The first release of MekHQ is ready! This program is my attempt to create a campaign management system for use with MegaMek. Right now the program will let you load in a set of units via a MUL file and then perform repairs (and provide medical care) on those units, per the rules in StratOps. You can then spit these units out again into MUL files that can be loaded into a MegaMek game. Currently, only repairs for Meks and Vees are complete. Eventually, I would like to expand this program considerably. I will definitely be adding maintenance checks and parts/salvage in the short term. In the long term, I would like to incorporate other rules for running units, depending on what gets presented in Interstellar Ops. This will likely include finances and contract negotiations. If I can pull it off I would also like to throw in RATs and a random name generator for easy OpFor generation. Maybe even a stellar map, so that you can track travel and transport times. But that is all far in the future. For now the goal is to be as fully compliant with the repair and salvage chapter from StratOps as possible.
It looks like the sourceforge site that is hosting MekHQ. Is completely borked and my uploaded files are not showing in the files section. So for the time being, I am going to put the release file up on my blog:
mekhq-dev-svn-20090729.zip
Here are some screenshots of the program in action. First one of the hangar with work in progress:
Extra cookies to anyone who knows where the name “Space Zombie” comes from.
And here is one of the personnel screen:
Keep in mind that this in early release. I am largely releasing this for people interested in bughunting. If you find bugs or have features you would like to request, please use the tracker on the sourceforge site.
Enjoy!
Taharqa MekHQ
The map editor in MegaMek is admittedly a little arcane. Additionally, with all of the new building classes and the changes to gun emplacements, it can be a little daunting to try and create maps with buildings on them. This little tutorial is designed to show you how to get buildings and gun emplacements up and running for your MegaMek games.
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Taharqa Tips and Tutorials
We all have had the experience of waiting what seems hours for the bot in MegaMek to move. Many people give up on having games beyond about a lance in size when playing the bot due to the exponentially increasing time that the bot uses to calculate its moves. There are several ways that you can make the bot more efficient without a radical loss of time efficiency. I am going to outline below some of the procedures that I use when I play large games against the bot.
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Taharqa Tips and Tutorials
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 / 10,000
This is the recommended SP/C-bill conversion in the basic track system. There are two wrinkles that I add to this basic system. First, damaged mechs sell for less. Second, you can’t just buy whatever you want. You have to make a successful roll.
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Taharqa Track System
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. First, in addition to the SP cost, each pilot also accumulates XP points that must be spent for skill advancement. Second, both the SP and the XP cost of skill advancement is higher at higher skill levels.
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Taharqa Track System
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 information to build an OpFor.
Relative Size
The size of the OpFor is given as a percentage of the player’s deployed force (e.g. 125%). The track system suggests basing this on BV. I don’t base my ratios on BV for several reasons. First, given that I largely use random assignment tables, assigning a force based on BV is difficult. Second, I am not a huge fan of the BV system as I don’t feel you can really balance forces that simply in a game as complex as Battletech. Third, some tracks are meant to be more difficult or less difficult because of the skill level and technology rating of the OpFor and if you balance by BV, these differences are lost. This issue becomes particularly problematic if you balance BV with skill levels, because you lose any sense of progression as your own unit becomes more skilled.
For all of these reasons, I use a simple point-based system to assign the OpFor. Read more…
Taharqa Track System
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 have five categories:
- Minor Repair: If the only thing damaged on the unit is armor, then it falls into the minor repair category.
- Heavy Repair: If the unit suffered any internal structure and/or component damage, then it falls into the heavy repair category.
- Crippled: If the unit is crippled as per the Forced Withdrawal rules, then typically it falls into this category. I also put units that suffer engine destruction, but still have CT internal structure in this category.
- Destroyed: Center torso destruction.
- Totally Destroyed: as per the rules in TacOps.
I am not a stickler about these rules, and I allow myself fudge room to sometimes place a unit in one category or the other. So, for example, a mech who suffered a medium laser to the head that TAC’ed the cockpit, but otherwise had no other damage, would likely be considered a Minor Repair, even though the category by the rules would be Heavy Repair.
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Taharqa Track System
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 “warchest points” (WP) that partially reflect hard cash, but also represent other more intangible resources like prestige, grit, and knowledge. You can spend these WP on repairing and upgrading units, improving skills, buying new units, etc.
Each Jihad book contains a series of tracks that you can run your unit through. Each track has a WP cost to enter and a WP reward for completing each objective. The progression is not simply linear, because the completion of certain tracks makes available only certain future tracks, so someone can play through the track system several times and have different experiences each time.
Catalyst has made the official track system rules available for free. You can get them here. I have run two units through the track system. I first ran my own merc unit through JHS3070, playing against the bot in MegaMek. However, I found that somewhat unsatisfying because the bot is fairly limited. Luckily, I have now found someone to play against on a weekly basis and I am now running my Flaming Devil Monkeys mercenary unit through the track system.
Although I love the general idea of the track system, I have found that the official rules are somewhat lacking. I have made a number of tweaks to the system based on my first experience playing through them and I have found the results to be quite good. So, I decided I would go ahead and let others know about my own house rules in case they want to incorporate them into their own gameplay.
In tweaking the system, I have attempted to maintain the basic idea of the track system: remaining abstract and not getting tied down by a lot of complicated bookkeeping. In future posts, I will, in no particular order, highlight some of the changes I have made.
Taharqa Track System
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 in time.
I have played around with this data a bit in the statistical software program I use for work, R. I have been able to produce pretty nice maps of the Inner Sphere as well as some functions that can plot particular planets and planets around them for a specified radius of light years.
Recently, I decided to put this data to another use. I have been playing out a Jihad Chaos Campaign for the last six months or so, and although I have a vague sense of where most of the planets for the tracks are located, I am often fuzzy on the details. So I decided to design up a map that shows the “path” taken (or more correctly, to be taken) by my mercenary unit across the Inner Sphere during the Jihad. Most of the path is still just projected because in actuality, I am still on the final track of Dawn of the Jihad (located on Giausar on the border of the Lyran Alliance and the Free Worlds League). Here is the map:
I was actually surprised by how reasonable those paths were. I had a sense that my unit was bouncing much more haphazardly across the Inner Sphere. But most distances are fairly short and most of the action has been on the “left side” of the sphere. Anyway, hope you enjoy.
Taharqa Battletech, Flaming Devil Monkeys
