FGC Rules discussions

[Fatebringer]

This thread is a for rules discussions in general, what you like, what you don't like, how you would like to see things work in general, not just for the current game, but for any future games. While this board is relatively quiet now, I am hopeful for the first time in a long time that we will get a solid long term game on here again.

[Fatebringer]

First Discussion!

MP, your viewpoints on MP vs set floatilla's ala the Flashpoint system or something new....

[Fatebringer]

My personal viewpoint is that I like the Floatilla system. You know exactly what you can carry, but maning a bunch of extra units strictly for the purpose of unit delivery was tedious in Flashpoint. It had a great system for unit delivery, but man was it unbalanced. I felt for anyone who had to try to deliver their units past my Clan Dropship blockades. The IS's weak Dropships barelly stood a chance. It did lead to the need for more aero support, but Tech and size limitations plus only being able to use one unit at a time, really gave an advantage to the Clans again as I could take 1 ASF wing and hold off an intire invasion with my High Tech and Elite pilots. The upside was realism, the down side was imbalance. In one battle, a Wing of Legendary Wolf's Dragoons were tasked with trying to stop a Thera... I don't care how elite you are, you're not taking down a Thera. The BV was matched pretty close due to the Legendary Cost Modifier, but still... in actual megamek the Dragoons never even made it past the dropships and fighters to the Thera. Anywho, that's just a little rant to explain the difficulty involved.

MP Costs in previous incarnations of the game were ludicrously high. No one ever purchased MP unless they had to. I personally sold MP at a general cost of 1 RP (or FP of Faction specific designs) for every 50 MP and people would allow people to trial for adjust rates. Double MP for win vs me, 1/2 MP for a loss, either way, my value was still higher then the base costs at 25 to 1 for a loss.

[Fatebringer]

I am also a strong believer that we should update the planetary options to include more types of worlds. The Clan Homeworlds were completley inbalanced to make faction cohesion. I'm not sure that should change. Anyway, the following is just a rough impression, but I was inspired by the images I see of America at night and how more highly populated areas brighter. This also could lead to objectives for opposing players to reduce a worlds value.

For Example:

National Capitol - Reach Realm could only have 1 National Capitol. Generates 5 RP (The increased value would benefit smaller nations - 20 FP Militia)

Core Worlds - Highly Visible Jewel of the Nation. Generated 2 RP (Regional Capitol Worlds, Worlds with Multiple Industies. We could also make planetary upgrade a requirement for factions that want the world to reach a certain industrial size. It would also slow down expansive build up to a reasonable level for this kind of upgrade and a higher limit of Hex Improvements, but as an offset, provide a 10% Economic Bonus on revenue generated from Hex improvement - 8 FP Militia)

Primary Worlds - Worlds of value that participate to the economy. Generates 1 RP (Can have up to 5 Hex Improvements and provides a 5% Economic Bonus on revenue generated from Hex improvement, 4 PF Militia)

Control Worlds - They still contribute, Generate .5 RP (2 Hex Impvement limit, 2 FP Militia)

Member Worlds - The scarely inhabited or destitute worlds. Generates .25 ( Limit 1 Hex Improvement, 1 FP Militia)

Adding / updating Planetery categories has many game possibilies, the chief of which is that it would increase revenue per faction and allow the application of cost modifiers mean more. Plus it's a good justification for some game balances. One of the things people told me when I did all my research on the Capellan Confederation was the even though they less worlds, most of the Capellan worlds are highly populated. This can be reflected in less member worlds and more Control Worlds, while the Lyrans money is also not well balanced. Yes they have lots of money, this could be reflected in an increase of Core and Primary worlds while keeping the number of Member worlds relatively unchanged. I think one of the best game balancing examples would be the Fed Suns. While they have lots of worlds, many many of the out-back worlds would be member worlds. Also, different quality worlds should have different types of Militias (Militia Values based on an RP Production x 4 equation)

[Fatebringer]

I personally think the revamp to the Naval Tab was one of the best fixes to the game as it seperated squadrons by #'s of Light, Medium, Heavy fighters. While I personally hate Equipment Tables, it did assist with define final values. If the value of a Squadron was arbitary, that would be the same story, but without the equipment tab.

I think the increased planetary revenue would really fix some of the imbalance that is out there. This would also support the changes to the unit costs system, maybe even allow for some amazing reworks to the value system. The original orders I had came with another excel file that defined units by Stars and Tech Value. There is no reason that info cannot be reapplied to the orders in an expandable tab the way that it was for the Naval Tab.

