In June 2002 I was a member of a project group formed from members of our MW3/MW4 clan to program ourselves an own BattleTech Multiplayer Simulation due to our dissatisfaction with MW4 and the vanish of MPBT 3025.
The Engine we choosed was "Blitz3D", the internal project name was "MechSim 3025".
Due to some animosities aroused and harsh words spoken when our lead programmer get an additional artist into the boat which has been disliked personally by some of the teams other members, the project group unfortunately fell apart and the project was abandoned in November 2003.
The following is an exerpt ot the rules translations our team has developed:
TT turnlength: 10 seconds
TT hexsize: 30m
1. Movement
The most easiest way to translate TT movement into a realtime simulation is based on the terrain size scale. In our project, one "mapunit" was equal 1m². Test maps were at a maximum of 5km x 5km, while the targeted standard mapsize was 20 km x 20 km.
To find out the maximum speed for a certain unit (mech, vehicle, etc), multiply it's given running speed from the TRO's in hex with 3. The sum was the amount of mapunits it had to be able to travel in 1 second at full speed (at a fixed framerate of 30 frames per second (fps) for the animation cycle). The units animations had then to be finetuned to avoid sliding/skidding (the most time- and patience-consuming part).
2. Weapon Damage
Although we started with the given
weapon damage/heat/range from the basic TT and a
cooldown/recharge rate of 10 seconds for each weapon, we choosed to switch to the more satisfying
'Mech Duel Rules weapon stats from the "Solaris VII" boardgame (FASA 1660 - "Solaris VII - Gamemasters Book" ,Page 51).
Thoose "
quarter-scale system" named rules set were a direct derivate from the basic 10 second/30m scale to a 2,5 second/7,5m scale (1/4th) and a heatscale from 0 to 120 instead of 0 to 30 (for thoose who aren't familiar with the "Solaris VII" rules).
Within theese rules it would be theorethically possible to fire a weapon more than once in a 10 second "game round", but the increased heat produced (4 times larger than the values from the TT) would almost result in a instant shutdown trying this. Watching your Heatscale and
knowing your numbers was a must if you don't wanted to be a overheated sitting duck.
Standard heatsinks were able to dissipate 1 heatpoint in 2,5 seconds (at a rate of 0.004 heatpoints per 1/100th of a second).
To avoid instant pinpoint accuracy and "insta-coring", all weapons were slewed to a converging process of about 3 seconds. Firing a weapon before converging was reached resulted in a hit somewhere inside the aiming reticule instead of the "point" in it's middle. This was made visibly by some "dots" travelling from the outer ring of the reticule to it's center.
Each missile was a single instance with it's own tracking ability and turn rate. It was also planned to make an AC shot a single "slug" (which means an AC/5 has 5, an AC/10 has 10 slugs and so on). That way it would possibly "spread" an AC salvo instead of hitting all the same section.
3. Mech Customization
At the time the project was abandoned it wasn't planned to include a "MechLab". The only way to customize your mech was arranging certain weapons to certain TICs (
Targeting
Interlock
Circuits). But with all Mechs from the TRO 3025 and thoose from the "Battlepack: Fouth Succession War" with all their variants you'd have a bunch to choose from. I guess made from hardcore BT-Fans it would be unneccesary to mention that "MechWar 3025" included all "Unseens" including the Quads (which were very fun to steer! Ah, I loved that "Scorpion"! Nearly as much as my "Rifleman"
)
Edited by Arnold Carns, 27 February 2012 - 08:41 AM.
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