likewise if one person has 30 units to the other with 4, thats unreasonable.  All solvable and having nothing to do with how much damage an ac2 does.

For ac2s using the actual battle value balance system, the formula indicates the ac2 is a GOOD gun.  So what if a 60 ton weapon carrier gets only 5 of them, the gun is properly balanced in the BV currency.  If you want the 60 ton carrier to do more damage, but cost more, give it LRMs.  If you want it to do even more damage and cost even more BV, give it clan tech.  Battletech could no longer balance a weapon by tonnage as soon as new weapons came out.  The asymmetric elite but few versus poor but many has been baked into the system forever now.  It's a feature, and a valuable one.

As for mguns and range, at range the mgun is an area effect anti infantry weapon that creates a beaten zone.  Infantry is not well handled at btechs scale.  I suggested the expanded LOS range which should fix all the mgun issues you have, as it lets you engage any infantry you find with a mgun but due to rounding you can't hurt mech targets at that range.  But range in btech is not nearly that off as you think.  Using maneuver group as an example, imagine if the abrams tank in maneuver group could change speed for free without an order as much as it wanted.  In battletech, as depicted by the scale and math, units are blisteringly agile.  Move, stop, reverse multiple times in the same action agile.  Locusts pull 11+gs.  That's a quirk of battletech movement.  Now that may not be how you had seen things, but I hope that helps reframe the reference between maneuver group and btech.

[Daryk]

4x4 on 30 map sheets sounds about right for a LAM vs. LAM fight...  ^-^

As for the Ultras Cannonshop, as reasonable an explanation as that is, it doesn't fix the unreasonableness of a weapon system that wouldn't make it off the test bench.  1-in-36 failure requiring non-battlefield maintenance is just nonsensical, and always has been.

[Retry]

BV is essentially calculated as the sum of Defensive BV & Offensive BV, plus other miscellaneous factors that may or may not actually make sense as part of a unit's "battle value" (ex: unit weight).  This is opposed to a presumably more logical method of calculating it as the product of the two values, as you usually need some of both for viable front-line units outside of very specific roles (hidden-unit ambushers)

A lazy example is to take the AC/2 carrier, BV 403 (though this example should be applicable to most single-weapon systems) and remove all but 1 AC/2, while keeping everything else the same (everything, including weight.  So yes, there will be 24 empty, unallocated tons.).  Call it the AC/2 Lite.  Effective BV: 255.

A naïve analysis of BV would suggest that the 5 AC/2 Carriers (BV 2015) are about evenly matched with 8 of these "AC/2 Lite Carriers" (2040), and possibly even marginally biased in favour of the Lites.  In actuality, the AC/2 Carriers win handily, primarily because it's just better balanced in capabilities (which is to say, actually useful firepower for this engagement), which leads to the "Lite" being effectively over-valued in comparison.

What's this have to do with AC/2s and /5s?  Since some balance is clearly necessary to make an X BV unit actually have the value of an X BV unit, you want to be able to efficiently load in some firepower to achieve such balance.  AC/2s (and to some extent AC/5s) are terrible at this: They cost a lot of weight to put little capability on the field (and by extension, little offensive value needed to "balance" the unit).  Just like the example of the 5x AC/2 Carriers vs the 8x "Lite" carriers, substituting those heavy, bulky, and weight-inefficient weapons can easily lead to better balanced and more value out of your BV.

You can't (usually) replace AC/2s & AC/5s with alternative weapons and equipment and end up with an equal or lower BV.  You can consistently replace AC/2s & AC/5s with alternatives (and often more armor in the case of 3025 Introtech models) and end up with a 'Mech that, with a Lance of them, will consistently defeat an equal BV of autocannon toting Battlemechs despite being nominally "equally matched" according to BV.

Also, I reject this line of reasoning in general:

We have a case here where people THINK the ac2 is too weak but, when playing bv, those people are just wrong.  Using that flawed logic, we must raise all weapons to clan standards, and all weapons would have exactly equal damageXrange/tonnage.  However, thanks to BV, we can have the wonderful variety of asymmetric weapons and units.

...

For ac2s using the actual battle value balance system, the formula indicates the ac2 is a GOOD gun.

This seems like putting the cart before the horse.  Weapons have a performance envelope with respect to damage, accuracy, range, weight and size, and other factors.  Then and only then does BV assign a vague "Battle Value" number to roughly estimate battlefield effectiveness.  BV is a rough estimate for us out-of-universe people to fiddle with, rather than something that actually exists within the Battletech setting (perhaps as part of a simulation or in-universe wargame for military leadership to use?), while an in-universe Logistician is concerned with less abstract and more terrestrial concerns such as warship & Jumpship availability, Dropship availability, 'Mech bay capacity, Mechwarrior & Technical crew training, overall cargo capacity, consumable needs, costs & budgets, etc.