Defining the units by sizes applied made a huge difference in ensuring that players were using the right types of units in megamek. Right now, once a ground unit is made, it becomes an amalgumous value that the player interprets any way they want. Unless a players wants to keep the intent of the unit they don't have to.

In essence what I'm saying is create unit costs by the faction's staple "Star" or "Lance" values and track them like we do Escort Fighters now. With the increased revenue the value would be about the same and allow for more variation while locking down what I consider a big problem, players just showing up with nothing but munch mechs.

[Fatebringer]

In regards to Upkeep, the Flashpoint orders were very nice, I like the idea of diminishing return on a military ensuring that they will not just get infinatly larger. It also meas that for larger projects, like stopping the clans, it could not be the responsiblity of just one faction as a faction could never get large enough to support itself to that size. I think the costs should be a % of the military size, not a % of the factions economy though. Upkeeps based on Faction size should only apply to economic factors. The fact that most of the Flashpoint missions were based on %'s reaaaally hurt the larger factions. A small faction could really clean up. If you guys ever saw what I was able to do with the Wolves-in-Exile... they were a tiny faction with one of the most potent militaries because they would trade missions for cash. The mission was a huge break for a large faction that only paid 2/3'rds to 1/2 of what the mission would have cost them, but the Wolves got 3 times their national income and could run another 15 missions with that much money. In that game if you were a large faction not making deals with small factions, you suffered. I think this is quite evident with the horrible start for the Federated Suns in that game. It wasn't until later when they lost about 6 districts and made deals with the Raven Alliance who was much smaller than them, to clean up some of their toxic worlds that anything good started to happen for them.

Anywho, back to the topic of Upkeep, I still like the idea, but any the most important thing for a mega game like the FGC is to keep as much of the actual math doesn't have to be done by players. The excel based orders are a blessing to large scale factions. I've gone thru some of the calculations when I had to augment the "New Dominion" Orders to accomodate multiple Equipment tables based on three factions in one and it gave me a healthy respect for how much I didn't have to do. Upkeep would have to be like that.

[Arkansas Warrior]

An idea that crossed my mind a while back regarding pirate transit: Give bonuses to a faction that has owned a world for a while when they're jumping into that system.  IIRC a large part of hitting pirate points is knowing the system's gravity well.  It makes sense that long-time owners would have a detailed map of planetary bodies, moons, etc that influence gravity, and would know when and where to find pirate points better than a faction without such a history.  So, for example, the Capellans would get a significant bonus to their Pirate Transit rolls against Sarna March or St. Ives worlds, since they used to own them and presumable have good maps.

[Fatebringer]

I understand the concept to that and knowing where the pirate points are is a foregone conclution, but how often would they have actually planned or used those points?

[Iron Mongoose]

I think I agree with AW about the pirate points.  Just patrolling a system regularly (something most nations do just for customs/terriff porposes) is going to involve maping out basic pirate points, and also the more commonly used non-basic ones.  Years of prepairing to defend Sarna against a Davion attack will have given the CC a wealth of data about every little rock in the system that they can use to find the craziest pirate points you could think of.

I know science types on the forums tend to point to the really basic types of pirate points (many of which have since been shown not to work, reflecting a relitively shalower level of thought put into things than we tend to give them credit for).  But, something like just jumping in between a planet and its moon is easy enough to be predictable.  If you really want to cause trouble, you'll find one in the middle of nowhere that just happens to come into alignment when all the planets and moons and asteroids are just so, that's really hard to predict and so going to be a long ways from any patrolls.  Not just something you or I could do on the back of an envalope, but the sort of thing it would take JPL and NASA months to grind out on supercomputers.

The FS already knows all thouse for Kathil and Robinson and New Avalon, the CC knows them for Capella and St Ives and Sarna, the LA knows them for Hesperus and Skye, and so on.  But, if the FWL wanted to hit Sarna, they'd have to go get their astronomy guys together and get some survays and grind it out.

[Iron Mongoose]

As to movement, MP is very abstract, but its a lot easier to track vs actualy having to know where your dropships are at any given moment.  If I was back in Clan Mongoose and I only had seven clusters, or even the Mandrills with about 20, it might be doable.  But even the CC with only ten regements and eight warrior houses, I could never hope to keep up.  Granted, I don't have to, because its yours Fate to do, but I won't wish it on anyone.

