Initiative

The fastest ways I've seen to resolve initiative are preplotting (secretly record all unit declarations simultaneously) and the playing card method (each unit acts when its assigned card is drawn).

What I'm going to propose is not as fast.

0. Before the game, assign point values to all units (say, BV2/100, round up). Multiply all units in the lower valued force by a factor which brings their total even with the higher valued force. Round any unit valued at less than a single point to tenths of a point.
1. Some units may be required to declare before standard initiative begins. They do so now. If both players have such units, the players alternate as in step 4.
2. At the beginning of any phase in which initiative matters, each player may designate any enemy units as "exempt" from standard initiative.
3. Each player secretly records declarations for as many of his own non-exempt units (at least one, assuming he has at least one non-exempt unit) as he wants, and tallies up their point values. Both players reveal and resolve those declarations.
4. The player whose tally is lowest openly declares actions until his tally exceeds his opponent's. Repeat until all non-exempt units have been declared.
5. Declare actions for "exempt" units, alternating as in step 4. (Given that players will tend to "exempt" enemies they don't care about, these could be resolved quickly and simultaneously.)

Simple Fantasy Halfbreeds

Progress Quest is a weird and satirical yet very authentic experience. As my Double Wookie Battle-Felon climbed to level 8, I got to looking at the game's racial types. They're really not that far off from what D&D-style games actually do. I've tried before to distill D&D3.X's sub-races into more efficient templates; looking back at that, I now realize that race and alignment can be collapsed directly into the base ability scores.

• "Elf"-ish ability score = dexterity, agility, foot speed, personal beauty, vision, hearing, affinity for & resistance to musical / mental magic.
• "Dwarf"-ish ability score = physical health and resilience, sprints, sense of position / direction / elevation / orientation, mechanical engineering / architecture, affinity for & resistance to runic (artifact-based) magic.
• "Orc"-ish ability score = size, strength, stamina, sense of smell, affinity for & resistance to blood magic.
• [Elemental] affinity score = terrain-specific survival & peasant skills, discipline, piety, ethereal awareness, affinity for & resistance to pact-based magic. (Choose an element: fire, water, earth, wind, wood, desert/void, light, dark, etc.)
• "Society" ability score = domestication, class, literacy, common lore, device skills, teamwork, leadership, loyalty, sensing motives, affinity for civilization & technology.
• "Detachment" ability score = coolness in the face of danger and horror, resistance to plight of others, resistance to magical healing and resurrection. (Also replaces stereotypical Cthulhu-esque insanity stats.)

Balancing the three bloodlines creates a human; raising the highest stat to double the second-highest creates a pure ("double") breed; in between lie all the shades of half-breed; terrain-specific [Elemental] breeds can give way to pure elemental sprites; "society" can indicate "high" or "low" breeds; hobbits, pixies, gnomes and goblins amount to "short" breeds; and any of the various animal-faced races can be emulated by relabeling Elf, Dwarf or Orc to the animal type. Use either your "society" score or the best-shared of the first four stats to try communicating in someone else's language.

"Detachment," "Society," and the ratio between the two offer a more concrete and nuanced view of "alignment" than the standard good-evil / law-chaos layout does. They don't address the character's goals or commitment to the party, but those things can make or break a campaign, and really ought to be hashed out with the group before play begins.

Without complex character builds, where will players turn to flex their stat-wonkery? I think it would be useful to treat lair design & stock scenarios the way character creation has been treated - point builds, random generation, class/level systems, with a few new options or ideas costed out in each splatbook to help sell more splatbooks. Can't hurt to turn player attention to something that's routinely in short supply, and to have your books always trying to address new & different aspects of an encounter.

PS: I prefer how D12s roll to how D20s roll. So, instead of rolling 1D20 against dodge+armor (or whatever action you're taking), roll 2D12 and assign one die result to accuracy and the other to potency.

Notable 'Mechs and MechWarriors

TR:3025 describes the "feats and foibles" of 168 Notable combatants. I think Steve (Centurion13) put it best when he said these sections read like a notation in a real military – they say what the person does, how they do it, and what impact it has on themselves and the people around them.

Besides giving players colorful characters to interact with, these kinds of briefs are essential to establishing a MechWarrior's-eye-view of known space. They form very careful ratios of rank, faction, and perhaps even gender. (Almost 29% of the Notables were women by a quick count, though I didn't record it.)

You can see a more detailed breakdown here.