Basically, BV cannot be credited for the current in-universe variety of weaponry and equipment.

I suggested the expanded LOS range which should fix all the mgun issues you have

I vaguely recall the Expanded LOS range rules, but I believe there's a minimum range a weapon have to be able to reach by default before a weapon is actually permitted to use LoS range brackets.  Something like Small Lasers and MGs can't make use of it, though long-ranged weapons like PPCs and AC/2s can.

[DevianID]

Retry, a units weight is part of the offensive calc due to the damage it can do in physicals.  You could get a more accurate tonnage to physical damage calculation but for a 60 ton tank that adds half its tonnage as offensive BV, versus a custom charge weapon built in the BV formula that does 24 damage at 1 hex range which the formula says is 26 BV, plus unit displacement as a bonus.  So 60/2 BV I think is 'close enough' to 26 in this case as it is further multiplied by speed factor, so a faster tank would pay more for its 'melee'.  Tonnage also helps in the passive damage you do back to things hitting you with some melee attacks.  So tonnage/physicals of some kind belongs in the BV formula.

On the topic of BV being a sum versus a product.  It has to be a sum.  A product means that unbalanced units get a free discount, which is the unintended consequence that ruins the 'offense x defense' idea.  With a sum, if you have X defense, you pay for x defense equal to anything else.  Since their is value of existing in battletech even without guns it is important things pay fairly for defense.  Same thing with offense, in battletech things can attack without the enemy being able to interact first, either from hidden units or just hiding behind a hill that block LOS until you get to shoot.  But with product based BV if you have 50% of the weapon or defense, your WHOLE unit is 50% less.  So instead of 1 awesome with 4 PPCS and 240 armor, by taking an awesome with just 2 PPCs, you can 2 two awesomes with 4 TOTAL ppcs, but 480 total armor.

Finally, for LOS ranges, yes normally you need 13 hexes of range for it.  But not so for older versions.  So I suggest allowing all weapons LOS range, but penalize them further if they dont hit the 13 hex threshold.  So 33% instead of 50% LOS damage for a machine gun.

[VanVelding]

The problem with that is a restriction of which of my toys I can play with. I want to be able to play with whatever of my toys I want when I actually get the chance to play with them at all.

Yeah, the backwards compatibility is key to Battletech and there don't need to be any new barriers for older players to hit up newer eras. But this game is very pro-proxy.

And if a suite of 'mechs from TRO:3025 can see you through every era--and it's good that they can--then what's the point of my toys from TRO: 3060? We get all these cool new units and then, one era later, they're thrown on the pyre for a new Quickdraw variant.

[Aotrs Commander]

Yeah, the backwards compatibility is key to Battletech and there don't need to be any new barriers for older players to hit up newer eras. But this game is very pro-proxy.

And if a suite of 'mechs from TRO:3025 can see you through every era--and it's good that they can--then what's the point of my toys from TRO: 3060? We get all these cool new units and then, one era later, they're thrown on the pyre for a new Quickdraw variant.

That is the Generation 1 Pokémon Problem, granted.

I think it's just exacerbared at the moment, though, in IlClan simply BECAUSE the new batch of models are going back to introtech era. But given the runaway success of the plastic, I can't see CGL stopping after the Mercs kickstarter (frankly, if I were them, I'd be rubbing my hands at the idea of product for year to come), so I suspect we will see a resurgance of later mechs as time goes on.

[Retry]

Retry, a units weight is part of the offensive calc due to the damage it can do in physicals.  You could get a more accurate tonnage to physical damage calculation but for a 60 ton tank that adds half its tonnage as offensive BV, versus a custom charge weapon built in the BV formula that does 24 damage at 1 hex range which the formula says is 26 BV, plus unit displacement as a bonus.  So 60/2 BV I think is 'close enough' to 26 in this case as it is further multiplied by speed factor, so a faster tank would pay more for its 'melee'.  Tonnage also helps in the passive damage you do back to things hitting you with some melee attacks.  So tonnage/physicals of some kind belongs in the BV formula.

The number of times I've seen a vehicle attempt a Charge attack can be counted on one hand.  The number of times that move ended up being more beneficial than maneuvering and using other weapon systems instead of charging is 0.  In fact, the number of times the vehicle attempting the charge ended up being detrimental to the charger's side is nearly equal to the number of times I've seen a vehicle attempt a Charge attack.  An "option" that's strictly inferior to whatever options you already have is not something that should be accounted for IMO.

But more importantly, the weight factor is also included for units that cannot make charges or other physical attacks at all, such as VTOLs, so that clearly cannot be the main reason for its incorporation.

Finally, for LOS ranges, yes normally you need 13 hexes of range for it.  But not so for older versions.  So I suggest allowing all weapons LOS range, but penalize them further if they dont hit the 13 hex threshold.  So 33% instead of 50% LOS damage for a machine gun.

