MekHQ: AtB - OpFor Composition, etc.

[plothos]

Hi gang,

I'm looking to better understand how the opfor is determined in mekhq, and generally how contracts are constructed and executed. I am finding it very opaque and am reading all sorts of tidbits here and there but nothing definitive.

First, the OpFor seems to generally be a little stronger than makes sense to my smooth brain from a campaign perspective. In an evenly matched pitched battle, one would expect to lose some components pretty regularly, if not entire mechs and pilots. Granted, you get some time between missions to hire and outfit, and maybe you kept some in reserve (is that even a good idea??), but most salvage isn't repairable from what I've seen and selling for some cash really doesn't seem to keep up with attritional losses. I'm just kinda confused in general. Is one really expected to fight multiple battles every month that are evenly matched against you just to earn a payout of 2 million at the end of a couple of months? That's the behavior I'm seeing so far, and it doesn't seem right. Either the pay should be higher or the mission easier. Maybe I'm just taking bad contracts, but I'm only seeing 2 offered at a time and others are far worse.

Second, before accepting a contract, if they vary in difficulty, how does one TELL which ones will be harder and which easier? I'd have thought payout would indicate this, but I'm not seeing that this is true in my limited experience.

Third, there are some setting checkboxes for things like basing the contract payout based on equipment or personnel. I've read that equipment is more forgiving of the two, but I'm not seeing very good contracts and I'm wondering what it's really based on. Like, if I have two lances and nothing else will it give me X amount and if I have the same two lances plus a couple unassigned mechs and a ton of spare parts will it give me Y, being much larger than X?

Fourth, is combat difficulty also increased when contract pay is? Are they linked? I see a lot of settings about pay, and a bunch about opfor relative composition (tanks vs. mechs) but nothing at all about opfor strength. If I'm expected to defend 1300 BV with my 10,000 BV that's fine, but when the enemy is deploying 11,000 BV in response I not only HAVE to deploy my whole force, but am going to probably lose some units. The only workaround here that I've found is going in and sabotaging the opfor with unit edits, but this feels both cheesy and tedious. I've read a couple of posts in which people have been saying that if your lances are under a certain tonnage then the enemy will be less but if you go over a threshold then they are stronger. If true, that would be good info to have. What are the numbers on this?

Fifth, what does the "difficulty" setting even do?

Sixth, how does the deployment into megamek work? My first mission I had my battle lance set to fight and my scout lance set to scout (1 scout was required per the contract). I got a defend mission and the battle lance auto-deployed and I added the scout. The battle deployed first and the scout came in after. Makes sense, but the next fight didn't work the same way. I had another defend and I think neither auto-deployed. I deployed the battle lance and then advanced the day to the mission start. On that day, the scout had self-added. Okay, I was going to add them to have a chance anyway (my allies were a freaking wasp and a firestarter, not exactly 12k battle material), but now my SCOUT lance was deployed first and the battle lance was coming in 7 turns later. I get that they came in slow because they were slower (though not slow, the worst was a 4/6/0 and the commander had good strat and tactics so it seemed a tad high) but what determines which drops first and how can one manage this? It seems that a GM should at least have the option here somewhere, but heck if I can find it.

Such a great program, but there is just SO MUCH learning by trial and error with these vague tooltips. The AtB document doesn't help clarify the above points so far as I can find, and is a couple of years old to boot. Am I missing a resource or something?

If I get this sorted, I'd love to help the community out with documentation or videos, but I can't until I get it figured out. I'm not afraid of doing my homework. I've watched hours of videos and read everything I can find but still have so many questions.

If you read all that, Thanks! Help a guy out!

[Hammer]

Before we can dive into this there is a very big questions.

AtB or Stratcon.

[plothos]

AtB
I left stratcon unchecked, not knowing what it does.

[PhoenixHeart]

I should be able to answer most if not all of these questions, and I will try to do so in a few hours after work if nobody else has by then.

[Hammer]

Hi,

I've asked some players from our Discord to try and help with the answers (I'm real life swamped).