Half of all Notables have no command rank; one quarter command a lance; one eighth command a company; the remainder spreads more or less evenly across battalion, regiment and ships; only two command more than a regiment; none of the 168 are House, mercenary or bandit leaders; and Natasha Kerensky is as close as they get to the stable of novelized point-of-view characters. 

TR:3025 was written in conjunction with the 1st edition MechWarrior RPG, and the number of 'Mech regiments that the RPG claims for each House is almost exactly three times the number of Notables TR:3025 assigns to that House. The ratios are so exact that I feel confident assigning Hap Carsburg (Dervish) to the Lyrans, Charles LaPierre (Ostsol) and Timothy O'Neil (Grasshopper) to the Capellans, and it's all but certain that there are 102 mercenary 'Mech regiments in known space in 3025.

I think future TROs would do well to follow the halving pattern for rank and to apportion factions according to the forces those factions actually field. (It'd also be good to have a sprinkling muster out, be drummed out, desert, defect, or otherwise change factions.)

It looks like the authors of TR:3025 wrote maybe half as many Notables to start and then did a second pass to even the ratios out. However, since BattleTech revolves around MechWarriors, the number of MechWarrior Notables per regiment is the best measure of factional bias. Not only do Steiner, Davion, and Mercenaries have disproportionately more MechWarriors than other Notables, but "slightly more than half" of Davion's 110 regiments are mercenaries, as are about one third of Steiner's. This exaggerates their existing bias and leaves few merc regiments to the other four factions.

(Considering this Davion/Steiner/Mercenary bias, the "students of history" and "Successor Lords" comments from the introduction, the "Comstar officials" comment from the HCT entry, the alleged Davion agent in the OSR entry, how designations for Kapteyn-exclusive designs (ie, their Aerospace fighters) differ from everything else, how the back cover quotes the New Avalon Herald, and how FASA had not yet begun using ComStar as their default neutral point of view: TR:3025 was most likely written either for academic (non-military) studies within the NAIS or by someone outside the Davion hierarchy as a guide for FedSuns-aligned mercenaries.)

Of the 168 Notables, a whopping 48 mention the condition of their machine. Twenty (12%) are in mint, best, or perfect condition. Twenty-eight (17%) are battered, scarred or understrength. (Notable Davion machines tend towards good condition. Steiner and Marik split more evenly.) Conversely, only thirteen (8%) of the 168 mention which variant they are. Of those thirteen, three (SDR, CPLT, WHM) specify the stock variant; three (WHM, VTR, BNC) specify an established variant; four (OSR, CP, Leopard, Overlord) modify their communications or electronics; and two (QKD, WSP LAM) have special armor.

Out of the whole book, only one Notable machine and combatant (HBK Shawn Philips) has unique game stats - and that was a rare ground-up assembly of a design already known to have a large class of undocumented variants. The universe is altogether more interested in the long lasting, preexisting damage to a given machine, and individual pilots are overwhelmingly more likely to restore a design than they are to alter it. What modifications they do make tend to fall outside the formalized rules or scales of play.

 

Two of TR:3025's Notable MechWarriors are notably dead. Since they are both on the same page (JN7) and one of them is really about the guy's present-day descendant anyways, I believe that page is an aberration. Historical figures (Aleksandr Kerensky, Ian Davion, etc.) belong to Battle History.

All 166 other Notable combatants are still live and active in the field. Sure, Maria Gutierrez (F-90) spends most of her time behind a desk, Sealth (ZEU) wants to retire, and a host of others have almost run out of luck. But their fates haven't been decided yet - that's up to the player. Cadre duty (including many of the highest ranked Notables) and bionic limbs seem to be as close as death and retirement can get before the person is no longer worth mentioning. (Mentioning in a TRO, anyhow. Feel free to discreetly finish one or two as Easter Eggs in scenario books or novels.)

The Repair Facility, MASH, Coolant Truck and Boomerang Spotter Plane (quite sensibly) have no Notable combatants. The J-27, Mobile HQ and Swift Wind note crew mainly for the continuously exceptional risks they take.

The Rommel/Patton also has no Notable combatants, but its "Notes" section addresses all the points that Battle History, Variants and Notable Crew normally would. I'm not sure if that reflects the early stage of the tanks' development or an early stage of TR:3025's real world development.

Finally, I'd like to say that I really like how, instead of using generic ranks all the time or using confusing factional ranks all the time, the TR3063 fanbook compromised by putting factional ranks in the bold header and using generic ranks in its actual writing.

Play a Short Battalion as Easily as a Lance

Provided that you're not too keen on 1:1 accuracy with the fictional setting, there is a very simple way to preserve the "feel" of BattleTech while fielding seven times as many miniatures:

Assign each location on regular 'Mech sheets to a separate figure.

