963 replies to this topic

[Metus regem]

Bishop Steiner, on 20 October 2014 - 10:24 AM, said:

Ah. Yeah.


Also had other things that players never got.

Had one guy jump off a 15 story building in his MDC armor, and in a different game, a Samas lose it's wing and crash from 1000 meters.

Both tried to argue the ground was SDC and would not have breached their armor, etc.
http://en.wikipedia....drostatic_shock

Both really got miffed when I used the SDC explanation example in the book of the guy jumping on a grenade. The Samas and Body armor were both quite salvageable. But their was a lot of pink slime, inside, to hose out of both, first.

Always did like Rifts. Did think now that you mention it, that the 4% rule was a little..extreme. That said, guy in full MDC body armor jumps in front of Boom gun blast. IDC what the total damage done is respective to the armor. Guy inside just got flung back about 100 ft, got his limbs twisted and contorted, on the miracle that section of armor didn't buckle and breach, the shear force transferred by hydrostatic shock would likely have ruptured a lot of squishy organs.

I may be nice and let the guy live, but he was usually in the hospital for the foreseeable future, and often in need of shiny new cybernetics.

And that's where the 4% rule would have been handy, the Boom Gun does 3d6X10, so minim of 30 points, he would need to have 750 MDC body armour for shot not to go through him, and 9,000 MDC to avoid a crit damage from the boom gun from turning him into a fine pink paste.

[Bishop Steiner]

cdlord, on 20 October 2014 - 10:24 AM, said:

I have played Rifts for decades and know not of a 4% rule. Can someone enlighten me please?

Rifter magazine , I believe. A lot of optional "realism" rules are added into it. Not a core rule, as I recall, though here we do like to "Corerule Ignore" anyhow, lol.

Metus regem, on 20 October 2014 - 10:29 AM, said:

And that's where the 4% rule would have been handy, the Boom Gun does 3d6X10, so minim of 30 points, he would need to have 750 MDC body armour for shot not to go through him, and 9,000 MDC to avoid a crit damage from the boom gun from turning him into a fine pink paste.

Yeah. My solution was simpler.

Body armor and personal weapons just got the MDC severely lowered. Having pistols doing more MDC than the full size railguns on a Coalition Abolisher Robot Vehicle was just DUMB. And there were tons of man pack weapons with stock rifts stats that would 4% insta kill you in any body armor. So I never used it because i felt it was a poor solution, considering the damage discrepancies in general. I mean the old Pulse laser rifle in Sourcebook one could do 1d6x10. So even with ultra heavy 250 MDC armor, a manpack weapon would auto kill you in the heaviest mdc armor you can carry.

My home rules are all stuck on a harddrive in my old busted computer, but I think that the adjusted HEAVIEST manpack "anti vehicle" weapons were only capable of 5-6d6, and that was for crew served railguns, full size missile launchers firing SRMs, etc. I think I had mini missiles doing only 3-4d6 tops.

And the heaviest personal armor was about 100 MDC, and that was for the enhanced coalition model, and stuff used by Juicers and Borgs.

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 20 October 2014 - 10:35 AM.

[Metus regem]

Bishop Steiner, on 20 October 2014 - 10:30 AM, said:

Rifter magazine , I believe. A lot of optional "realism" rules are added into it. Not a core rule, as I recall, though here we do like to "Corerule Ignore" anyhow, lol.

Really? It's in my first edition of the Robotech RPG.... Right next to the fruit punch stain from my buddy from when we were in high school....

[UrsusMorologus]

People use meta different on these forums than elsewhere that I've seen. Basically it means that gameplay boils down to archetypes and eventually all gameplay devolves to the playing the archetypes rather than focusing on the immediate play. Its very common in card games, like in blackjack you play the odds not the hand, "I drew a hard 18" everybody knows what happened next. In an RPG game you might say "I fought his paladin swordsman with my elf necromancer " and everybody knows exactly what happened, what spells were used, what gear was worn, everything, because the archetype are known within the metagame. Same thing here, "I caught his ac40 jager with my 5D spider" and you have a rough idea of what happened. The way people use it here is something else, like "flavor of the month" or something, but thats not the traditional usage as I have seen it. I dont think it matters much though.