But you can always join our Discord and we have tons of players that can get some of these answered. :)

[NickAragua]

Note that classic AtB isn't really getting any active development from anyone; all my work for the last several years has gone into StratCon. So if you want to create/update documentation, I'd recommend checking the "StratCon" checkbox (make sure to finish out any active contracts first). Stratcon_tips and Stratcon_faq in the docs/atb stuff folder contain some collected community knowledge about it as well.

The main thing to keep in mind about classic AtB is that the opposition in a particular scenario is determined by rolling on a d20 table. If you've got "double vehicles" checked off, any vehicle counts are multiplied by 2. Difficulty adds or subtracts from that d20 roll. You may also experience hostile reinforcements, hostile infantry/turrets/aerospace (if those are selected); plus anything specific to the scenario. So you may face anywhere from one to eight lances (or uh, clan stars or comstar L2s) plus auxiliary units. Hope you rolled some kind of super dense terrain and brought jump-capable mechs, lol.

The only thing that affects tactical scenario difficulty that you can see when signing the contract is opfor and allied equipment quality/experience (i.e. "Green/F"). Payout, etc is all indirect; the contract type affects parts availability and "repair site", which determines whether or not you can get replacement parts and modifiers to your repair rolls. Thus, the chances of repairing a mech missing both legs and two torso sections while on a guerilla contract are... not great.

Deployment timing depends on the specific tactical scenario, and also on lance role. The battle leader's "strategy" (I think) will help get reinforcements deployed sooner - the battle leader is the highest ranking officer in the group.

Meanwhile, StratCon's fights are BV-balanced to the seed lance (which may not necessarily be the lance that deploys to the fight, as you get to choose most of the time), with some modifiers, so it's a little more fair, and you get to set the pace (most of the time).

[plothos]

Sounds like for AtB you really need to have a pretty strong outfit put together if it's really just a d20 roll. I definitely didn't have as much trouble when I tried a campaign for a few years with a pretty grossly overpowered company. I was hoping to have the old build-up-to-it experience one. I don't know why I expected that, necessarily.

Is there information on the table somewhere? Like I said, I'd love to help others coming to these tools learn them more easily and not have to struggle so much. I found the interface for the program to be relatively easy to get a handle on but even after a good bit of digging and experimenting I'm still pretty clueless as to how it actually functions as a working program, and thus not feeling like I know how to run a campaign. Like, I know how to hire and edit admins, doctors, astechs, etc., but how many does one need? Does having too many hurt? Does having more mechs make the fights harder? (Seems like it should but doesn't really seem like it does.) What does one build for and why play a campaign at all if one starts or needs to start with a large, powerful company? I can order parts, refit mechs, even arrange marriages and get prisoners to defect, but just what seems like the most fundamental question of a campaign manager to me is "what contracts are we going to run?" But I have no sense after all this time what to pick or how to execute other than picking one that says it's profitable and kinda hoping for the best, which doesn't go well too often with just 8 mechs totaling about 400 tons.

...but maybe that's why we're going with stratcon instead?

I will definitely have to take a look at it if it's a bit more manageable, especially for more modest units.

(I did have a huge mountain in that fight, by the way, and I always pack plenty of jumpjets, so I was able to table them and not lose anybody, though I did save scum a couple of through-armor crits on the engine/gyro - their Ostroc NEVER missed with his first LL shot no matter whether he needed a 12 or not, but I got lucky and gyro'd the orion, which let my firestarter get in and melt/kick him while he was down.)

[doulos05]

Sounds like for AtB you really need to have a pretty strong outfit put together if it's really just a d20 roll. I definitely didn't have as much trouble when I tried a campaign for a few years with a pretty grossly overpowered company. I was hoping to have the old build-up-to-it experience one. I don't know why I expected that, necessarily.

