skiltao's Xanga

Tactical Operations (pages 28-53)

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:34:19 GMT

Planetary Conditions

I always wanted to spice up a regular BT scenario by shuffling up weather/terrain cards (from the ClixTech game and the ol' CCG) and drawing one at random. I think that's the idea behind this chapter, but I don't know if there's a card for each condition here.

...instead of hiding an easily-missed note in these 5 introductory paragraphs, shouldn't the chart say which terrain requires a PSR to enter? There's certainly room for another column, and if none of them require a PSR (which seems to be the case so far), then should the book say THAT here instead?

Also, isn't "n/a" traditionally used when a column does not apply (instead of the "0" used here)?

...you know the "Prohibited Units" column is too comprehensive when Rail vehicles are listed on every single line except rail hexes, which shouldn't be on that chart to begin with. And why are rail hexes listed at only 20 CF? Rail bridges can easily exceed 100.

...perversely, roads have too much CF - the paved road outside my house is tough, but it ain't that tough. Methinks that "gravel roads" should be renamed to "paved," and the current "paved" should be renamed to "ferrocrete."

Base Terrain Types

Buildings probably shouldn't be a base terrain type, and since you'll have to read the buildings chapter to move through any of 'em anyways, the table may as well be there instead of here.

Gravel Piles are interesting, though I feel that some of the unit-specific rules could be absorbed into other rules somehow; for example, if "infantry occupying a level zero hex are height zero" then half of the infantry note becomes superfluous.

Hah, the table lists "sprinting" as 'Mech-only and never even mentions "overdrive" (or the infantry-equivalent)!

Sheer Cliffs could have been as simple as "treat as a Wall." Should be just about identical, right? Save a page of text.

Terrain Modifications

Bug Storms are a problem in the real world, when huge flocks of small birds manage to close fairly major airports. Plus, y'know, there's that Hitchcock film.

Why do fires and fire-starting weapons reduce snow to mud at different rates? If nothing else, just use the GSR in both cases.

I feel like the "crush depth check" and the "Hull breach TN" should be related (maybe combined); also, the "High/Low Gravity" caveat is the sort of thing that belongs in a sidebar rather than attached to the base rule.

Fun note: regular depth hexes (0-15) reduce heat by 1 per heatsink, while Extreme Depths (16+) start at a flat rate of 6 - which was the old original rule for all regular water hexes.

Fire

Fire is absolutely a terrain modification in the same vein as the rest, and I don't know why the author feels compelled to defend its place in this chapter.

...any given infantry unit can put out any given fire? Seriously?

...y'know, considering how short elevations are compared to how long a hex is, you need pretty strong winds before the map registers any "drift" at all; may as well make direction and duration constant values, tied to the wind rules.

More Terrain Modifications

Hazardous liquid makes you roll 1d6 to see whether you take 1d3 or 2d6 damage? That's... that's unnecessary. Bad form, in fact. But hey, at least it can wander around the board like a Gelatinous Cube.

...what is a "thumbnail rule?" And I know I said this before, but any text that discusses how to "pass the 'realistic' litmus test" should be split off into a sidebar, and not embedded in the base rule.

Walking on Ice costs +1 MP per hex, with a TN+4 penalty for any PSRs; "hurried movement" lets me ignore that 1 MP in exchange for a PSR at an additional a TN+2 penalty, and the Ice rule adds another TN+3 on top for the hell of it. So: make a PSR roll at TN+9, or use the Careful Movement rule to do the exact same thing at TN+4? May be time for an errata.

Breaking the Ice: you don't need to repeat what happens to units that fall in water. It's been mentioned once in this chapter already, which is once more than is needed since TW should have that covered. (In a similar vein, I have to believe there's a more concise way to tell the reader what rules can and can't be combined with Vacuum or Extreme Temperatures.)

Units displaced by water flow automatically change their facing? Sweet, free MP for naval units. Not that I really see myself using Water Flow, Torrents, or Rapids.

...Most of these things do look fun -or at least usable- but there's really too much here for it all to sink in at once. I know I'll eventually return to the Heavy Industrial Zone.

Text: 1454 sqin
Photos: 58 sqin
Diagrams: 61 sqin
Illustrations: 0 sqin

What is your favorite song to sing at karaoke either on your own or with a group of people and why?

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:10:47 GMT

Actually, I've been asked not to sing. ...Not that I've ever sung at a karaoke bar, but I've sung with friends after leaving bars. That's almost* the same.

*For varying values of "almost."

I just answered this Featured Question; you can answer it too!

The finer points of clear posting (forums related, but not BT)

When I'm responding to a thread on the BT forums, and a couple people say similar things, sometimes I'll quote only one short statement out of the bunch as a springboard in replying to the whole thread. Is that bad form?

