BattleTech Master Unit List Updates

I love watching the continued development of the Master Unit List.

For those that have never heard of it before, the online Master Unit List (MUL) is a tool for players to quickly and easily sort through the thousands of units that populate the BattleTech game/universe when creating a force for a game, a campaign, and so on.

George, Joshua, and their crew, are constantly fixing things based upon community feedback, while implementing updates and new features.

Since several new, important updates just occurred, thought it appropriate to cover the last few months of the larger changes/updates (some of you may be aware of some of these changes, but covering them nonetheless for those not as familiar).

The following, in no particular order, is a list of modifications/upgrades since the last night I blogged about the MUL several months back.

• Search results now appear in tab format, seperated by unit type: i.e. BattleMechs, Combat Vehicles, Aerospace and so on. Much, much easier now to quickly zero in when hunting for specific units in a large search result.
• BattleForce stats added to many units; automatically appears above the Faction Availability area on the upper, right-hand side of a unit’s data screen.
• First buildings (from the free HexPack Promotion 1 pdf) added.
• There’s now a mobile version available. The server auto detects if you are on a mobile device or not (you can also manually swtich this from the main menu’s mobile option).
• Finally, and my absolute favorite, all units can now be found in the MUL. When you first bring up the Search The Master Unit List Screen, underneath the “Name or Model:” field, you’ll see a “Only Units with BV” auto checked. If you un-check that box you’ll be able to search for almost any unit ever mentioned anywhere in BattleTech.

  When the Master Unit List first launched a half year ago, only those units with verified battle values where listed. This process is done when a new “Unabridged” Record Sheet PDF is generated (see the full list of available Record Sheets PDF here). This work is done hand-in-hand with the Master Unit List database to ensure the most correct battle value is generated for each unit, as well as the most correct game stats as presented on a record sheet.

  Such up-to-date record sheet PDFs are still missing for several Technical Readouts (such as 3057, 3067, Prototypes, Vehicle Annex), while aerospace Large Craft remain to be worked on across several Technical Readouts. Despite a team of great, dedicated volunteers, it’s simply a very large project to create even one Unabridged Record Sheet, much less coordinating it appropriately with the MUL, and so on.

  As such, while “Total Warfare-style” record sheets and battle values of those units found in the books noted above remain missing, you’re now able to fully search for almost anything under the sun (art is still missing on a lot of these units but will be added as updates continue).

As an aside, it’s not just the community finding the MUL incredibly useful, but we’re finding it very useful as a development tool. Brent Evans, the art director, was assigning art for Historical: Liberation of Terra, Vol 1, and he asks what BattleMechs would be the most appropriate. Normally you’d simply look at the book’s RAT, but those aren’t available yet and the art needs to go out now. So Brent head’s off to the MUL, clicks on the Show Advanced Search Field button, then selects both Age of War and Star League for Production Era and BattleMech for Unit Type and bang, instant list he can reference when generating those art notes.

25+ years of BattleTech awesomeness and to have such a massive, user-friendly tool available to all for use…nothing but win.

Again, thanks to George, Joshua and the whole team (not to mention the community that continues to help polish it through feedback) for all the fantastic work!

Randall