Battletech with the Original Spirit but Better Science

[Cynical Cat]

Fire away.

Please no excessive mecha bashing. Yes, they aren't realistic, but this is a game with mecha=knights. We are going need some SoD on this one or its pointless.

A few ideas of mine:

1) Weight: we can mess with this. The important parts are light=speedy, medium=workhorse, heavy=bad boys, and assault=death tortoise category wise. A Marauder is a well armoured death machine with PPCs of doom. The 75 tons bit is secondary.

2) The obvious machine gun bits.

3) Range has already been somewhat addressed in the RPG by multiplying by 100 meters instead of 30 meters. Maybe another figure would be better, but we can dump the original range figures.

4) Autocannons are going to need work

5) The medium laser is thematically the a good light weight weapon. In honouring the spirit we should try to keep that, however we end up rationalizing it (say less damage, faster cycle rate or whatever). I bring this up as its likely that weapons will recieve a lot of attention.

6) Tin foil uber ablative armour needs surgery.

7) Missles. Not sure exactly how to address them.

That's all off the top of my head for the moment. Please comment, critique, and add your own.

[White Haven]

Missiles in BT are really rockets, some guided, some semiguided, some dumbfire, sort of like an enhanced Hellfire pod in modern terms. The only real 'missile' as we think of them now is the Arrow-IV artillery missile, and if you use the laser-guidance feature, that most definitely IS extreme-range and very, very painful guidance. It's more just a disconnect between people thinking 'missile' and picturing a Tomahawk or a Sidewinder.

As for the holy anoited medium laser, it's all about the damage/heat ratio, which is one of the best. in the game. Not THE best...but better ones tend to be too small and point-blank-range to be combat-effective in most situations.

[LadyTevar]

Missles... well, what can be said? They're dumb-bombs, because making them smart would cost too much was the explaination I heard. It did explain why only a percentage of your missiles hit the target when you had missile lock.
However, a later release gave us the TAG system, that would hit the enemy first and then act as a beacon to attract the missile's simple guidance system, so FASA did know there was a problem there.

My best answer? Remove the "How many missiles hit" roll. If you have Missile Lock, your missiles hit the enemy mech *somewhere*, using the normal damage assignment for that arc of fire. If you have shot the enemy with a TAG beacon, then use the punch/kick tables as appropiate for where the beacon hit to assign where the missiles hit.

I forgot if this was in the rules, but my gaming group broke the missiles down in groups of five when rolling for damage placement. 5pts of damage to a chest might not be much, but to the head it was a nasty shot. Especially on a light mech.

[White Haven]

Tev? Hon? You're outta date. SRMs are wholly unguided rockets, hence the random missile hits. LRMs are at best semiguided, and hence the same thing. STREAK SRMs and, for the clans Streak LRMs, do work that way. They're guided missiles, and you roll your to-hit to see if you get a solid lock. If you do, they all hit. If you don't, you don't even fire the missiles. The only conventional missiles that TAG has an effect on are Semiguided LRM munitions, and I'd have to look up the rules for those.

[White Haven]

And TAG's a laser-designation, you're thinking of NARC pods, which can be used with NARC-equipped missiles.

EDIT: And LRMs are always done in 5-point clusters. SRMs are done missile-by-missile, each hit causing two damage.

[Josh]

I don't know if this will entirely fit, but one of my biggest gripes was that in a battlefield full of hot targets, one of the simpler guidance mechanisms has never been used.

Why the fuck aren't there heat-seekers in Btech?

I agree with CC that the weights need to be largely disposed of. One of my biggest gripes about Btech was the rigid, perfectly-rounded weight schemes.

Another one that's thematic and annoy is the oddball mixtures of units. Does the Air Force field squadrons with one F-22, two F-16s, an F-4, four F-15s, etc.?

It's understandable that everyone wants to mix and match unit types for their units, but that only works in the magic Battletech world of Perfectly Interchangeable Mech Components.