Is there information on the table somewhere? Like I said, I'd love to help others coming to these tools learn them more easily and not have to struggle so much. I found the interface for the program to be relatively easy to get a handle on but even after a good bit of digging and experimenting I'm still pretty clueless as to how it actually functions as a working program, and thus not feeling like I know how to run a campaign. Like, I know how to hire and edit admins, doctors, astechs, etc., but how many does one need? Does having too many hurt? Does having more mechs make the fights harder? (Seems like it should but doesn't really seem like it does.) What does one build for and why play a campaign at all if one starts or needs to start with a large, powerful company? I can order parts, refit mechs, even arrange marriages and get prisoners to defect, but just what seems like the most fundamental question of a campaign manager to me is "what contracts are we going to run?" But I have no sense after all this time what to pick or how to execute other than picking one that says it's profitable and kinda hoping for the best, which doesn't go well too often with just 8 mechs totaling about 400 tons.

...but maybe that's why we're going with stratcon instead?

I will definitely have to take a look at it if it's a bit more manageable, especially for more modest units.

(I did have a huge mountain in that fight, by the way, and I always pack plenty of jumpjets, so I was able to table them and not lose anybody, though I did save scum a couple of through-armor crits on the engine/gyro - their Ostroc NEVER missed with his first LL shot no matter whether he needed a 12 or not, but I got lucky and gyro'd the orion, which let my firestarter get in and melt/kick him while he was down.)

I don't currently have a stratcon campaign going because I have 0.48 (stable) installed, but stratcon was a lot better.

[Rince Wind]

What difficulty do you play on? And have you read the documentation, especially about lance weights? A 205t lance counts as heavy and will fight against the same things a 280t lance would, while a 200t one counts as medium and gets an easier opfor (usually, there is some randomness involved, of course).
The thresholds are 130t for light lances, 200t for medium, 280t for heavy. I mostly try to not field light lances asap, because too much can go wrong there too quickly.

The contracts difficulties vary by quality of the equipment and the skill of the opfor, you can see that before you finalize the contract. If your admins have the negotiation skill you can also reroll some things, getting better transport terms can be a huge difference. If you get >50% twice in a row that is free money. Battle loss compensation can be very nice as well. If you didn't change the method payment is based on the worth of your ToEE while negotiating. You could show your employer some XL engine mechs or whatever else you have that is expensive and then mothball it as soon as the contract is signed. Just be careful to not show too many lances, because then you will be required to field them as well. You could even argue that showing that expensive salvage is just you telling your employer that you get the job done and are worth the price. So what if you achieve it with cheaper units?
And you can always reroll more contracts to choose from, it is a single player game after all.

It can be better to just go to a battle and then say "yeah, nah" and flee. Less of a penalty than not showing up at all, only 1 point, iirc. A lot of players know princess quite well and will have little trouble winning even fights with little damage to their lance. I am not among those and play on green difficulty.

[dgorsman]

Salvage is difficult to pick up at first.  You'll mostly be stripping them for armor and ammo.  Over time you'll be picking up a few with a missing arm or leg that can be replaced at a later date.  Don't be afraid to change the location setting of the salvage to maintenance facility or factory if you feel you're in a suitably equipped base facility, which will make repairs and component/limb replacements easier.  Work out what you want to keep, sell the rest to raise funds to purchase replacements.  You might have to wait a bit for replacements to be available for purchase, as your unit rating sets an upper limit on what will be sold to you (really bad rating means you can't even buy armor).

Use the Unit Rating Details button/dialog from the Command Center tab as a guide on how many personnel you need.  It does a breakdown on the support personnel, including how many you have and how many are considered necessary.  General rule of thumb you want 6 AsTechs for every Tech.  And it's a good idea to have at least 60% of your units with their own Tech, although if you're not playing with maintenance rules (I recommend not using maintenance for the first few campaigns, it gets rather brutal) that can be as low as 40%.

You can get a general idea of which contracts will be harder or easier by looking at the expected opposition information.  A green OpFor will generate fairly low-skilled opponents, which will be easier, while a veteran or Elite OpFor will be much more dangerous.  Equipment rating is also a factor, more so in later eras.  An A-equipped OpFor will be getting top of the line equipment, and post-Clan Invasion such IS forces will routinely have Clan Mechs, while an F-rated unit will have worse/badly regarded equipment.  This is based on the faction availability files, typically the forcegenerator XML files if not using specific RATs.