Ignoring the head, this turns a lance into four squads of seven (twenty-eight figures total), and uses basically all the same rules as regular BattleTech. No need to roll on the hit location table, obviously, since each figure will target other figures individually; jump jets apply only to whichever figure has 'em on its crit table; heat is shared across all units in the squad; use 60-degree firing arcs, no rotation, for all figures; critical hits largely the same, except shoulder/hip crits immobilize the corresponding figure; figures occupy the entirety of whichever hex they're in, and can block LOS; ammo explosions apply full damage to the hex they're in, then apply half the excess to adjacent hexes; limbs mass 10% of the "full" 'Mech's mass and torsos mass 20%; physical attacks and weapons attacks are handled in the same phase, since each figure can only do one or the other anyways; each figure can do whatever physical attacks the location could normally, except that torso locations do 1/3rd normal charging damage.

Variations:

1. Instead of making a second roll to check for critical hits, treat a roll of doubles on any appropriate To-Hit roll as a single successful crit.
2. A squad deactivates when its "Center" is destroyed.
3. Jump MP replaces ground MP 1:1 instead of being a separate movement mode.
4. "Leg" figures can move anywhere they could normally; torsos can only move towards "legs," and cannot move beyond legs; arms must also move towards legs but can also continue beyond them.
5. Split-location equipment (ammo, autocannon spillover crits, Artemis, etc) is removed from its current location and considered to be mounted outside the armor on the rear hexside of whichever figure carries the primary/bulk of the associated weapon.
6. Legs get zero free facing changes; torsos get one free facing change; arms get two free facing changes.
7. Figures (for purpose of city fighting or physical attack damage) determine their mass by summing all equipment and armor and structure etc. in the location. Assume split-location equipment spreads mass evenly across all crits, and that the engine puts 1/3rd of its mass in the center torso and splits the remaining 2/3rd between the legs.
8. The "Center" figure absorbs the head location's armor & structure and weapons, but ignores pilot effects. 
9. Instead of the "short/medium/long" "+0/+2/+4" brackets & modifiers applying to the range between shooter and target, assume all weapons are always in range, and apply them instead to the target's movement in place of the standard Target Movement Modifier table. Green pilots subtract one hex from their effective movement for this purpose; veteran pilots add one. 

Edit, November 16, 2012:

• Alternate to variations 2 & 4: the center must remain within (Flank MP) hexes of at least one leg; each side torso must remain within (Flank MP) hexes of the center (or the hex the center was destroyed in); each arm must remain within (Flank MP) hexes of the associated side torso (or the hex the side was destroyed in).
• Alternate to variation 8: each item in the head gets assigned to different non-center location; when a non-center location is destroyed, the whole team suffers effects as though the corresponding head item had suffered a critical hit. 

Edit, August 1, 2019:

• Don't know when this dates to, but I just found an old note suggesting that each unit track heat individually and units in base contact can share cooling capacity. (Harsh.) Possibly as an alternative to the movement restrictions mentioned earlier.

How to TRO - words per page

It's about time I got back to looking at TROs, and I think I'll start off easy. Just a couple graphs for you today.

The "wordcounts" are artificially smooth curves based on the linecounts from my earlier spreadsheet. The pie graphs represent the average portion of a writeup devoted to each section (which also means they represent the total portion of each book devoted to each section).

I estimated wordcounts for the "Hypothetical 750-word Page" in two different ways, which produced two sets of wordcounts, which I then treated as a single combined sample.The first method was to adjust each page to 750 words individually. The second was to sum how much of all sections on all pages exceeded the median, and apply a single multiplier en masse to reach an average of 750 words per page.

Still trying to figure out a clean way to display words per each Notable, words per each Variant, Notables per page and Variants per page in that same space - it would amuse me to make everything fit on a single 3x5 notecard.

Weird thing about the chance one roll has to beat another:

A while ago, EastwoodDC posted a spreadsheet for calculating the chance of rolling any given result on a number of whatever sized dice. I started looking at the chances one roll had to beat another and I noticed something weird.

When rolling 1d6 against 2d6, the chance that they'll tie is equal to the chance of rolling exactly 7 on 3d6, and the chance that 1d6 will beat 2d6 is equal to the chance of rolling 6 or less on 3d6.

When rolling 2d6 against 3d6, the chance that they'll tie is equal to the chance of rolling exactly 14 on 5d6, and the chance that 2d6 will beat 3d6 is equal to the chance of rolling 13 or less on 5d6.

