Battletech Public Playtest Thread

[Kannik]

Like weight class initiative and stability damage only from ballistics, etc...

Class initiative was interesting but it broke down in some places, namely that it made many mechs just beyond the limit break decidedly worse than lighter mechs. This was especially noticeable with the classic 80 and 85 ton assaults. That Zeus or B-Master doesn't get enough extra armour or weaponry (due to the exponential engine weights that BT 'features') over a Warhammer or Marauder to make up for that the WH and MAD can both move and fire before the Zeus or BM can do anything. The AWS is OK because it's only 3/5... but any 4/6 assault is heavily penalized.

What might work well though is having the inits break down by movement, rather than by weight class. This of course increases dramatically the number of init slots (and for at tabletop game could make record keeping somewhat insane), but it rewards more 'nimble' mechs (as indicated by their movement score). Suddenly the Charger might actually be slightly less terrible?

Of course, if simultaneous fire is kept rather than fully adopting the HBS integrated move/fire turn sequence then the detrimental effect would be less pronounced.

Stability wise, when I was toying of how I'd do that on table top I liked the idea of having energy weapons still do some stability damage (armour blasting or melting off could still cause the mech to suddenly unbalance), just at a lower rate than their damage done, while having ballistics and missiles do equal to or more than their damage value. Extra work/complexity, but also would give another way to balance weapon types.

 

[payn]

Stability wise, when I was toying of how I'd do that on table top I liked the idea of having energy weapons still do some stability damage (armour blasting or melting off could still cause the mech to suddenly unbalance), just at a lower rate than their damage done, while having ballistics and missiles do equal to or more than their damage value. Extra work/complexity, but also would give another way to balance weapon types.

I’d be fine giving energy zero stability impact on account they don’t need ammo nor risk explosion. Seems like a nice buff that Ammo weapons need.

 

[RangerWickett]

You can aim with targeting computers! (though Im a curmudgeon about their existence).

Though, when you say "the video games" you gotta clarify that the video games are Mechwarrior and the table top is Battletech. In the former you can take out 24 mechs and over 30 vehicles single-handedly, not so much in the latter. Unless you are talking about HBS Battletech video game which allows aiming with a morale system that isnt part of the tabletop ruleset. I cant say I havent imagined adding some HBS ideas into the tabletop version though. Like weight class initiative and stability damage only from ballistics, etc...

Well, I'm thinking about Mechwarrior Online, where one-on-one fights are quite balanced, and a big deciding factor of skill is how well you can figure out which components to aim at to most quickly degrade their ability to kill you.

A friend and I designed a home mech combat system we called Aimbots, which was built from the ground up with the assumption that you're always aiming, and about 25% of shots hit where you're aiming, 50% hit a random location, and 25% miss. Normally you'll start by aiming at something high-value like a gun or the engine (each component has its own armor, instead of each body part). But the random hits will knock armor off less-important components like heat sinks and arm actuators, so you're going to constantly be adjusting your calculus of what you need to aim at.

I need to do some more test games of that system. I rather liked it.

 

[RangerWickett]

When all 8 are going to hit a single location, you're done for. Why bother installing an AC/20 then?

Yeah, that was a problem in MWO. In the early Beta test days I pitched some proposals to moderate that, to try to make convergence less feasible. But they wanted to keep it so shots went to where your reticle is pointing, so for balance they went with a system called 'ghost heat' instead, which just made firing too many weapons at once produce extra heat. It was, eh, fine.

Of course, if you're building a game from scratch, you can just not make units that boat weapons, or make the heat system penalize it.