So, it's a house rule of a Tac Ops option.  All right.

On the topic of BV being a sum versus a product.  It has to be a sum. -snip-

This is wrong.

I know this is wrong because I have years of experience playing BT with Product-based unit BV.  My old group started using it a while back (possibly around the time when Megamek added an unofficial one as an option?  Actually, that may be why we started using it.).  The consensus was unanimous that Product-based BV resulted in a consistently better estimate of combat value relative to other forces, and as a consequence we basically dropped off the original sum-based original calculation method with the exception of teaching newbies or playing with someone else who specifically didn't want that option on (and in that case it was because they didn't want any alternative rules on whatsoever, and usually 3025-level tech only too).

[Daryk]

I can only say I'm glad to hear there's at least one group out there that found BV useful.  I'll live with it not being useful to me.

[Retry]

I have to make a minor correction to myself: The method in question is called the geometric mean, so a bit different than just a raw multiplication factor to Offensive & Defensive factors.

[DevianID]

Assuming its the geometric mean, not the multiplier as previously mentioned, its a little better by virtue of being closer to normal Sum.  However you still make designs which stack either defense or offense get a discount.  You make 'bad' designs like the charger (800 defense 170 offense, GM is 270+ cheaper) cheaper, but you also make designs like the hellstar cheaper (1.9k offense 1.1k defense,  GM is 100+bv cheaper).  Balanced offense/defense designs (a stock warhammer is pretty even split at 678/620, GM is 2 points cheaper) designs pay almost the same cost.  So youre discounting cheap armor chargers and uber shooty hellstars compared to balanced designs... thats not good to me.  Your experience is useful, but math is math.  We CAN use your experience with specific units you have found that work with geometric mean that outweigh the math ADVANTAGE geometric mean provides to hellstars.  That requires you give specific examples of forces in both systems you have personally played with so we can compare the math to see if the solution helped or hurt.

It IS better then the straight product... that math is REALLY bad and im glad you corrected that part LOL.

For tonnage BV, charging hovercraft was pretty common back in the day and often seen as too powerful.  You also, as I mentioned, still use your tonnage to deal damage back to things when colliding with them.  Vtols ABSOLUTELY smash into stuff slipping around.  (EDIT: If you are saying that vehicles should pay something for potential physical damage, but you think tonnage/2 is too high (so 15 BV on a 30 ton vtol) then what value do you think is fair?  Or are you saying vehicles should pay nothing for any potential physical damage they can do?)

As for the cheeky comment about my suggested LOS rule... Yeah I suggested a different house rule to the house rule weapon changes AOTRS suggested... my rule makes mguns have the long range he was looking for without dealing damage to mechs from cross map with a piranha.  I honestly think it is a solution that would work for him based on what he was saying.  If you have another, different suggestion for how to house rule machine guns, Im sure AOTRS would appreciate it more then taking a dig at me.

[Retry]

Assuming its the geometric mean, not the multiplier as previously mentioned, its a little better by virtue of being closer to normal Sum.  However you still make designs which stack either defense or offense get a discount.  You make 'bad' designs like the charger (800 defense 170 offense, GM is 270+ cheaper) cheaper, but you also make designs like the hellstar cheaper (1.9k offense 1.1k defense,  GM is 100+bv cheaper).  Balanced offense/defense designs (a stock warhammer is pretty even split at 678/620, GM is 2 points cheaper) designs pay almost the same cost.  So youre discounting cheap armor chargers and uber shooty hellstars compared to balanced designs... thats not good to me.

100 BV off a 3,100 BV is a relatively small discount of ~3%, and so Battlemechs (& other vehicles) that get discounted equal or greater than ~3% (which is most of them IIRC) are either no worse against Hellstars or relatively better equipped to fight them as that extra BV discount allows for more or better units on the field (assuming direct BV balancing).

Hellstars, specifically, also benefit from being one of the very few canonical designs that are nearly heat-neutral, which helps keep their BV at an optimal level.  Overheating weapon BVs are overvalued by the formula, counting a good chunk of their on-paper BV for weapons they can't actually use.  Mainly impacts the more "flavourful" IS designs, but I think the objectively worst example is the Clan Nova Prime, at 2663 BV with 12 ER Medium Lasers and only 7 sustainable.  Geometric BV doesn't really address that part, unfortunately.  The best way to get most 'Mechs more competitive with those is by increasing the overheat BV penalty (and thus reducing the effective BV of nearly everything except Hellstars).

Your experience is useful, but math is math.  We CAN use your experience with specific units you have found that work with geometric mean that outweigh the math ADVANTAGE geometric mean provides to hellstars.  That requires you give specific examples of forces in both systems you have personally played with so we can compare the math to see if the solution helped or hurt.