When rolling 3d6 against 4d6, the chance that they'll tie is equal to the chance of rolling exactly 21 on 7d6, and the chance that 3d6 will beat 4d6 is equal to the chance of rolling 20 or less on 7d6.

So I'm pretty sure that, anytime you roll Nd6 against (N+1)d6, the chance they'll tie is equal to the chance of rolling N*7 on (N+N+1)d6 and the chance that Nd6 will win is equal to the chance of rolling (N*7)-1 or less on (N+N+1)d6.

Messed around a little more, and it looks like 1d6 ties 3d6 as often as 4d6 will roll exactly 7; 1d6 beats 3d6 as often as 4d6 rolls 6 or less; 2d6 ties 4d6 as often as 6d6 will roll exactly 14; and 2d6 beats 4d6 as often as 6d6 rolls 13 or less. So I expect that, when rolling Nd6 against (N+2)d6, they'll tie as often as (N+N+2)d6 rolls exactly N*7, and that Nd6 will beat (N+2) as often as (N+N+2) rolls (N*7)-1 or less.

Wait. Those look the same. Can I just follow this pattern for any number of d6?

Nd6 ties (N+M)d6 as often as (N+N+M)d6 rolls exactly (7*N).
Nd6 beats (N+M)d6 as often as (N+N+M)d6 rolls (7*N)-1 or less.

And then, since the "7" there is a result of the average outcome of a single d6, can I extend it to other sizes of dice?

NdD ties (N+M)dD as often as (N+N+M)dD rolls exactly ((D+1)*N).
NdD beats (N+M)dD as often as (N+N+M)dD rolls ((D+1)*N)-1 or less.

Seriously just guessing at this point (could probably figure it out by hand with more spreadsheets, or by pure math from Pascal's Triangle) but I think this is going to work.


EDIT: VanVelding has tackled the math for this here and here.
EDIT ²: and here.

Final thoughts on TRO:3063

I was going to write more about TROs, but I don't have my notes together yet, so... TRO:3063!

It was initially released back around August 25th with the final version posted on September 9th. You can download it from The BattleTech Reader, OurBattleTech, BattleTechUniverse, Lords of the Battlefield, or the BattleTech Engineer. If you are considering a similar project, I highly recommend you look at the advice in Steve's 'Lessons Learned' document. Much of it applies to non-BattleTech, non-book projects as well.

There's already been some discussion of the TRO and the reception has been overwhelmingly positive. It matches, and in some ways exceeds, the quality of the current official TROs -- if I knew nothing about BattleTech, I don't know if I could tell the difference between it and Catalyst's books. (Granted, it was produced as a leisure activity over five years; Catalyst does not have that freedom.)

Looking at it now in retrospect:

Many readers seem curious about why the book covers the units it does or why they're built the way they are. (Power level, prevalence of SPLs & AMS, lack of infantry/spaceships/Clans, etc.) The reasons have been touched on in a few places, but for a book like this, it would be helpful to have a foreword explain more completely what the writers hoped to achieve and some of the thinking behind their decisions.

TR:3058, TR:3060 and TR:3067 show an overwhelming trend towards putting fusion and XL engines on new and upgraded vehicles. (The Tokugawa and Schiltron, for example.) I don't know that it was intentional, but TRO 3063 fits that trend quite well.

The manufacturing dates published by Catalyst (TechManual, Tactical Operations and so on) haven't been accurate enough for me to take them as Gospel, so me and Steve talked about how far R&D might've gotten by 3063. I suppose in-universe editorial comments [set off in square brackets, the way TR:2750 does] could have covered those weapons from a 3070s point of view.

I miss the Heavy PPCs. Not for the PPC itself, but for what having a heavy main gun forces you to do with the rest of your armament. It's more elegant. Less jumbled to read and fewer weapons to roll during play. (On the whole, the designs in this book are probably a little too optimized for my taste, but not moreso than what I remember of Catalyst's trends for the period.)

It's so hard to tell what's changed since I did my editing pass because I reviewed most entries only once, looked mostly for just the biggest issues, and tried to preserve/highlight (instead of replace) the original intent. (If you see a spot with too many three-clause sentences, or where paragraphs are all weirdly equal lengths, that's probably me.) And I really need to thank the other editor(s?) for going through entries after/before I'd gotten to 'em. But man, I'm scrolling through the book, and I know Steve's changed stuff, but it's so hard to pick out. I've only got two so far: looks like he overruled my cuts to the Feng-Niao, and I think he took a couple SPLs off the Sabra.