Master Unit List

The Master Unit List (MUL) is a project by Catalyst Game Labs, in cooperation with a staff of volunteers known since as the MUL Team, that essentially comprises a database of all BattleTech units of any kind ever mentioned in a (canonical) source.

According to a blog by Joel Bancroft-Connors, the MUL project started in 2007 as an attempt to assign official Battle Value 2.0 values to all existing BattleMech designs. Over the course of the project its scope was expanded; it became a master list of existing units and an official faction/availability list to replace the unofficial and outdated faction list by Peter LaCasse, and includes introduction dates and known manufacturing data as a successor in spirit to Objective Raids.

On 14 January 2010, a Beta version of the Master Name List (v1.66) was released to the public for factchecking purposes. Numerous issues were raised by the community and v1.66 remains an unofficial pre-release, i.e. non-canonical. However, it does technically meet the criteria for a meta-source as it seeks to collate otherwise canonical data. Although it was in fact correctly referred to as the "Master Name List", this document established the informal name "Master Unit List" (MUL) for the entire project and made the MUL known under that name to the general fanbase.

On 23 March 2011, the Master Unit List: Battle Value was officially released as a free document through the BattleCorps' BattleShop site, presenting a list of (only) those ground units for which official record sheets exist with Battle Value (2.0) and their Jihad era and Dark Age era availability. It is understood that this is only a fraction of the MUL's entire content and that further releases will provide additional MUL data.

MUL Team

The following persons have been credited with creating the Master Unit List database (listed alphabetically):

• Joel Bancroft-Connors ("Welshman") - Project leader. Coincidentally, he wrote the "Combat Efficiency Factors" article for BattleTechnology many years earlier, as well as a first incarnation of a master list of units for that magazine. Although neither of these works is likely to have substantially contributed to the MUL project, they are very early attempts at the general concept.
• Michael Binder - BV expert
• Roland Boshnak ("ColBosch") - Author of a massive fan project cataloging all existing designs in a Technical Readout style. This work, which he decided not to release to the public due to copyright reasons, is thought to have laid the groundwork for what became the MUL.
• Joshua K. Franklin ("Nckestrel") - Author of the 3025-3050 Random Assignment Tables, the most recent and most comprehensive fan-created faction list, random allocation tables and quirks list. His work is generally regarded as the most up-to-date, most accurate and most thoroughly-researched document despite him openly admitting to having used extrapolated, inferred or plainly estimated data where no solid canonical data was available to work from.
• William Gauthier ("MadCapellan") - Authored the Objective Raids: 3067 fan project which, combined with the work of Luke Robertson, Roland Boshnak and Chris Wheeler, is thought to have been the basis of the manufacture information part of the MUL project
• Keith Hann ("Xotl")
• Johannes Heidler ("Jymset") - BV expert (specialist on Support Vehicles), computer automation
• Daniel Isberner ("DarkISI") - BV and spreadsheet expert
• Chris Marti - Infantry rules expert
• Luke Robertson - WarShip and DropShip rules, Clan Infrastructure and SLDF expert
• Chris Smith - computer automation
• Chris Wheeler ("Chinless")
• Patrick Wynne ("Roosterboy")
• "Nckestrel", "Jellico", "Alexander Knight"

References

• BattleBlog link on CBT.com

External Links

• MUL v1.66 beta version download and errata thread (CBT Forum archive)
• Master Unit List: Battle Value download