I know some people skip posts if they don't see their own name, so it might be misleading in that way, but people also skip or skim posts that run too long... concision, and let the masses muddle out my meaning; or an expansive and thoroughly explored essay? I dunno.

I could go point by point, but it's harder to carry on a discussion like that ever since they got rid of quote trees; I've seen more than one argument devolve into confusion over who said what, when.

PS- going to continue TacOps musings in the near future; I've read up to SupVees, but weather/terrain is next on my plate.

Tactical Operations (pages 18-27)

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 01:46:24 GMT

That has to be a Lineholder in the photo, but if so, it carries too many missile tubes. (It and the Catapult do look well-painted to my untrained eye.)

Movement Modes

Skilled Evasion and the Skidding change are neat. Hurried Movement is intriguing, but I don't yet know how it interacts with the Planetary Conditions (and considering that we have Direct as well as Glancing Blows, I fully expected to see a "Careful Movement" rule); the Stacking expansion is okay, and I'm indifferent to Hull Down (the errata makes Hull Down 'Mechs immune to the Taking Damage rule, which seems like bullshit since "taking a knee" would make most 'Mechs less stable, but I haven't seen how it interacts with other rules yet).

Standing Still

Foot infantry are slow. While nimble at their own scale, they're simply incapable of dodging or evading at any scale a BattleMech cares about. Why exempt them? Can't be because they're dispersed or dug-in, because infantry get those bonuses elsewhere. If the rule meant to discourage 'Mechs from camping in heavy cover (thereby turning the game into "TurretTech"), shouldn't infantry-towed-gauss-rifles be subject to the same penalty?

It could've been simpler (and avoided the errata) had they added "0 hexes" and "immobile" as separate entries on the TMM chart; of course, I still don't know if there's situations where this expanded "Standing Still" rule is justified.

Sprinting

I notice no differences from the MaxTech version, which is okay, but I was hoping they'd change it to something like:

SPRINTING (Weapon phase)
Instead of declaring any other actions this phase, you may declare a sprint. Your Sprinting MP equals half your Walk/Cruise MP (round down) and generates 1 heat point, is unaffected by MASC/superchargers, and for all other purposes counts as running. The move is considered simultaneous with weapons fire.

I'm assuming you'd have run already in the movement phase, but you don't have to. And conveniently, standing still would obviate the "Physical Defense" mode from the next page.

Fun coincidence: TN+3 woods penalty blocks LOS while TN+3 AMM (ignoring jumping) makes you unable to shoot; in effect, a +3 modifier means your MechWarrior is blind.

Shielding

Since you have to be as tall as your target, you should probably be as wide as well: hex-sized targets (eg, buildings) shouldn't be open to shielding, and you really ought to designate a specific unit within the target hex. The MoF rules are unnecessary, since the Missed Shot rules cover that already (or y'know, they should- more on that when we get to it).

Sidenote: the difference between height and levels can be confusing; a car occupying level zero is height one, whereas a 'Mech (rising one level above the terrain) is height 2. But the book explains it adequately, and I don't see a better way to do it.

Crawling, Climbing, Attempting to Stand

These three rules are so similar (nevermind that hands aren't really required for either crawling or climbing a 50* slope) that I'm kinda surprised they weren't condensed:

If the 'Mech uses Walk MP, it can attempt to crawl prone to a new hex or climb to a new elevation. Use the "attempting to stand" rules for the base MP cost and requisite PSR. The most MP you can spend in a single attempt equals your number of functional arm actuators.

Dangle-and-Drop is essentially climbing down two levels, so I'm astonished that they still treat it as a separate case.

Piloting Skill Rolls

I was hoping the Taking Damage modifier would be based on gyro rating, but it and Leg Damage PSR rules look the same as MaxTech.

Fumbles, now... falling down every six minutes is realistic? Rules for fatigue, weather, or even community chest cards would be more reasonable than the Fumble rule. I can see how some players might want some extra element of chance, but adding extra falls seems to slow down the game and remove tactical options.

I don't see how the expanded Falling rule adds anything to gameplay. Is it intended to compensate for Fumbles?

Vehicles

These introductory paragraphs (such as the one here titled "MOVEMENT") seem to be a relic of the days when fluff was intermixed with rules, and looks a little out of place now. Makes the section easier to read, but, y'know.

Lance Movement

ComGuard units mix Level 1 units freely within Level 2 units; there's no guarantee how many vehicles a "real" ComGuard Level 2 would have, so it's unreasonable to demand a player group more than 4 together. Does moving the whole lance as a single unit mean they all travel the same hexes? You could represent the lance with a single miniature, but what if half take motive damage? It'd be ludicrous to play ten Clan tanks in this fashion... I hope it's just for purposes of initiative/move order.

