MechWarriors, Prepare for Battle!

 As a wargame, the FGC campaign’s combat system was at the heart of its rules. While members were always encouraged to play out there battles in MegaMek for maximum enjoyment and roleplaying value, the sheer scale of the campaign meant that many fights had to be settled using Simple Resolution, and alternate, dice-based combat system.

 As the FGC campaign grew and evolved, so did the Simple Resolution rules; in many respects this was good – loopholes were closed, special cases were addressed, and outcomes were made more realistic. At the same time, however, this increased the burden on members by adding more dice rolls and requiring more forum posts to complete combat.

 As part of the reboot of the FGC campaign, the Simple Resolution rules were given a total overhaul. Now fitting on a single page, each round of combat requires only two to four die rolls from each participant; many unneccessarily complex elements have been streamlined or removed entirely and the focus in general has moved back to ease of play.

 Some of the changes include:

• The term “unit” now only means an individual tactical unit (one ‘Mech, one tank, one platoon of infantry, etc.) – larger groups (formerly top-, middle-, and bottom-level units) are now uniformly referred to as “formations.” This may seem like a minor change, but it reduces potential ambiguity in terms of how rules are intended to be applied.
• Fractional accounting is gone. The old rules had an odd “round to the nearest quarter” provision that caused countless arguments about how it was meant to be applied. In the new campaign, all fractions are rounded up to the nearest whole number – no exceptions.
• Quality (formerly Skill Level) and Loyalty no longer modify unit Strength (formerly Force Point Value). Instead, these two statistics directly modify a formation’s die rolls during combat. Quality improves combat rolls and loyalty improves morale rolls.
• Critical hit confirmation rolls are gone, as are multiple critical strings, auto-win rolls, and penalty self-crits. Under the new rules if a formation rolls “double dice” (i.e. 1+1, 2+2, etc.) on their combat roll, they always get one critical event. The odds of getting a critical event are the same (17%) and an avoidable die roll is eliminated.
• Withdrawal checks are back in a greatly simplified form as a morale check. Hardened and Fanatical units get a bonus that makes them more likely to stand their ground in the face of danger. Now that it has tangible game benefits, a formation’s Loyalty rating is no longer a meaningless statistic.
• Damage Control is now more random, and a formation’s Quality rating influences the outcome of the roll.
• Last but not least, the combat rules have gone from about 1700 words to about 500.

Check out the preview of the revised rules on the INTELSER Forums!