The OpFor BV budget will normally be in excess of what you are fielding, as it's not quite as intuitive.  Count on regularly being outnumbered.  The general 'Difficulty setting' dropdown choses a rough factor of how much BV the OpFor has for a scenario - more difficulty, higher multiplier, harder battle.  If you think the battle is going to be particularly unfair, you can have the OpFor enter in small groups with suitable delays between them.  I strongly recommend you adjust Princess settings to something appropriate for the scenario, as the default mid-range settings tend to be a little overwhelming.  Don't be afraid to /kick a Princess player and replace them with different settings, including having them move to an edge and leave if you think it's time for them to withdraw.

Not all scenarios are going to be winnable.  Part of the game is determining when it's time to withdraw, and doing so in good order so you just take the loss rather than taking the loss and losing a ton of valuable units in the process.

When you look at individual scenarios, there's a very important bit at the very bottom when you have command rights lower than Independent.  It will typically include a scenario objective of "Preserve X% of [insert formation here]".  That's the formation it has built the scenario around.  It's also the formation you need to field, although you can do it as reinforcements.

Other formations can be deployed as reinforcements if you feel you are badly out-BV'd and/or outnumbered.  Deployment delays are generally based on the strategic speed (walking/cruising) of the slowest unit in the reinforcing formation, with some adjustment for the Strategy skill of that formation's commander.  This does not include chase type scenarios (Pursuit/Harass), which are... not great.  In the past I've manually changed the delayed entry, currently I'm deploying everything at the start with the escaping force deploying deeper into the map.

Documentation is one of the big problems with most open source projects.  Everyone wants to work on the fancy stuff, on the bugs that get in the way, but few want to do the writing, grabbing screen shots, and so on.  I'm working on a bit of a documentation modernization project and it is REALLY slow going.

[plothos]

What difficulty do you play on? And have you read the documentation, especially about lance weights? A 205t lance counts as heavy and will fight against the same things a 280t lance would, while a 200t one counts as medium and gets an easier opfor (usually, there is some randomness involved, of course).
The thresholds are 130t for light lances, 200t for medium, 280t for heavy. I mostly try to not field light lances asap, because too much can go wrong there too quickly.

This is a big puzzle piece I've been looking for. I've read all I can find of the documentation but never saw that; where is it put down? Just knowing it's not based on weight class of the mechs but on tonnage of the lance makes a huge difference. So, two atlases is a medium lance, if I read you right, but three hunchbacks and a shadow hawk is heavy, and will face far stiffer opposition on average? If true, that really needs to be made much clearer, because it's huge for the playability of the AtB, imo.

The contracts difficulties vary by quality of the equipment and the skill of the opfor, you can see that before you finalize the contract.

See, I thought this was true until my "green" opposition rolled up with two pilots 1/4 pilots in big, chonky mechs. Then I wondered.

If your admins have the negotiation skill you can also reroll some things, getting better transport terms can be a huge difference. If you get >50% twice in a row that is free money. Battle loss compensation can be very nice as well. If you didn't change the method payment is based on the worth of your ToEE while negotiating. You could show your employer some XL engine mechs or whatever else you have that is expensive and then mothball it as soon as the contract is signed. Just be careful to not show too many lances, because then you will be required to field them as well. You could even argue that showing that expensive salvage is just you telling your employer that you get the job done and are worth the price. So what if you achieve it with cheaper units?

