It could have been much much worse honestly, and everyone came out uninjured (Elk aside) which was the most important part. I'll piece together another 30 year old hood, headlights, front end, windshield, and side mirror which exploded.. and repair the thing. It likely wont be pretty anytime soon though, paint jobs are ridiculously expensive.

Well at least you've got a lot of meat for the freezer to keep you over the winter ^_^

Right, ran the new method i'll be handling acquisition of equipment, modifications, and mech up grades in the future.

Will be using 'Availability' rolls for everything.

Auctions will start having things like 'Extra' Availability roll, or '+x' to Availability roll, which will be more universal than specific items going up for bid.


Will make things like mental ability, nobility and rank more useful (not that rank needed any reason, but it will be).  Will also allow players to start accumulating stuff.

<hr.

I believe, the paperwork is pretty comprehensive, but i'm just as sure someone will have questions on it's content.  This stuff doesnt go into effect until next contract, so if you have questions you may ask them now and beat the rush.

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This message was last edited by the GM at 17:38, Thu 25 Sept 2014.

Quick question about scouting without a probe.  What are the ranges - range 1 only?  Range penalties based on distance?

We understand the -4 immobile bonus and the movement penalties.

I seme to recall it has been adjecant only so far, without a probe.

Range 1 is adjacent :)

Movement from previous round impacts the roll as well as environmental effects...smoke, darkness and such.

In reply to Kitten (msg # 799):

Would it be reasonable to assume that some gear will improve in availability over time?

I would think so.  Except since we're mimicking RL time movement and it's 3028 right now a lot of the advanced tech wasn't widespread and much easier to access till rolling up on 3040ish.  So if this game is still playing in 12 years totally ;)

That said she might speed it up a bit faster than that.

That was my thought as well.  As the infrastructure improves from the devastation of the succession wars, common gear can become, well, more common :) and as technology spreads those TNs will drop as well, I expect.

That said, I've noticed in this universe nothing makes 'time passes' happen faster than moving around to new contracts.

'This Universe', actually uses real time as the clock.

Take the current date and add 1015 years, and that's the date in the game.

I use real time to figure out your pay too, you'll notice a one month mission is base pay, two month mission is double base pay and so forth.

Removes that whole, how many days have passed bean counting for lazy people like me.

Mission time is actually only a few days.  Most of the rest id spent in a dropship between contracts, or killing time in R&R while units gather up and prepare for the next contract, or whatever...

my TN #'s are actually based on a pretty simple forumla.

Base roll is around a 7

+1 for every 100k an item cost.
+2 for items that are 'Advance Tech'  (Normal IS 'advance' stuff)
+4 for items that are 'Conjecture'    (Normal IS 'advance' stuff that i consider 'broken' or KittenTech stuff that are a cut above IS 'advance' stuff')

That's the 'rough' formula.  If you apply it the TN's should be pretty close with what i put out.

Over time... some of the Advance Tech stuff should come down, as it becomes pretty common, but some of the conjecture stuff will just vanish.  ie.  Plugsuits never existed in the BT universe so for some reason they 'die out' as available somewhere along the way.

The Beta Light Gauss Rifle and Light AC/20 has 'died out' in favor of a new design focused more on range over firepower.  I know some players wanted to see something like this appear, so it's here, now leave me alone.
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:14, Fri 26 Sept 2014.

All I have to say, is thanks for all the work you put into the game, battlemasters as well.

Thank you Akarian, its nice to hear now and then.

^.^

As much as I hate to sound like an echo, I also truly appreciate the hard work you're putting into this game.

I've enjoyed playing in this game since day 1.

Yeah, way back when i went and rebooted the campaign off the ending of wild stallions you were one of the first players that signed on from my efforts to recruit there.  I still have his game on my list and i keep hoping Mac comes back, i still wonder what happened to him every time i look at it.  I hope he's okay, his departure was rather abrupt and he hasnt done anything since.

not to mention, just up and disappearing wasn't like him.

I still wonder too, even as i use his game as a lookup ressource.

Wow!  M11 - Normandy was brutal.

