As I write this, the hearing in Seattle today on Catalyst Game Labs’ future is about to begin. For those who have not been keeping score, three parties are seeking for force CGL into bankruptcy in order to recover money they feel is owed to them. In dollar terms, the primary claimant is Wildfire Press, [...]
Well, a beta release of the new Battletech RPG titled A Time Of War (aToW) is out and after having given it a good look, I can confidently say that I am …. frustrated. I have been waiting for a long time for a Battletech RPG that would work, in particular one that would [...]
So, I was looking through Total Warfare the other day and I noticed that they did have information in there on pilot advancement, which I thought had been left out. Basically 8XP increases gunnery and 4XP increases piloting. It got me thinking about the XP costs I use in my own system. [...]
I always like to have names for all my pilots in a battletech campaign. Optimally I would also like to be able to give names to the OpFor pilots. Yeah, its just fluff, but I like that kind of stuff. I have used other name generators around the web in the past to come up [...]
Every merc unit needs access to the marketplace to survive. Below, I cover the three things you can do in the marketplace: buying, selling, and recruiting.
Buying and Selling
Buying and selling units is pretty simple in my track system. The cost of each unit in SP is given by:
SP cost = C-bill cost / [...]
If there is one area where I think the track system is flawed it is skill advancement. Because the basic track system rules give a very low SP cost for pilot advancement, a pilot can easily go from Green (5/6) to Elite (2/3) in only six tracks.
I have adjusted these rules in two ways. [...]
The track system generally provides three pieces of information on the OpFor for each track: (1) Their size relative to the player’s forces; (2) their overall skill level; and (3) their tech level. Sometimes additional information on the composition of forces is provided (all conventional, all mech, etc.). Let me discuss how I use this [...]
The basic wartrack system just uses a simple tonnage system to determine support point costs of repairs. I have extended this system in two ways. First, I vary the costs by degree of damage and second, I base the cost of repairs on the total cost of the unit.
To determine degree of damage, I [...]
I have really enjoyed the Chaos Campaign track system that Catalyst Game Labs has put into their Jihad Hot Spots sourcebooks. For those who aren’t familiar with it, the track system allows for a highly abstracted method of running your own unit through a series of scenarios. The system relies on an abstract set of [...]
Awhile back, I downloaded some nice data on the x-y location of very planet in the Battletech universe from the Inner Sphere Cartographic Society, which unfortunately does not appear to be very active any longer. One of the nice features of the data is that it provides the affiliation of each planet at various points [...]