Can you explain how one "shows" the employer mechs? Is it not going by what's in the hangar, but only by your lances? Or only by the lances given a role in the mission? It's the little details that matter. I'm honestly less fussed about the contract values than the mission difficulty, which just hasn't made much sense to me. Even with what you say above about tonnages, which tonnages of which lances are used at what point to figure the battle? Let's look at an example. I have a battle lance of 70+65+55+55 = 245 tons, so it's (on the light side of) heavy and coming in at a BV of 6916. It's set to fight. I have a scout lance of 55+45+35+35 = 170 tons, so it's (on the medium side of) medium and has a BV of 3845. The mission I pull auto-assigns my scout lance and gives me a wasp and a stinger as allies (with admittedly good pilots, but 40 tons here and no firepower). Against me is a lance of 250 tons and a BV over 7000, plus a reinforcing mixed unit of mechs and tanks of 2800. Now, if I can get my battle lance in there in support this is winnable and pretty even, though they have the early advantage in starting units. I'm just wondering 1) if this is set up knowing I have the battle lance to add or not, 2) is it counting what I have in the mech bay?, 3) is it counting lances not assigned to the campaign?, and 4) since this is all I have but for one mech in the bay and even assuming it's not counting that so it would be the same whether or not I had that mech, then it's a pretty even fight. I'm on green or ultra-green difficulty, and expecting mission after mission to be a scrap for my ENTIRE company seems... unbalanced. This is worse by far if it's only counting the scout lance and still throwing almost 10k at my just under 4k+wasp+stinger, but even if it's not, is there a way to make it ... not suck so much? :D

And you can always reroll more contracts to choose from, it is a single player game after all.

It can be better to just go to a battle and then say "yeah, nah" and flee. Less of a penalty than not showing up at all, only 1 point, iirc. A lot of players know princess quite well and will have little trouble winning even fights with little damage to their lance. I am not among those and play on green difficulty.

And if it's just a hard base game, you know what, that's fine. I just want to know for sure that's what's going on and I'm not missing anything. How stuff is generated is just unclear and it feels off. Maybe my feeling is wrong and/or there's nothing to do about it. I just would love to have an option for a milder campaign, and I'd hate to miss out on it just because I didn't know the workings of these mechanics. Also, having just spent a lot of time figuring all this out, I'd love to help others not have so much trouble onboarding.

I guess with so many games working a certain way for campaigns (to wit, MW5 or HBS's BT game or a host of other non-BT games), my expectation is that one could start with a ragtag crew and build them up through some easier missions, light garrison duties, quick skirmishes, etc. What I get when I boot up and try to run a game, though, is a big wall of huge scraps right out of the gate, and I guess I can't help thinking I missed something. I figure I can't be alone in that. So I want to get it figured, then share what I've learned, somehow or other.

[plothos]

Salvage is difficult to pick up at first.  You'll mostly be stripping them for armor and ammo.  Over time you'll be picking up a few with a missing arm or leg that can be replaced at a later date.  Don't be afraid to change the location setting of the salvage to maintenance facility or factory if you feel you're in a suitably equipped base facility, which will make repairs and component/limb replacements easier.  Work out what you want to keep, sell the rest to raise funds to purchase replacements.  You might have to wait a bit for replacements to be available for purchase, as your unit rating sets an upper limit on what will be sold to you (really bad rating means you can't even buy armor).

Good info, thanks. I have an ostroc I took as salvage, and it's listed as salvage, but my techs keep trying to repair it and I'm not sure what's really going on there. I don't have anyone assigned but I can't make them stop and I can't seem to do anything with it but sell it. How do you strip armor and the like?

Use the Unit Rating Details button/dialog from the Command Center tab as a guide on how many personnel you need.  It does a breakdown on the support personnel, including how many you have and how many are considered necessary.  General rule of thumb you want 6 AsTechs for every Tech.  And it's a good idea to have at least 60% of your units with their own Tech, although if you're not playing with maintenance rules (I recommend not using maintenance for the first few campaigns, it gets rather brutal) that can be as low as 40%.

I have looked at that report but must have missed the recommendations. I have like 7 techs for 9 mechs and like 14 astechs currently. I was running maintenance but gave my techs good skills and lowered the target numbers so they wouldn't break too much stuff. Also increased the main. window. (Some of the tooltips do explain how it all works, if you pay attention! (Again, why I keep wondering if I just missed something somewhere; I'm not inclined to blame the program before myself!))

You can get a general idea of which contracts will be harder or easier by looking at the expected opposition information.  A green OpFor will generate fairly low-skilled opponents, which will be easier, while a veteran or Elite OpFor will be much more dangerous.  Equipment rating is also a factor, more so in later eras.  An A-equipped OpFor will be getting top of the line equipment, and post-Clan Invasion such IS forces will routinely have Clan Mechs, while an F-rated unit will have worse/badly regarded equipment.  This is based on the faction availability files, typically the forcegenerator XML files if not using specific RATs.

