LordHumungus
09/01/13 02:55 PM
208.163.153.55
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As the title states, the goal is to recreate something similar to Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries (the computer game) in a tabletop format. I do not know how much roleplaying will take place so my emphasis at the moment is on the combat aspect of the game.
Here are some canon rules I found in the old books that are useful to me pertaining to running a long term campaign. Most of them are in Battletech Master Rules. The experience rule is in Citytech:
Mech Destruction - "Truly destroyed" and unrepairable:
If artillery fire from an area saturation attack destroys the center torso completely
If an ammo explosion takes place
Ammo Dumping
Player announces ammo dump at end of current turn. For the next turn the ammo is in the mech but unavailable. At the end of the turn after calling, it is dumped.
Mech cannot run or jump in turn dumping ammo.
Any hit to the rear of a mech during the ammo dump turn causes it to explode due to the rear loading doors being open.
Mechwarrior Experience
For every 4 opponents a player kills, he can reduce his piloting or gunnery by 1. (Modifying with house rule because no one will pick piloting: Roll 1d6, 1-2 Piloting, 3-4 Mechwarrior choice, 5-6 Gunnery)
Damage to a Mechwarrior
Head Hit: Mechwarrior takes 1 point of damage
Falling: Roll piloting skill check. If failed, take 1 point of damage
Ammo explosion: Causes 2 points of damage due to shock from neurohelmet
Heat: Mechwarrior suffers 1 point of damage every turn internal heat is 15 or higher.Every turn its 26 or higher he suffers 2 damage.
Ejection: Can choose to eject or automatically ejects after an Attack Phase where an ammo explosion occurred. Roll successful piloting skill or take 1 point of damage.
Death of a Mechwarrior
Mechwarriors can take 6 points of damage before dying of injuries
Critical hit - Head: A critical hit to the "Cockpit" (usually #3 on the hit table) kills the mechwarrior and puts the mech out of commission for the game.
Critical hit - Head roll of 12: Roll on Determining Critical Hits table results in a 12 blows the head off killing the Mechwarrior.
Ammo explosion destroys the Head, Cockpit or Center Torso unless he is able to eject (Master Rules pg 73) Mechwarriors are assumed to have auto eject engaged so are only at risk if they suffer their 6th point of damage on a failing piloting skill roll ejecting.
Repair and Salvage
These rules are crazy complicated and I don't understand them yet.
Here are some rules I need to either find in the books or make up as house rules:
#1 What is typical resale value i.e. is it %60 ?
#2 How close to canon is the Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries computer game i.e. can I assume a Mechwarrior can hire someone to pilot his second mech say an urban mech for $5,000 c-bills a mission? I have found charts in the rulebooks for this type of thing.
Is there any canon streamlined version of salvage and repair rules, new or old, as they seem overly complicated for repair and I haven't located salvage rules yet.
#3 I don't agree with the rule that only artillery strikes and ammo explosions can kill a mech. By this logic mechs never die unless you don't have the c-bills to repair them or the technicians. Don't agree with this at all maybe I am misinterpreting a rule somewhere.
#4 I have several handbooks including the Mechwarrior handbook. I have not found yet which weapons can damage mechs from a pilot. (I.e. The pilot ejects. He has an SRM2 strapped to his cockpit. He can engage an enemy mech if he chooses or run off the field at 1 MP. If he is fired upon he has a +2 to be hit because he is a small target. I assume damage works same - he can take 6 hits total so an SRM missile hit would deal 2 of the 6 total)
I have a steady flow of new players right now coming and going. There are key components I am looking to do with my campaign:
A: The Campaign is ongoing, forever if I want it to be. I.e. You can grab your mechwarrior sheet and come back a year later if you wanted to. I may make a table that compensates them for battles they missed while away so they are competitive. They would not however get experience, but they also didn't die so that evens out.
B: I don't like that only ammo explosions and artillery fire can permanently destroy a mech. I will keep reading the rules and make sure I understand and possibly change this rule as its not realistic and it takes away from the atmosphere of danger in the campaign.
C: Players start out modestly but can build up to as much as a Lance each of mechs / vehicles / infantry.
D: I need to develop scenarios that are going to allow all the players to work against one person, but also break into two teams occasionally fighting each other. The Solaris 7 arena is one example off the top of my head that would allow normally friendly players to battle each other. New players coming would be another example that could square off against existing players.
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ghostrider
09/02/13 12:35 AM
66.74.188.151
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Have you looked into the actual mech warrior books yet?