[AlmightyAeng]

1453 R, on 20 October 2014 - 10:28 AM, said:

Not quite.

For the example DRG-1N, for instance, the AC/5 quirks would be split to, effectively, 25% general ballistic cooldown + 25% additional AC/5 cooldown (or 20/30, which would also work), but then the thing would also get the same sort of split on its energy quirks. 10/15% split for its ERLL giving it some benefit to every beam, whilst giving a larger benefit to its PGI-approved loadout.

In such a way a Gauss/ML Gaussdragon build would still pick up some benefits from the quirks, enough to help it out against Jagers a bit and to put a smile on its pilot's face again, but players who do the dual AC/5 build Piranha favors get the bigger boost. This favors stock(ish...) loadouts as TT guys favor and point different people at different chassis, but without straight-up mouthpunching folks who've perhaps sunk a bunch of sweat and effort into a build Piranha is now basically telling them to discard.

The main argument against this proposal seems to be that some players feel that it muddies the waters and dilutes the entire purpose of the quirks system by making role/niche delineation less clear-cut, but my own thoughts are that less clear-cut delineation isn't necessarily a bad thing. And also I'm pretty sure that's not the case, as an extra double-plus of the stated bonus for the specific weapon would be a pretty starkly clear indication to new players of how Piranha wants them to play their 'Mech.

I suppose, but PGI is also taking the approach of 'less is more' when it comes to buffs these days, it seems, and adjusting after if necessary.

Buffing EVERY single weapon the Dragon could take, alongside a bigger buff for a specific weapon, may take the chassis out of line for where they want it. Who knows? Maybe a second pass will see the Dragon getting more generic buffs, too.

[Bishop Steiner]

Metus regem, on 20 October 2014 - 10:32 AM, said:

Really? It's in my first edition of the Robotech RPG.... Right next to the fruit punch stain from my buddy from when we were in high school....

what page? I think I still have the macross one around. Somewhere. Or at least on PDF.

Seems crazy to mention it in Macross Sourcebook, since,...... there really was no MDC body armor, lol.

[Metus regem]

Bishop Steiner, on 20 October 2014 - 10:37 AM, said:

what page? I think I still have the macross one around. Somewhere. Or at least on PDF.

Seems crazy to mention it in Macross Sourcebook, since,...... there really was no MDC body armor, lol.

I'll look when I get home, have to dig it out of the tub where I keep all my gaming books so the Toddler doesn't destroy them...stupid tub weighs like a 150 pounds... 20 years worth of gaming books in there for several system...

makes a good table for the key board and mouse though..

[UnsafePilot]

When one of you goes through your old books do me a favor and look up omnimech construction rules. I'd still like to know how badly we were breaking the game by swapping our weapon loadouts.

[Bishop Steiner]

UnsafePilot, on 20 October 2014 - 10:43 AM, said:

When one of you goes through your old books do me a favor and look up omnimech construction rules. I'd still like to know how badly we were breaking the game by swapping our weapon loadouts.

Omnis had unlimited capability for weapon swaps limited only by Podspace, Critical spaces per location, and their locked cores. You could NOT change Internal Structure, Armor type or quantity, Engines, and whatever were considered "chassis mounted" stock Heatsinks. Also several had specific hard mounted items like TCs in the Warhawk, Flamer on the Adder and BAP on the Myst Lynx.

Beyond that, within Game Master or tourney rules limitations, the sky was the limit, which is part of what made them more powerful than IS mechs, on top of their more advanced systems.

The Caveat being, unless one was High Ranking, Bloodnamed or some other type of Ristar, one could not customize their mech, but were limited to the "Omni Configurations" listed in the TROs.

99% of mechs were stock configuration, IS and Clan, and even most customizations were necessary ones, like your unit not having any PPCs left to fix the arm on your Marauder, so you used a Large Laser. But since the mech was not designed around that, there were modification rules that may incur negative quirks for doing so.

In RPGs, of course, players always play the 1%. The downside? In a mass Multiplayergame, if everyone is still the 1%, then you lose all the flavor of the actual game.

When you house rule played TT, was all the enemy and auxiliary mechs custom designs? I am betting not. And that is part of the issue with MWO currently, and why the near stock Quirks are GOOD, because it will give players reasons to play closer to stock should they choose, and return the actual flavor to the IP, within reason.