Yeesh, yeah I've been trying to survey the opfor and not get too bad a deal. I figured with all regular/vet pilots myself and allies at veteran I could handle a regular enemy. I got through the first huge fight, but had to save scum a couple bad firing rounds, play my absolute best, and just thought.... that was rough for a first time at bat on a game set to easy, after all I'm no newbie when it comes to BT or to megamek!

The OpFor BV budget will normally be in excess of what you are fielding, as it's not quite as intuitive.  Count on regularly being outnumbered.  The general 'Difficulty setting' dropdown choses a rough factor of how much BV the OpFor has for a scenario - more difficulty, higher multiplier, harder battle.  If you think the battle is going to be particularly unfair, you can have the OpFor enter in small groups with suitable delays between them.  I strongly recommend you adjust Princess settings to something appropriate for the scenario, as the default mid-range settings tend to be a little overwhelming.  Don't be afraid to /kick a Princess player and replace them with different settings, including having them move to an edge and leave if you think it's time for them to withdraw.

Again, not what I expected but what I needed confirmed, I guess. If I understand you, you're generally always fighting on parity (with your whole command?) and you either run with some regularity, take losses, and/or (for want of a better word) cheat within megamek by changing the rules for the enemy? If true, important to know.

To clarify, though, as a previous post suggested opfor was based on tonnage. You're suggesting it's BV from the sound of it. What if I keep my tonnage the same but ramp up my pilot skill and thus my BV? Will the opfor be stronger, or is this a workaround/way to lessen the learning curve?

When you look at individual scenarios, there's a very important bit at the very bottom when you have command rights lower than Independent.  It will typically include a scenario objective of "Preserve X% of [insert formation here]".  That's the formation it has built the scenario around.  It's also the formation you need to field, although you can do it as reinforcements.

Other formations can be deployed as reinforcements if you feel you are badly out-BV'd and/or outnumbered.  Deployment delays are generally based on the strategic speed (walking/cruising) of the slowest unit in the reinforcing formation, with some adjustment for the Strategy skill of that formation's commander.  This does not include chase type scenarios (Pursuit/Harass), which are... not great.  In the past I've manually changed the delayed entry, currently I'm deploying everything at the start with the escaping force deploying deeper into the map.

I haven't seen where I can change the entry round. Is that in MM or MHQ? That would help a bit in places as well.

Documentation is one of the big problems with most open source projects.  Everyone wants to work on the fancy stuff, on the bugs that get in the way, but few want to do the writing, grabbing screen shots, and so on.  I'm working on a bit of a documentation modernization project and it is REALLY slow going.

Totally! That's why I keep making clear I'm trying to learn so I can maybe help out. I love what's being put together here. I can write and explain pretty darn well, once I understand something. I don't want to mouth off without knowing what I"m talking about, though. Hence, all my questions.

And if I haven't said it recently,
THANKS TO ALL OF YOU FOR YOUR REPLIES!!!

[dgorsman]

Good info, thanks. I have an ostroc I took as salvage, and it's listed as salvage, but my techs keep trying to repair it and I'm not sure what's really going on there. I don't have anyone assigned but I can't make them stop and I can't seem to do anything with it but sell it. How do you strip armor and the like?

Try right clicking the unit in the repair list, if the right-click context menu has Repair in it, and it is greyed out, then the unit cannot be repaired to a functional state.  You can only strip it for parts.  Units that can be returned to a functional state can be switched between Repair (fix things, replace others) and Salvage (remove things).

Salvaging components works just like repairs.  The ones that can be removed are in the task list on the Repair tab.  Select one, then select a Tech from the list on the right.  Then, depending on if you think the target number displayed at the top is worth it, then click Do Task.  The results are listed in the Last Repair Check box directly below the button.