I see a few 'Mechs with a few BVs changes near their name, and the Battlemaster example (which due to my own error needs to be rechecked via the geometric mean method).  Notably haven't seen any sort of math or other explanation on why the current summation method is better than the geometric mean method.

The theory at its most abstract is simple.  A 'Mech (or other units for that matter) is a weapon system that combines protection and firepower (well and speed, but that's accounted for in both sides of the equation in BV by default).  A 'Mech with 10 "units" of firepower and 5 "units" of protection has a theoretically devastating punch, but it's pointless because it won't live long enough to use it.  A 'Mech with 2 "units" of firepower and 25 "units" of protection is quite the brick, but just doesn't have the threat to shape the field and will be targeted and destroyed last because of it.  A 'Mech with 6 "units" of firepower and 15 "units" of protection, a "well balanced" unit, is well equipped to shape the battle because it has both enough firepower to be threatening and enough protection to not be trivially dispatched.  2 Well-Balanced 'Mechs thus have an effective capability worth more than a force 1 Firepower 'Mech and 1 Defensive 'Mech, which would be properly reflected in a geometric mean calculation; Flat Sum would have valued the two forces to be equivalents.

As for what specific units our group personally used, that's a bit of a nontrivial problem, since the most recent few years were heavier on the campaign-level, specifically AU campaigns, so the forces looked a bit... custom.  And then after that we haven't been able to do BT related stuff due to work schedule changes (mine, in particular).

I suppose I could check around and see what was being thrown around back then but it won't be quick; it's just not a high priority for the moment and I've already spent much more time on this thread than I'd prefer.

For tonnage BV, charging hovercraft was pretty common back in the day and often seen as too powerful.  You also, as I mentioned, still use your tonnage to deal damage back to things when colliding with them.  Vtols ABSOLUTELY smash into stuff slipping around.  (EDIT: If you are saying that vehicles should pay something for potential physical damage, but you think tonnage/2 is too high (so 15 BV on a 30 ton vtol) then what value do you think is fair?  Or are you saying vehicles should pay nothing for any potential physical damage they can do?)

VTOLs can technically hit stuff, sure, but I don't see how crashing into a mountain or an apartment complex are such tactically important features that they must be factored into their BV.  As such, a BV value of 0 would be fair.  For other vehicles (like tracked ones) the issue isn't quite as extreme, but the Charge ability is pretty much consistently inferior to doing basically anything else, and as a consequence I still consider 0 BV to be appropriate for that reason.

For 'Mechs it's slightly different as they have access to punching and kicks, which often don't actually require sacrificing your weapon fire or damaging yourself and are more practical (as far as being within 30 meters of another multi-ton war machine counts as practicality).  Still, it's a niche option outside of Solaris, so the weight should be (and is) rather small.

As for the cheeky comment about my suggested LOS rule... -snip-

No, it's not a dig.  Though not what I would personally turn to first, they are a possible solution to the problem.

Though it would have saved some confusion if it had been clear that it was essentially a modification to the LoS optional rule to begin with, I have no strong opinion on it one way or another.

[Daryk]

I'm no fan of BV, but Line of Sight is actually valuable on some level.

[Cannonshop]

I can only say I'm glad to hear there's at least one group out there that found BV useful.  I'll live with it not being useful to me.

You have to remember what BV is for-it's a system intended to allow for asymmetric play without said play being outright unfair.

How does it work?  you have an objective measure of general capability (minus subjective issues like player ability, terrain, or quantities) based on a few common variables, when put together the sum of the measure should be more or less equal, and you've got a game instead of a predetermined outcome. (Minus extreme outliers because no system is completely bulletproof or perfect).

There are a few things they tried to fix with BV 2.0 and failed miserably with, like trying to deal with the Initiative Sinking (the thing that REALLY makes a Savannahswarm in theory dangerous), but FSM Failed utterly because it wound up that the perfect answer in FSM, is to take the smallest number of the highest BV units that would fit into the calculations, because that would guarantee to cripple anyone else's forces from the get-go by requiring them to sacrifice to either meet your quantity 1-1, or screw their skills (thus ability to move and fire) completely over.

all this, because the dev in charge didn't want to front-load the initiative on an asymmetrical fight so that the larger force has to move more units earlier rather than later-a change that DOES in fact, address unfair initiative sinking (and reflects that it's more difficult to command larger units than smaller ones-which it is.)

[Grand_dm]

I can only say I'm glad to hear there's at least one group out there that found BV useful.  I'll live with it not being useful to me.

I find it limited at best, like challenge rating in D&D.

[Grand_dm]

The biggest disconnect in the jamming rules is that you can smack a RAC an clear it but an Ultra needs a full tech team after the battle.

In my own games the UAC uses the same unjam rules as a RAC. So does the AC2 and AC5.