There is some good info about advancing a character in there. Depending on the circumstances, you could technically advance a skill fighting lance on lance.
Head shots and criticals can be a real pain sometimes. Also the mechs/tanks that are involved can change this as well.
New rules for auto ejection came out when things like case, especially the clans changed this option. You could turn it off, since mechs could survive from ammo hits. That would mean it wouldnt work for other times.
Do you allow a tank kill to substitute for a mech kill? If you cannt advance in skills for a vehicle/infantry kill might mean someone just avoiding encounters with them. Also, do you consider mech surrenders as a kill?
The repairs of mechs are in there as well.
Resale of mechs depends on alot of things. The condition of the mech is a big one. Where you are selling what type of mech is another. Buying a mech from an opposing house might mean having to salvage parts from the enemy, or not being able to repair it what-so-ever. If its across the innersphere would make getting parts even harder, and longer before they can be fixed.
As for totally destroyed, I think that means no parts can be salvaged from the unit. You should be able to SOME parts from most units that shut down from damage.
Now pay for warriors is varied. What skill level is the soldier? What unit will they drive i.e. a light mech pilot would probably recieve less then a similarly skilled assault pilot?
Dont know about anyone else here, but ammo explosions destroying a mech should depend on wiether or not the ammo could wipe out the rest of the mechs internals. Having a single lrm 20 shot only left in a 3025 Atlas with no torso damage should mean it would survive the damage, since it does 1 point per missle left, so 20 points total. An ammo explosion in an arm shouldnt blow up a mech either. I would think an engine explosion should make a mech unrepairable.
One problem I could see in negotiating a contract. And the contract can make or break a unit faster then combat can. Dont know if they changed the tables, but the mercenaries handbook is a good source for contracts and even pay.
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LordHumungus
09/02/13 10:53 AM
76.101.253.192
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Quote:
Have you looked into the actual mech warrior books yet?
There is some good info about advancing a character in there. Depending on the circumstances, you could technically advance a skill fighting lance on lance.
Head shots and criticals can be a real pain sometimes. Also the mechs/tanks that are involved can change this as well.
New rules for auto ejection came out when things like case, especially the clans changed this option. You could turn it off, since mechs could survive from ammo hits. That would mean it wouldnt work for other times.
Do you allow a tank kill to substitute for a mech kill? If you cannt advance in skills for a vehicle/infantry kill might mean someone just avoiding encounters with them. Also, do you consider mech surrenders as a kill?
The repairs of mechs are in there as well.
Resale of mechs depends on alot of things. The condition of the mech is a big one. Where you are selling what type of mech is another. Buying a mech from an opposing house might mean having to salvage parts from the enemy, or not being able to repair it what-so-ever. If its across the innersphere would make getting parts even harder, and longer before they can be fixed.
As for totally destroyed, I think that means no parts can be salvaged from the unit. You should be able to SOME parts from most units that shut down from damage.
Now pay for warriors is varied. What skill level is the soldier? What unit will they drive i.e. a light mech pilot would probably recieve less then a similarly skilled assault pilot?
Dont know about anyone else here, but ammo explosions destroying a mech should depend on wiether or not the ammo could wipe out the rest of the mechs internals. Having a single lrm 20 shot only left in a 3025 Atlas with no torso damage should mean it would survive the damage, since it does 1 point per missle left, so 20 points total. An ammo explosion in an arm shouldnt blow up a mech either. I would think an engine explosion should make a mech unrepairable.
One problem I could see in negotiating a contract. And the contract can make or break a unit faster then combat can. Dont know if they changed the tables, but the mercenaries handbook is a good source for contracts and even pay.
Thanks for the response. You cleared one thing up which is the auto eject feature for the computer system sensing an ammo explosion. As stated, if the mech could survive the explosion because it was low on ammo, the pilot would perhaps not want to eject. I will give the players the option to turn on or off their auto eject. I did not even see this angle for some reason.
I do not like that the master rule book states that artillery strike and ammo explosion is the only way to permanently kill a mech (at least thats what I gathered from reading it) so I will likely put a rule in place that 3 engine hits destroys the mech past repair. I will read the repair rules fully first because there might be something helpful there on this (maybe there is a point where the cost to repair exceeds the cost to replace).
I was debating whether to treat vehicles and infantry the same as a mech. If a modest Stinger can count as a kill I don't see why we shouldn't count infantry and vehicles as a kill.