If techs are trying to repair things without you directly telling them to, it sounds like you have Mass Repair/Mass Salvage set up to run automatically.  Probably not a great idea, at least to start with.  This automated feature is controlled through the File Menu => MekHQ Options => New Day Options tab, as "Run Mass Repair / Mass Salvage" check box.

I have looked at that report but must have missed the recommendations. I have like 7 techs for 9 mechs and like 14 astechs currently. I was running maintenance but gave my techs good skills and lowered the target numbers so they wouldn't break too much stuff. Also increased the main. window. (Some of the tooltips do explain how it all works, if you pay attention! (Again, why I keep wondering if I just missed something somewhere; I'm not inclined to blame the program before myself!))

Here's what that section on my current campaign looks like:

Support:             -5
    Tech Support:
        Mech Techs:                  18 needed /   18 available
            NOTE: ProtoMechs and BattleMechs use same techs.
        Aero Techs:                   2 needed /    2 available
        Mechanics:                   12 needed /    9 available
            NOTE: Vehicles and Infantry use the same mechanics.
        Battle Armor Techs:           0 needed /    0 available
        Astechs:                    180 needed /  182 available
    Admin Support:                   33 needed /   38 available
    Large Craft Crew:
        All fully crewed.

I'm nearly fully staffed.  I need 18 Mech Techs and 2 AeroTechs to be optimal, and have that.  I need 12 mechanics, but don't have those.  It's not too bad though, most of my vehicles are either support vehicles which don't see combat or gun emplacements to hold facilities I'm protecting.  For all those techs, I need 180 AsTechs; I have those plus two extra.  Admin requirements are for 33, while I have effectively 38 (these count not just admins but some other staff - either way, it's where it should be).

Yeesh, yeah I've been trying to survey the opfor and not get too bad a deal. I figured with all regular/vet pilots myself and allies at veteran I could handle a regular enemy. I got through the first huge fight, but had to save scum a couple bad firing rounds, play my absolute best, and just thought.... that was rough for a first time at bat on a game set to easy, after all I'm no newbie when it comes to BT or to megamek!

Fight conservatively in the scenarios, at least until you have the upper hand.  You're fighting a campaign, you need to conserve resources.  It's a change in thinking from not having to worry about what comes later.

Again, not what I expected but what I needed confirmed, I guess. If I understand you, you're generally always fighting on parity (with your whole command?) and you either run with some regularity, take losses, and/or (for want of a better word) cheat within megamek by changing the rules for the enemy? If true, important to know.

To clarify, though, as a previous post suggested opfor was based on tonnage. You're suggesting it's BV from the sound of it. What if I keep my tonnage the same but ramp up my pilot skill and thus my BV? Will the opfor be stronger, or is this a workaround/way to lessen the learning curve?

The OpFor is built on multiple factors, including BV, weight class, and scenario type.  If you field a heavy lance, or one of your heavy lances is assigned to a scenario, then that weight class will partly determine what you're facing - typically a heavy weight force, but it could be lighter if the scenario type calls for it.  Then the BV of the formation assigned as the primary force for the scenario sets the base BV the OpFor has to build that heavy weight force, and that is multiplied by the campaign difficulty factor.  On top of all of that, there is some +/- randomization, AND random scenario modifiers.  All of that means you are rarely fighting at an advantage, sometimes at parity in BV but usually at a disadvantage in both numbers and BV.  Fight smart, with the objectives in mind.

I haven't seen where I can change the entry round. Is that in MM or MHQ? That would help a bit in places as well.

Entry turn is set in the MegaMek lobby.  Right click on a unit, select Configure... from the context menu, and switch to the Deployment tab.  From there you can change the Deployment round, plus set an individual zone different from the player default, as well as the depth and offset of that zone.

[plothos]

Thank you for all the help.

[Flame_Draken]

A lot of the info for ATB rules are in the Official ATB TT Rules spreadsheet in docs/ATB Stuff folder.  It has the rules for contract generation, the campaign system, battle generation, being a noble and a pirate as well.

That should give you a general idea of what ATB is doing in the background even if the tables may or may not be 100% accurate anymore.