Speed, Turn Modes, and Advanced Maneuvers

These look mostly familiar from MaxTech. Looking at the turn mode table, I see they've added weight class modifiers; now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the center of gravity more important than, and independent of, weight class? Why is Overdrive described here instead of back in Movement Modes with Sprinting? Why do only WiGEs get bonus MP?

Infantry

Back under the old infantry rules, a "dead" infantryman wasn't really dead. He was too injured to shoot, or helping another injured guy along, or just awed/afraid enough to be acting less frequently. But TW's infantry rules only count direct, instant-splatter as damage. So: why do the "squad deployment" effects not apply to a platoon who has been reduced to 7 troops?

Sidenote: Squads would be easier to play if the infantry platoons were already divided up into different hit locations, the way BattleSuit squads are.

Huzzah for Movement on Pavement! In fact, I'm almost willing to let mechanized infantry use Overdrive. Boo to Fast Movement! 1MP foot infantry would need to be olympic sprinters, running nude, to use this rule; any infantry normally capable of moving 2MP can see my Sprinting rules (above). The Climbing infantry, on the other hand, interest me and warrant further attention.

Movement Dice

Same ol', same ol'. Still a useful rule.

Text: 547 sqin
Photos: 52 sqin
Diagrams: 11 sqin
Illustrations: 0 sqin

Tactical Operations (pages 0-17)

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 07:49:25 GMT

The first 18 pages don't contain any rules, so for now I'll probably jump disjointedly between whatever shiny thing catches my gnat-like attention.

The Cover

Tactical Operations has a good-looking painting on the front cover, apparently depicting the Black Widows in a battle on... Odessa? The newtech Gladiator in the lower-left makes me want to say it's Odessa. I'm not sure what the peasant* infantry plan to do, but the book includes infantry options, so their presence (short-lived though it may be) is appropriate. I'm glad to see the old FASA font again; and I hadn't noticed until now, but the words "THE ADVANCED PLANETARY CONQUEST RULES" appear in the bottom right; slick. Misleading, but slick. I'll have to check TW & TM to see what they've got there.

The back cover neither pleases nor disappoints. Meanwhile, the inside covers again show Mad Cat schematics. It would've been cool to have a different OmniMech for each book, but it still looks good as-is, and honestly I can't think of many other 'Mechs (omni or otherwise) that would fill a 2-page spread so well. (It would have been extremely nifty if this, the first printing of Tactical Operations, had included the errata for TechManual's first printing (and if TM's 1st had included the errata for TW's 1st, and so on down the line). However, that'd've just been icing on this delicious green&yellow cake.)

My pages have already pulled away from the spine; I stored it spine-up for a month. Yeah. Should get some glue in there soon.

*I say "peasant infantry" because they're not wearing goggles, using anti-'Mech weapons, or carrying grapple rods. Judging by their half-capes and chiseled chins, I'd wager they're fresh out of WoB bootcamp, recruited off some miserable periphery world.

Table of Contents & Credits

A quick glance at the ToC makes me feel like this'll follow MaxTech & Combat Equipment pretty closely, so while a few items make me nervous, I don't expect any real surprises. Weird that each Weather/Terrain/etc effect gets called out, though. No other subsections do.

I thought the Stansel-Garners were with the Shadowrun team, so it's strange to see them involved - but I'm *shocked* to see so many artists! Each short story must have been illustrated by a different one. The acknowledgements are intriguing, in that they highlight the staff's attempts to be comprehensive, scientific, and otherwise (I fear) write long & complex rules. Putting out a book of this size is no mean feat; the lengthy acknowledgments & thanks are well-earned. Well, the "Additional Thanks" to online contributors are less so, though I do like to see my own name in print, and I did laugh to see regular writers credited there instead of elsewhere.

Text: 335 square inches (rough estimates)
Photos: 28 sqin

Introduction

This laptop has a rigid keyboard and screen, yet both retract into a compact baton. I want it. I will juggle it. The image also contains a message between two apparent Fedrats, possibly describing TacOps as an NAIS report intercepted by Dracs, and subsequently turned over to the Princess-Regent. Maybe. I'm not 100%.

"This book contains a number of rules changes from previous editions. We feel confident that these are the most complete, clear and concise advanced rules for Classic BattleTech ever presented."

In fact, the book was so overwritten that Catalyst split it in half, creating a bit of serendipity:

The "introductory rules" (formerly Level 1) are contained in 1 product (the IntroBox)
The "tournament rules" (formerly Level 2) are contained in 2 products (TW/TM)
The "advanced/experimental rules" (formerly Level 3) are contained in 3 products (TO/SO/IO)

It amuses me.