I already started streamlining several rules in an excel file and will likely add a chart of the repair and salvage rules once I have them figured out. One thing I have noticed is the players begin to lose interest fast if the game has too many delays to check rules.
I have skimmed the Mechwarrior rulebooks twice but most of it was about character generation. I think if I go over those books and Master Rules with a fine comb I can find the rules I need.
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ghostrider
09/03/13 01:22 AM
66.74.188.151
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Once you get into repairs and start having things like repair failures, then you get into the better to replace then repair. A few bad rolls could very well leave a mech area unable to carry armor or even the normal weapon. 2 partial engine repairs might blow up an ammo carrying mech in a dozen rounds just from having the engine run.
One thing i will suggest is not to let players get skills below 0 for gunnery or piloting. They will come up with alot of excuses, but letting them get into the auto hit at long range thru woods while the enemy moves 8+ hexes is garbage. Also keep a roll of 2 as an automatic miss. Otherwise you start getting into just rolling hit locations and having no chance of missing. Some people will disagree with this.
Might wanna change the 4 units for a skill down to a sliding scale. Maybe keep that at skill 8-7, but increase it for 6 then again 5. Also actual danger should affect it as well.
You take an atlas against a normal stinger and unless extremely lucky, the atlas isnt likely to lose. Now if you the stinger pilot and defeat the atlas one on one, well.... The way xp is earned and skills improved is the section I was refering to. I agree that character creation is long and boring. This also depends on which version you look thru. Last I knew there was 4 versions.
One major problem with tanks is they tend to get disabled quickly on a lucky roll. A single point of damage can destroy the largest, baddest tank on the field with a crit of fuel, or ammo, crew killed and sometimes engine destroy.
I did see it suggested somewhere that you could roll to see if a pilot hits the ejection soon enough to avoid problems. Doubt clanners would, but innersphere pilots might. Think it was on a 7+ roll. Up to you to fix a number, or even let them try.
Alot of this is up to trying to keep with the cannon rules, or if you want to make up some house rules. If you use house rules, let people know before they play. I dislike some of the (cannt think of the name right now) rules that let people reroll or use three dice and take the best 2 for a hit in combat that mech warrior books say can be done.
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LordHumungus
09/03/13 02:21 PM
208.163.153.55
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Hi Ghostrider thanks for replying again. With the rerolling I think you are referring to the Edge rules - never used em but someone else was telling me. I've been looking through Master Rules and I'm nervous to even try to implement such complicated rules. The players are mostly all new and are not going to want to waste more than 5 or 10 minutes talking about what repairs take place. I can also see them getting heavilly demoralized in the beginning of the campaign from a bad roll (i.e. your Panther's ppc is not longer operable.. or you failed the skill to repair it and have to do without this mission).
If you look at the new Chaos Campaign rules there are about 9 different conditions that make someone do a Forced Withdrawal off the field. I am debating using a simplistic system: For every one of the 9 conditions of Forced Withdrawal, the cost to repair goes up %5. I'll give an example. If you took an Engine and Gyro hit, one of your side torsos internals is destroyed and you have internal damage in 3 limbs it would be %15 of the retail value of the mech to make repairs. So an Atlas would cost almost 1.5 million and a Stinger would cost 242,316 C-Bills. This may be too high as I don't want to feel that I have to pull punches because the group will go bankrupt if I hit them with an equal force. So maybe I'll lower it to 3 or 4 percent I'm not sure yet just some ideas I am kicking around. I personally hate house rules whenever canon rules can be used but because all the players are new and having fun trumps looking up every little item to be repaired and rolling for it I think I have to come up with something.
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ghostrider
09/03/13 06:37 PM
66.74.188.151
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natural aptitude. Thats what I was thinking. One of them had Kai Liao-Allard and Phlen Kell-Ward with them.
Honestly, you control alot of the mission they are on. You can set up rules for success/failure, including orders to retreat. Leads to intrigue as well, if you decide to have their employer decide to sacrifice them to distract an enemy, like Kurita or Liao have done in the past.
Quick numbers would work, but not be realistic. You could always assign weither the repairs work or not. Some simple things would be a good idea to do, like a knowing the mechs they use and having a table for repairs on such.
If they are going bankrupt from simple battle damage, then they need to require more money for missions. A simple head shot can take out a mech with a bad die roll. It will happen, but then they could take out the baddest of enemies the same way.
You might set up something before hand with repairs or sales costs. I think merc handbook had a table to randomize some costs, I dont see why you couldnt use it as well, saying markets rise and fall.
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