Unlimited Customization truly only works, balance wise, in limited Solaris 7 style Comp Leagues.

[Almond Brown]

Alek Ituin, on 20 October 2014 - 09:47 AM, said:

Using the same analogy, Pilot A could feasibly add a second Vulcan instead of the single GAU-8. I guess it would be something like a "Minor" upgrade kit using your original idea. That also leaves the GAU-8 to the A-10, giving it a solid purpose as being a gun with a plane strapped to it.

Yay for variety!

(You could totally add a second Vulcan to the F-22 IRL, they're actually quite compact rotary cannons, and the F-22 is massive)

They likely could have but someone, somewhere did the Maths and decided a 2nd Vulcan would be great but the ammo required to run 2 (for any length of time) would not be feasible.

Ammo is very heavy for a 20mm (3.5oz/shell) that fires at a "extremely high rate".

Thus 4.5 shells per pound per gun @ 6000rnds/sec = 1330lbs/fired per second x 2.

How many seconds of Vulcan Cannon fire would you like Captain?

[UnsafePilot]

Bishop Steiner, on 20 October 2014 - 10:52 AM, said:

Omnis had unlimited capability for weapon swaps limited only by Podspace, Critical spaces per location, and their locked cores. You could NOT change Internal Structure, Armor type or quantity, Engines, and whatever were considered "chassis mounted" stock Heatsinks. Also several had specific hard mounted items like TCs in the Warhawk, Flamer on the Adder and BAP on the Myst Lynx.

Beyond that, within Game Master or tourney rules limitations, the sky was the limit, which is part of what made them more powerful than IS mechs, on top of their more advanced systems.

The Caveat being, unless one was High Ranking, Bloodnamed or some other type of Ristar, one could not customize their mech, but were limited to the "Omni Configurations" listed in the TROs.

99% of mechs were stock configuration, IS and Clan, and even most customizations were necessary ones, like your unit not having any PPCs left to fix the arm on your Marauder, so you used a Large Laser. But since the mech was not designed around that, there were modification rules that may incur negative quirks for doing so.

In RPGs, of course, players always play the 1%. The downside? In a mass Multiplayergame, if everyone is still the 1%, then you lose all the flavor of the actual game.

When you house rule played TT, was all the enemy and auxiliary mechs custom designs? I am betting not. And that is part of the issue with MWO currently, and why the near stock Quirks are GOOD, because it will give players reasons to play closer to stock should they choose, and return the actual flavor to the IP, within reason.

Unlimited Customization truly only works, balance wise, in limited Solaris 7 style Comp Leagues.

So it sounds like we weren't breaking the rules so much as we were lying to ourselves about our rank within the military. Then again that's just an RP issue between a few friends.

Most of our TT games were friendly skirmishes between our omni's. When we used other units they weren't customized as far as I can remember.

The quirk system really seems like the best middle ground between Full Stock/intended role and the anything goes MW2 style we have currently; But I still maintain that BT has allowed me to customize my loadout in all of the incarnations I've tried.

Edited by UnsafePilot, 20 October 2014 - 11:03 AM.

[KraftySOT]

Though one thing to consider in the TT is that theres so many mechs out there, that basically whatever configs you could dream up here, are already out there.

Not to mention alot of tourneys accepted some of the mechs in the newsletters and magazines. The Rattler was one of my favorites. 12 mgs on an atlas, with a hatchet.

If you wanted nothing but medium laser boats, you could pull that off alot of the time. Theres just so many.

As its evolved over the years, theres just about every loadout imaginable available as stock. If we had as many mechs to choose from here, customization being rare would work just fine. Id love to see that too. It just seems to take a ridiculous amount of time to make the mechs themselves.

[Bishop Steiner]

Almond Brown, on 20 October 2014 - 11:01 AM, said:

They likely could have but someone, somewhere did the Maths and decided a 2nd Vulcan would be great but the ammo required to run 2 (for any length of time) would not be feasible.

Ammo is very heavy for a 20mm (3.5oz/shell) that fires at a "extremely high rate".

Thus 4.5 shells per pound per gun @ 6000rnds/sec = 1330lbs/fired per second x 2.