"Choose Your Rules" gives good advice, advice which once was known intuitively by children the world over, and defines everything in the book as optional. If a rule later on describes itself as optional, does that make it double-optional, you think? Especially since TO spends the next few hundred words telling players to "make it up" themselves when they see a gap or flaw... (nitpick: p9, column2, line 6: I don't think "comprehensive" quite fits- comprehensive between sections? I feel like I should know what word belongs in its place)

Another oddity: they take so much time explaining that Fiction should not be construed as Rules, yet never seem to care that the reverse is also true.

...why are the recordsheets being discussed here, instead of in their respective chapters? (Maybe they shouldn't have included "concise" in that earlier claim.)

Okay, the first sentence of "Tactical Analysis" is unnecessry for reasons stated in that very sentence, and Mr. DeMarco is crazy if he thinks the events from 3049 onward do not constitute a Fifth Succession War. The industrial info is interesting, and I bet people love the factional R&D info; but why is the CapCon rated D when they invented stealth armor?

Text: 445 sqin
Photos: 0 sqin
Diagrams: 92 sqin
Illustrations: 68 sqin

Well then

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:46:40 GMT

I have decided to tackle Tactical Operations first: I'm treating it as "light reading" and it is a single book, whereas tro3039 would require me to have three or four books out at a time and is a more involved project overall. So now, as always in leisure, we follow the path of least resistance.

On another note, my posts here are infrequent and rarely well thought-out, so check out Giant Battling Robots if you value quality and consistency (he also links to a number of other folk generally, but not universally, centered on game principles/design). I'd perma-link him, but xanga and I don't seem to understand each other.

The forums, so big!

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:34:16 GMT

Instead of necro'ing every month-old thread I've read since getting back (woo! reliable internet again!), I'll just stack some of my less vital commentary in here.

Holding a Trial of Bloodright for a dead Clan would be both hilarious and awesome.
The Inner Sphere averages 3 billion people per inhabited system, not per planet (second paragraph). But I guess, with enough small craft, a multi-planet system might behave like a single planet.
I really like Mara's "Good Sportsman" definition of cheese.
No Frabby, the video games do not constitute a shade of grey; if you think they do, then you're misusing the word "canon."
*skiltao pictures a Play-Doh Fun Factory shaped like a tree*
Considering that StratOps introduces fairly complete rulesets for space battles & hexless ground battles, it's a shame that Catalyst didn't view this book as a potential first point of entry for new players.
Heh: "Dice for the Dice God!" -Atlas3060
Evidence that HunterADA is awesome.
On the other hand, we could shortcut the whole process: don't ask at all, and then complain about the hypothetical answers you might have gotten.
Evidence that DougGlendower is awesome.
Heh.
I am astonished and disappointed at the lack of imagination displayed by some in this thread. Also, factual errors and logical fallacies lie therein.

I spent a month with my brother in Tennessee, hangin' out mostly, but I did have time to finish reading TR:3039 and start on Tactical Operations. While I mean to serial-blog my reactions to both, anyone more interested in seeing one or the other?

Just wanted to warn you (not BattleTech)

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 19:07:22 GMT

I moved this weekend and won't have proper computer access before Friday, so I guess I'm taking a break from blogs, comics, and the official BT forums. I trust the internet will go on without me.

Finn's Limit (not BattleTech)

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 05:59:24 GMT

I was reading Fraggmented for its "storytelling engine" entries, as a quick education on Marvel/DC comic titles, when the guy comes up with something called Finn's Limit to describe a characteristic of internet discussions. I like the concept, but it just feels like a small piece of something bigger.

More fun from Herb (quote stash)

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 06:46:24 GMT

Quote from: HABEAS2 on 31 July, 2009 at 00:03:23
Please try not to patronize me. Much of what amounts to my opinions stem from aesthetics, what I feel to be "right" for the BattleTech universe, and may differ from your view. The chief difference between your opinion and mine when it comes to discussions like these happens to be that I am in a position to impose my aesthetic interpretations on the universe directly, whereas yours can only be to observe, criticize, use or discard as you see fit. If it was not your attempt to challenge me the way an impertinent child defies his bedtime, then forgive me for misreading your tone. By which I mean I feel no obligation whatsoever to justify my perceptions, though I will attempt to do so nonetheless, sacrificing another hour or so of development/writing time I probably wasn't going to use anyway
<snip 1 & 2>
3) Finally, the lessons of 20th century reality have no technical bearing on 31st century space opera. If they had, there would have been no Succession Wars, no decline of technology, and BattleMechs would still be seen as a childish fantasy espoused by Japanese cartoons and toy lines.

Hope that helps.

- Herb

I've pimped these everywhere else, so why not here (not battletech)

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 04:55:23 GMT

Check out Violence: The Roleplaying Game of Egregious and Repulsive Bloodshed (third link from the bottom).
Check out There Will Be Brawl, a web-serial based on the Super Smash Bros games (it's awesome if you're familiar with any of those games, and more awesome if you grew up with Nintendo in general).