If we wanted to go whole-hog on this, we could do a reboot of Battletech that ignores the Wiz Kids DA storyline. I've got the storyline I threw together laying around in OSF at SDN, somebody could dig that up and we could use it for setting material and redo some of the obnoxious in-universe elements along with the physics mods.

[White Haven]

Well, ignoring Dark Age is actually quite easy, simply because Dark Age takes place roughly a century past the current Classic timeline point. It's simply not relevant retroactively.

As for homogenous units, the Star League fought that way, frequently, via the 'buddy lance' system. In essence, lances tended to be the same battlemech, only four of them. Two things shattered that. First, the Sucession Wars and the loss of manufacturing capacity rendered it more or less impossible for outfits to get their 'dream' mix of units, whatever that might be. Forces fought with whatever they could get.

Second, the lack of flexibility. In the modern-fighter-aircraft example, you can outfit said aircraft for any of a ton of roles simply by swapping the loadouts around, and there's not much performance difference between them. It's as if all of modern air war consisted of medium Omnimechs, and were subject to one-hit-kills. Add to that the presence of the AWACS removing the necessity for a force to perform its own tactical-range recon, as well as the reduced flexibility of ground units that are designed around heavily armored chassis, and hence more difficult to customize even if they were designed for it. And it's inherently easier to slap a missile on an external hardpoint than it is to, say, decide you want to replace a g iven fighter's integral cannon with a heavier model, or add more ammo stores for it, which is really closer to what you're looking at for all battletech units.

[Josh]

The roots of it lie in FASA's original Battletech storyline, where Mechs were the knights of the battlefield and entirely uncommon. Even the Great Houses were slapdashing units together based on what was available, and in that vein the mix-mech lances were more plausible.

Of course this went away pretty much with the start of the Fourth Succession War storyline because it went from knights of the battlefield to clash of armies. MW:DA was an attempt to take it back to the 'scarce mechs' storyline, but with a bunch of nonsensical storylines worked in.

Devlin Stone: "Hay guys, we're gonna stop making mechs and give out welfare, kay?'

Great Houses: "Oh shit! WELFARE! We are undone unless we stop making mechs and start a dole!"

I did an offshoot storyline that laid the groundwork for a Dark Ages sorta feel without the whole Republic of the Sphere handwavium that went down and thought it could work in alongside the rules reboot we're working on.

[White Haven]

Meh. The Federated Commonwealth Civil War did more damage than...well, at least one of the Succession Wars, a lot of the units in and around the battle were and still are to some degree patchwork units. Also, in the current year (3067) the Jihad is about to kick off...which is well, WELL before the Dark Age storyline, but will do a quite nice enough job of breaking a lot of toys and powerblocs without having to get into the Wizkids-written material.

[Stofsk]

I'm not going to bash 'mechs, but I want to ask why they decided to go with them? Is it as simple as saying "We want Knights on the battlefield"? Also... there are tanks and aircraft in this setting - how do they stand up to 'mechs?

[SirNitram]

Tanks stack up favourably in most cases.. A little weaker, but much cheaper. They suffer a ridiculous 'If hit with a weapon that causes heat buildup in a mech, catch fire and explode' rule, though. I'd like that ditched in favour of weakness in proportion to their cost, though. Tanks should be 'Footsoldiers' to the 'knights', if we want fun and not realism.

[White Haven]

First off, it's a CHANCE to explode, not garaunteed. I agree it's a rule that needs heavy reworking, but it's not quite as bad as you described. But otherwise, yeah, they're cheaper and can bring some scary options to the table. Aircraft...well, they've gone through a lot of revisions. They're quite potent, especially while their external ordinance lasts, and can mount a fairly wide variety of it. Freefall-bombs, rocket-pods, space-bombs, even rail-launched Arrow-IV artillery missiles that can be TAG-guided to a target. Hell, there are even rules for infantry with towed weapons now, although they're not often used. That's part of why Davion units tend to be so nasty in a larger scale...they're one of the few major militaries that fully integrates combined-arms forces.