How many seconds of Vulcan Cannon fire would you like Captain?

So, had they decided that the role of the F22 was ground attack, anti helicopter, etc, it might almost make sense...except one generally doesn't use a supersonic 150 million dollar semi stealthy fighter to poorly do what an 11.8 million dollar A10 already does better. (something the idiots trying to phase the a10 out for the f35 need to have explained to them...except the real answer for that is kickbacks from Lockheed Martin and subsidiary weapons contractors)

Sounds like the idea of...Role Warfare. Something these Quirks seem to be encouraging. Aka...if you WANT to play an F-22, Play an F-22. If you want to play an A10, play it. But the a10 should be a better a10 than if you slap the a10s gun onto an f22. And that oddly, the A10, does its job (aka ROLE) better with a single GAU-8 than multiple 20mm vulcans or other guns.

Yet this is exactly what people are complaining about. That the Hunchback will excel at the role it was meant to, possibly better than their Shadowhawk does at imitating an HBK, now.

Sorry guys. You can modify mechs, but they have optimal roles. Whether the quirks paint it out for you or not, they always have. But sometimes, due to meta (and well, Paul), the WRONG roles became optimized and promoted. At no time should the Victor, a mech designed as a close combat design, have become a better PPC sniper than a mech like the Awesome that was designed to be just that. Jump Jets or not. And it certainly should not have been optimal at that role over the CQB role it WAS designed for.

[KraftySOT]

Bishop Steiner, on 20 October 2014 - 11:12 AM, said:

, the WRONG roles became optimized and promoted. At no time should the Victor, a mech designed as a close combat design, have become a better PPC sniper than a mech like the Awesome that was designed to be just that. Jump Jets or not. And it certainly should not have been optimal at that role over the CQB role it WAS designed for.

Which has always been a problem in the series, and fans sadly have been telling them this for years, and you get hardpoints and such as a result. Customization gets accepted as a part of the franchise, but no one was ever willing beyond hardpoints to take a step towards moving customization to something OTHER than stock loadouts, or just simply making it more difficult to do.

Quirks is a great inbetweener. Its not forcing you to do anything, its just softly compelling you to.

Ideally...in a perfect world...youd have almost every mech from the TROs in the game, and theyd be basically stock, with alot of really intricate customization options (like say...which manufacturers medium laser over another, one has more range, less damage, another less cycle, but less range, etc, thunder lrms, infernos, artemis, neurohelmet or interface upgrades, "software" upgrades, upgrade modules to change out bigger weapons).

So if you REALLY want whatever loadout it is...you can have it. Just not on the chassis you maybe want...but thats a twisted result of the PC series. I mean who on their right mind WANTS to take a Marauder and put AC10s on it and srms. Seriously.

People just want whatever works, or whatever they like. If they like AC10s and SRMs, theres about a bazillion chassis that offer that. If they want dual guass. Well theres only a few. But they exist. Do they want a Wubwubwubwub? Theres dozens of those. They just cant take their Victor and turn it into one. They have to get that mech. And even then theres still ALOT of options.

But who knows, maybe everyone would think that sucks.

[Eddrick]

Whenever, I ran TT games. I took the Construction Rules literaly. By using them. You create a Mech from scratch. Which, takes a LONG time according to the MechWarrior character handbooks.

I allowed them 1 Created Mech and 1 Stock Mech. Neither could be altered in any way. The created Mech could be whatever they wanted it to be. It didn't even have to be based off of any of the BattleTech Mechs. Just as long as its creation fallowed the Construction Rules.

Oddly, me and everyone went with fewer, bigger weapons then lots of smaller ones. None of them had more them 3 weapons.

Edited by Eddrick, 20 October 2014 - 11:33 AM.

[Metus regem]

Bishop Steiner, on 20 October 2014 - 11:12 AM, said:

So, had they decided that the role of the F22 was ground attack, anti helicopter, etc, it might almost make sense...except one generally doesn't use a supersonic 150 million dollar semi stealthy fighter to poorly do what an 11.8 million dollar A10 already does better. (something the idiots trying to phase the a10 out for the f35 need to have explained to them...except the real answer for that is kickbacks from Lockheed Martin and subsidiary weapons contractors)

No the A-10 is being phased out due to the age of the Air frame, it entered service in 1977, and the last one was built in 1984, that makes the newest one 30 years old... the same thing happened when the A6-E was replaced by the F/A-18, age.

