Tip of the week Archive:
Battletech
1. Jumping Mechs
2. Lance composition
3. Movement dice
4. "No AC rule"
5. Damage resolving
WW2
None yet
1. Jumping mechs- Always choose 'Mechs with jump jets over regular 'Mechs. You should use these to jump behind to your enemies' 'Mech's
rear to dispose of them quickly. Especially good 'Mechs for this purpose are the Turkina and the Madcat Pryde.
If you can, outfit 'Mechs that don't normally have JJ's with them.
2.Battletech Lance/Star Compostion
UBTSG
This section is to help you to decide what types of mech you want to place in your lance. The mech types are from the Mech Selection/Design tips section. This section introduces the following lance types:
Recon Lance
This lance has speed as a priority, electronic searching gear helps too. A bit of support for the weaker units are required as well.
Light Mech Hunter Lance
This lance operates as an effencient unit to destroy as many light mechs as possible. A blend of speed and firepower is a priority.
Riot Suppression Lance
This lance is suited for anti-infantry, anti-vehicle and anti-light mech combat.
Fire Support Lance
A lance that supplies long range firepower to front line units. Long range firepower with some close support or front line units for additional protection.
Main Battle Lance
This lance is designed to do the brunt of the fighting. Mostly front line with some close support added in. Mostly Medium-Heavy Mechs.
Mixed Battle Lance
This lance is made for heavy fighting, but is more varied then the main battle lance. This lance has some front line/close support units but adds a specialty unit (fire support, light mech hunter etc etc) for more varied assignments.
Assult Battle Lance
This is a heavy lance, formed with point guards and front line units. This lance is designed to trudge ahead and simply crush the front line.
Here is the chart. For the different lance types see above. For the mech types see the mech selection/design tips. The mechs in brackets are for clan stars.
[Lance Type] [Suggestion Lance Composition]
Recon S,S,S,KL (+KL)
Light Hunter S,KL,KL,FS (+KL)
Riot Suppress S,KL,KV,KI (+FS)
Fire Support FS,FS,FS,CS (+FL)
Main Battle FL,FL,CS,CS (+FL)
Mixed Battle FL,FL,CS,FS (+CS)
Assult Battle PG,PG,FL,FL (+FL)
Legend:
S: Scout
KL: Light Mech Hunter
KV: Vehicle Hunter
KI: Infantry Hunter
FS: Fire Support
CS: Close Support
FL: Front Line
PG: Point Guard
Taken from Bad Karma
3.This is not a gameplay tip, but should help speed up your games. If you aren't using them already, use "movement dice"- d6s that you place by each mech that moved more than 6". Calculate each mech's target movement modifier and place the D6 with the corresponding number.
Example: if a Mech moved 7", place the D6 with 1 face up by the mech.
4.When designing a mech (using 3025 Tech), never inslall an LRM-10 or AC-2. There are no differeces mathematically in the LRM-5, 15, and 20, so mix and match. If you use SRM's, the SRM-6 is the most efficient. Obviously the medium laser is the most efficient of the close-in weapons. Don't put Small Lasers onto a design, use machine guns instead. If you include the heat sinks required to drive them, the small laser does only about half as much damage per ton of space allocated. Large Lasers and PPC's work fine. The AC-20 and the AC-10 are both slightly less efficient than energy weapons, but they aren't a total wastage like the AC-2. The AC-5 is an inefficient design, but I have found that it is a great psycological weapon in 3025 Tech, enemies want to close with someone with an AC-5 and if backed up with close things, the design inefficiency is outweighed by the psyc-advantage. I have math table to prove all these statements, but they are on legal pads and I'm too lazy to post them now. Suffice to say that if you calculate the chance to hit at each range (with an arbitrary penalty of three to model terrain and movement) and multiply that percentage by the average damage a weapon causes and then divide by the effective weight of the weapon (tonnage + ht. sinks + 20 rds. of ammo) then you get a very usful table of numbers (expected damage/effective ton are the units).
5. When resolving damage on enemy mechs, start from the
weapons with the highest damage value such as PPCs and Gauss rifles. This enables you to get more critical hit chances.
Example: you hit a mech with a PPC (damage value 10) and a small laser (damage value 3) in the same same location, that has an armor value of 9. If you resolve the PPC damage first, you get 2 critical hit chances- one for the PPC, and one for the small laser. If you're less cunning, however, and resolve the small laser damage first, you get only one critical hit chance (for the PPC).