Yeah... I don't think the drops went well for anyone...  looking at the dice roller I see some people who went through buildings, me and Ana ran into eachother mid air on our mission... just getting on the ground sucked, but at least we only had lights and conventionals to contend with when we landed... that dropship looks like hell.  I'm glad it wasn't us who had to face it but I feel for you guys, that is not a fun looking target...

We've lost a productive player on this one, because it was believed to be impossible.  The way they went about the mission was partially to blame.  Ive had some of the other unit commanders look at it and it's in agreement that while some thought is needed, it's not impossible.

One Commander noted
Targeting a drop hex in one fire arc and staying in the PPCs short range for the drop would have limited the weapons fired during the drop phase to one combat arc, and kept the PPCs from firing, that could have saved them an instant 30 points of damage.

The weapons available to the Normandy in one fire Arc, less the PPCs is roughly equal to a lance of mechs.  To remove this firepower, the mercs only needed to do 70 points of damage to one fire arc.  Picking drop locations too close to the edge or bad dice rolls to scatter off hurt their ability to get 70 points of damage out on the Normandy.


Another Commander noted
Using the buildings for cover, not hiding behind them, but hiding in them would have negated the SRM and MG damage from the Ferrets and reduced damage from the Normandy by 4 for each weapon fired.

Even ignoring these plans, if they had better pilot rolls, or used a little edge here and there to nudge stuff along, the extra mechs on the map to soak damage and put weapons on the Normandy could have made a difference, but morale was shattered at that point.

The damage on this mission was all front loaded, and once you got the Normandy off, if you look at what's left on the map, it's mostly an easy mop up.

Regardless, it is what it is.  Some missions are more straight forward fights than others.  Every so often, a mission comes along like this one, that really requires thought to work out and defeat.  They're not impossible though.

Hmmm... gave it some thought and decided to open some vehicle options to players.  So that if they feel like playing conventional units they can.

Number of units allowed = to the Characters Rank
Max Tonnage of all conventional units purchased = to the Character's Mech weight.

Units available for purchase will be limited to those listed on this thread.
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 I am just glad to get away with the little real damage done to my mech, considering.

To clarify since it's been asked ...

Merc that are not engaged, may withdraw off any map edge.

Mercs that are engaged, may not withdraw off the map and either have to fight it out till they are no longer engaged or are a smokey mess in the sand.

despite player caused collision, and somewhat bad landings, we managed to off two mechs in our first turn of combat.

of course, that still leaves a fucktizillion of infantry and a veritable armada of conventionals to take down, not to mention locating and destroying the HQ...

It's october, the repair bay should be closed again, will give those that havent responded till the weekend to get an order in for Armor/Ammo.

At the end of mission 11, you'll be allowed to draw a ton of stuff from your inventory.  (armor... or ammo... or armor/ammo, as long as it adds up to one ton.)

Gave this a little bit of thought, and i'm looking at the characters develop.

Effectively immediately, i'm going to put a 'cap' on the development of character.

Effective maximum experience a character may accumulate and spend is 800xp.

No one is over this cap, and most players are only around the half way point to this cap, so to the majority of you, it should be no big deal.  I just dont want the gap between a veteran player and a new starting one to be too wide and obnoxious.  800xp is roughly double what the average starting player might start with.

xp earned over this cap, will be converted to CB for the character to spend.  {1xp=20,000cb}

---

I'm also looking at the organization of units.

I've tried to tinker and keep some of balance between the units but from what i can see, that just aint happening.  It's also obvious that some BMs are more brutal than other BMs.

For this reason, i've decided to start using a 'handicap' system.

There is already a rating system in place to adjust mission difficulty, i'm just going to assign BMs and Merc units a 'handicap' that will be used to modify the difficulty of the missions they receive.

This rating will go up and down based on the synergy i see in a unit, and the effectiveness they display... or the tragedies that they suffer.  In this way units that have suffered obnoxious losses can look forward to some easier missions to help get them back on their feet.  Units that have been mangling missions at will, can look forward to more challenging missions appropriate to their talent which will come with appropriately bigger pay checks to reflect the challenge of their missions.

 Anyone got any extra Duck Tape so that i can strap my mech together?.