That being said is the F-35 a good replacement? No, not by a long shot. It is a bit faster, but shorter range, lower YPR, smaller weapons payload, but hey, it is stealth right? A little.

The thing is, before the F-35's would be deployed the E-18G Growlers will have gone in, and removed the bulk of the SAM (Surface to Air Missile) sites using HARM missiles....

Gods I spend too much time dealing with this kind of stuff with what I do...

[KraftySOT]

And the least fair period of Battletech to me, was right before the clans. When there were less than 40 total mechs. Some designs were simply useless unless you liked kicking shins for two hours in the garage until someone fell over and couldnt get back up.

Then the clans albeit rather lame...did spawn a ridiculous amount of mechs both clan and IS. To the point where theres so many, that the bad designs just melt into the fabric. Theres so many variants of the designs too.

If you cant find exactly what you want out of the several thousand mechs and variants that exist now. Theres something bloody wrong with you. Every thing you can imagine, every lame munchkin design, to every horrible small laser and SRM 2 medium mech out there...it exists.

So actually digging into either set of rules for customizing your mech, or trying to figure out how to apply the repair rules to it, or just plain writing up your own mechs, seemed pointless.

The only time I did that was right when the clans came out because there were some clearly cheesey designs I wanted to try out and show off. Within a year...all those designs were in TROs.

So I never bothered doing anything but stock load outs ever again. Since theres always a stock load out to match my imagination.

[Bishop Steiner]

KraftySOT, on 20 October 2014 - 11:20 AM, said:

People just want whatever works, or whatever they like. If they like AC10s and SRMs,

but because reasons! I want to make my Marauder into a Hammerhands, cuz I like how the Marauder looks better!

[KraftySOT]

Bishop Steiner, on 20 October 2014 - 11:29 AM, said:

but because reasons! I want to make my Marauder into a Hammerhands, cuz I like how the Marauder looks better!

Yup that makes me want to pound my face into the desk. Never understood that.

[Bishop Steiner]

Metus regem, on 20 October 2014 - 11:25 AM, said:

No the A-10 is being phased out due to the age of the Air frame, it entered service in 1977, and the last one was built in 1984, that makes the newest one 30 years old... the same thing happened when the A6-E was replaced by the F/A-18, age.

That being said is the F-35 a good replacement? No, not by a long shot. It is a bit faster, but shorter range, lower YPR, smaller weapons payload, but hey, it is stealth right? A little.

The thing is, before the F-35's would be deployed the E-18G Growlers will have gone in, and removed the bulk of the SAM (Surface to Air Missile) sites using HARM missiles....

Gods I spend too much time dealing with this kind of stuff with what I do...

Airframe has been tested sound. NO stress shown, and the one component most likely to fatigue, the wings, were and or are, being upgraded already to new wings.

At best, idiot military brass is attempting to replace something without actually having a better replacement. At worst, some individuals are angling for special "advisory" roles with certain defense contractors once they hang up their nuggets, wings, etc.

In the time honored Military Brass on the take tradition. Really no different than doctors pushing pills for the Pharmaceuticals, or Politicians being lapdogs for the Special Interest Groups.

The A!0 not that long ago had been tested and rated to stay in the fleet til 2028, at the earliest, I believe. And now suddenly, it's falling apart?

Nope.

Metus regem, on 20 October 2014 - 11:25 AM, said:

That being said is the F-35 a good replacement? No, not by a long shot. It is a bit faster, but shorter range, lower YPR, smaller weapons payload, but hey, it is stealth right? A little.

The thing is, before the F-35's would be deployed the E-18G Growlers will have gone in, and removed the bulk of the SAM (Surface to Air Missile) sites using HARM missiles....

Gods I spend too much time dealing with this kind of stuff with what I do...

It also has a much higher stall speed, spends less time on target, can sustain considerably less ground fire.......

Also, the A10 doesn't require ANOTHER craft to enter airspace ahead of it. It is still in top shape, and the premier ground attack, counter insurgency aircraft in the world. By a lot.

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 20 October 2014 - 11:35 AM.