MustrumRidcully, on 01 June 2017 - 05:33 AM, said:
One of the things I am wondering about regarding the evolution of the Battletech technology is - where the Clans (and even the Helm Memory Core technology) just built in to sell new material via power creep, or did it also address perceived flaws about the game so far?
Basically with XL Engines and Endo-Steel, mechs can start loading up more weapons than before ,and with double heat sinks they can also afford to do it. Mechs can also get faster. Clan Tech even add additional range to most weapons.
These are clear examples of power creep, but if BT veterans look back - was it also more enjoyable to play the game with such mechs? Did the original rules feel limiting?
I stopped playing TT within a year after clans in 1990 (so by 1991)
Before that BT was like early D&D and the later AD&D (before AD&D 2) where it was on the GM to use their imagination and come up with a good game, story, opposition that wasn't too hard nor too easy, etc.
The GM's ability to follow the old* law books adage of "this is but a guide" became a paint by numbers thing much like how law books are treated today.
*Defining old here as meaning in North America during the wild west days when the first law book (not sure what edition it stopped at) actually had "this is but a guide" printed in the front.
Don't know what the game developers had in mind.
However they had introduced IS dbl HS the previous year as 1 ton, 3 slot and it was so rarely seen in any TT game that when it or any appeared they where quickly sold/traded or the GMs made (via npc merchant) offers that were often seen as a fantastic amount of cbills, I only recall that several dbl hs could pay for a new smaller mech (whether light or medium I don't recall).
It was fun, originally most missions were fighting over water.
BT2 carried on in the Battledroids tradition but the stories and succession lines etc were expanding.
FASA sold magazines and books and those small novels that highlighted 1 particular type of mech (wasn't many types originally), lead figurines, extra maps and score sheets where sold separately (but we all photocopied the generic mech score sheets), etc.
FASA sold StarTrek magazines and was involved in other things...
So I've no doubt it was some attempt to push for additional sales.
In my particular case I purchased Mechwarrior 3050 and some other stuff from them and found it was divisive materials and the clans caused many arguments which honestly I see to this day in the forums. Clan mechs were twice as fast, had double the armor, dumped twice the heat, shot twice as far, parts used half the slots and used half the tonnage of old parts, etc. (That was the generalizm I heard used back then on several occasions.)
At the time plenty of us (in the groups I hung out with) saw it as a blatant money grab, because to play with the new mechs you/your gm would need the new books. But as time moved on I now wonder.
Did FASA attempt to simply kill off the original mechs just to avoid what happened later with the Harmony Gold lawsuit and the Unseen???
But as others already wrote, you'll only find out if the original creators (Jordan) can tell you, maybe.
Edited by Max Rickson, 01 November 2017 - 05:51 PM.
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