Orcinus, on 11 July 2012 - 11:50 AM, said:
AI can be reconnected, but it has to be done through in-game commands.
mekhq (available from the same site where megamek is downloaded) is the primary tool for setting up full campaigns for people to play
I, however, am not familiar with the workings of mekhq, so I can't be of much help beyond that
MekHQ is still very much a Beta.
That said, it does have some very useful features for campaign style play. I use it myself to manage 2 campaigns i'm running via MegaMek. If your looking for a tool to help you manage all the tedious book keeping involved in a BT TT campaign, it's a great fit.
I would not, however, recommend it to anybody who doesn't already have a fair understanding of those rules. It's a tool to help manage your game, not a replacement for rule comprehension.
As far as MegaMek goes.
I think it's important that people know that MegaMek and MekWars are two seperate things (although they are designed to fit hand and glove). MegaMek is are computerized version of the TT game. That's it. You don't need anything else to play it.
MekWars is a campaign manager for MegaMek that has some useful features, but the servers online aren't what i would call "true campaign" style play. They're more like a blend of campaign play and match making service.
I get by without MekWars. We use TeamSpeak for coms while playing (typing is sooo 1984) and i send out any custom maps or units that I'm going to have in the campaign out via Email, and the person with the most stable connection/hardware hosts the game while the rest of us connect via IP address and password.
After the game, i collect the unit files, and, as a GM, determine who wins/salvages what, and send that out via email. The players then make the decisions as to what they wish to do regarding their salvage, and i make the dice rolls for repairs based on their decisions.
I then present the players with a briefing (again via email) regarding their possible options for future action (although players are welcome to come up with their own ideas regarding what to do next, i usually manage to cover all the viable options), and they decide what actions they wish to take.
I spend a little time in the MegaMek map editor and MegaMekLab, and the entire process starts again.
Each campaign meets every two weeks, on alternating weeks. This gives all the sad sops I have for players time to respond to my emails around all their tedious Real Life concerns (poor buggers with all their jobs and families and what-nots).
As a side note, matches are never based on matching BVs. Players are given what info they have earned (via their own decisions regarding scouting/recon) and they decide where to go with what. If they decide to launch an assault against overwhelming numbers, then i can always just restart the campaign.
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