Then again, I have long argued that incomming our out going ground troops should be able to fight.  As is, they just lose automaticly even against the small forces we tend to see in this era.  But, a squadron of fighters shouldn't really be able to hold up a flotilla of dropships.  A regement using Union class ships would outnumber a squadron of fighters by 50%, after all, and even against a wing they could pit each of their dropships against just two fighters.  So, the idea that a 2-3FP wing of fighters should be able to keep a 20-30 FP RCT riding in two dozen dropships from a planet is silly. 

There should be able to be a fight.  That said, yes, if there were two or three wings, or if there was a warship, it should be a slaughter, absolultly.  But, even still there would be risks.  And if there were just a few system patrolls, it should be a risk, or even a slaughter the other way.

I don't know what sort of system that calls for.  I've proposed assigning ground units 1/4th is FP in space for each of their ground FP, which seemed reasonable to me at the time based on common dropship types.  I think that gives players more options.  Sure, maybe you can smash through that defending fighter wing, but if it can kill just .5FP of your space combat value, then that's 2 lost ground FP.  Is that worth it? 

And, as I've said, I still think most players will just continue to send their own air units in to sheppard their ground units down, as is done in canon anyway, and this rule will nearly never be used.  But, I've never liked the way that ground units were basicly impotent in space, despite having massive numbers of dropships avalable to them.

[Fatebringer]

I think the flashpoint system for entering, exiting and tracking game turns was a good one. Each turn had 6 phases. You could spend all 6 moving your unit if you had to. Or spending 4 to get to a system, 1 to approach the planet and 1 to land. Landing being contested and what not.

I like the idea of combat modifiers that copy what is really happening like a -2 to be hit and -4 to shooting when a unit is trying to evade combat by just running their asses off. In Megamek this is played off by taking a 50 x 50 hex board and just thrusting as fast as you can before you leave the other side. There were plenty of battle where people didn't want to fight, but they did some damage still.

[FoxxItal]

Personally i miss the days when it was all just Roleplaying and Megamek was a new spice to add for flavor, Then someone decided,"Hey lets add a bunch of intricate rules that when taken together get complicated and involve math" Seriously i noticed the decline in any FC the moment MATH  Enterd the picture. WE'RE CLANNERS! We don't use numbers, we use our hands and go ,"I'll take 4 point
  The big difference between the FC right now and a Mekwars server, is we put everything on digital paper and force people to find the value of a FP in relation to a quarter FP and how many MPs to get so i can move said FPs.

 That said i love roleplaying with you guys so while this is how i feel don't mistake that as me going around secretly bashing the FC. I just feel theres too many things that hamper and slow us down and turns this game not into a vehicle for roleplaying, but for playing Risk:Battletech.

 Like i know everyones joking, but it almost seems like if someone isnt bashing the shit out of someone else then everybody looks bored. 

[Iron Mongoose]

I don't entirely disagree.

The problem is, in a pure RP environment, every one wants to explore the limits of what the RP alows them.  If your cherictor is a successor lord or a khan, that means the full range of nearly every possible thing.

So, either you need a GM that's very quick on his feet who can devote 100 hours a week to the game, or you need rules to cover every eventuality, or else players get upset.  We tried the pure RP thing in FGC3, with basicly no rules and definatly no math, and while it was a lot of fun, as players (for perficly good IC reasons) pushed the envalope, it built up a lot of strain and made life hell for the GM (Ghost Bear).

If I was running a small RP campaign with three or four buddies, I wouldn't have half so many rules, because it would be easy enough to make up an appropreate rule on the spot.  In a game like this, and more over in a game like this game really wants in its heart to be, that is to say even larger with more players for each faction and more actions every turn and more smaller factions activated, you can't react that fast.  Everyone needs to know what to expect, what the rules are, so that they can anticapate what other players will do and what they can do. 

As a faction leader, one of the things that frusterated me the most was rules changes, even if it was for a positive reason that made the rule better, because it changed the status quo, and it upset the way the game was ballanced.  Imagine if there were no rules, and that could go down at any moment?

I think that if we could have our way, we could find people who want to be faction leaders and faction record keepers and let them do their thing, and there would still be room for people like Foxx and myself, who don't really care overly much for all that and do just want to RP and fight.  But as is, the game still needs to grow a bit.

[Bergie]

I've been fiddling with some rules of my own for the last couple years based on past experiences with FGC's.  The only problem is playtesting and getting other opinions.  Anyone want to take a look at them (kudos to Fatebringer for slugging through it already )

[Fatebringer]

It was my inspiration for this thread