Of course I've always had an odd angle to my Battletech play. I tend to go very heavy on the support elements...airstrikes, artillery bombardment, long-range exchanges of fire...and only using conventional forces in an attack role when I absolutely have to. It drives my group nuts when I try to get 'em to fight that way :)

[LadyTevar]

Tev? Hon? You're outta date.

Considering I was using 3025-3050 rules? Yes.. I'm VERY out of date, WhiteHaven. Remember, I was using Marauders, PheonixHawks, Griffons, and all the other 'Banned/Vanished' mecha that FASA stole from Robotech.

[Josh]

Phoenix Hawks were my all-time favorite. But then, I'm old enough to remember when the game was 'Battledroids', too.

[Cynical Cat]

Tev? Hon? You're outta date.

Considering I was using 3025-3050 rules? Yes.. I'm VERY out of date, WhiteHaven. Remember, I was using Marauders, PheonixHawks, Griffons, and all the other 'Banned/Vanished' mecha that FASA stole from Robotech.

They're back by the way. They used new and slightly different art for upgraded versions in "Project Phoenix". As only the title to the original art was in dispute the Warhammer is back and reducing lesser 'mechs to slag.

[White Haven]

Hehe. With the exception of the Ost-series mechs, I'm something of an Unseen-nut. I've got old Wolverines, Marauders, Crusaders, enough Battlemasters that I've actually hacked up a couple for custom mod-jobs... I like the old stuff :) Some of the Reseen designs are crap, most are alright, and a few, like the new Longbow, are indisputably better-looking. And all of that wildly off the point. Now, on to piccies!

Old Longbow:


New Longbow:


Old Rifleman:


New Rifleman:

[Hotfoot]

Okay, so the question is, how much of the old spirit do we want to retain? I'm down with 'Mechs being the Knights of the Battlefield, but clearly we need to excise a lot of crap to get it working right. Silly as it may sound, I think that a sort of shield technology, powered by the pilot's connection to the machine may be in order. This, however, may play against the desire to keep it more "gritty", but it would go a long way to keep the 'Mechs the kings of the battlefield.

[White Haven]

Shields? SHIELDS? What, are you TRYING to legitimize Mechassault into canon!?

[Hotfoot]

Look, the way the old armor worked, it might as well have been shields without a regen rate. Throw enough low caliber low velocity rounds at it, and it melted away. Do I need to bring up the Pirhana?

[White Haven]

So change how armor works. That's what was said in the OP anyway. Fuck shields.

[Hotfoot]

Thing is, in order to make 'Mechs better than tanks, there has to be a reason. Simply saying "Oh look, they're better" makes no sense at all. At least some sort of shield projected by the 'Mech based on psychic ability or SOMETHING gives an advantage one wouldn't be able to confer to a tank.

[frigidmagi]

You'll have to explain why the pilot can't simply be hooked up to a tank. Does it have to do with some type of mental blockage? Can the pilot only do this for human-like shapes?

[Hotfoot]

You'll have to explain why the pilot can't simply be hooked up to a tank. Does it have to do with some type of mental blockage? Can the pilot only do this for human-like shapes?

That was the general idea, yes. The vehicle would have to be a somewhat logical extension of the pilot's body. We've already got neural link helmets to give balance data to the 'Mechs, we could extend that to an almost VR-like state in which they control the 'Mech with their minds, or something similar.

[SirNitram]

To be bluntly, brutally honest, you won't be able to make Mechs better than Tanks while being scientific. It's best to just try and remove the more glaring obscenities and keep going.

[Hotfoot]

True, you won't, but if we can at least find some way of using handwavium to explain it away, it does taste a bit better going down.

I do like the concept of tanks as foot soldiers while 'Mechwarriors are more like an elite class of knights, I'm just looking for a way to justify it other than "lol stats R better". A light 'Mech should be able to duke it out with a heavier tank with moderate difficulty in this model, which I think helps retain a lot of the original theme.