I am trying to design a collection of vehicles. I am trying to get an idea of vehicle tolerances, and I seem to be missing how they care calculated. I tried to reverse engineer them using traditional human tolerances, but I seem to be missing some key thing. I have also noticed that some end up in the high human range and then move into vehicular. Any direction that could be provided would be appreciated. I have the feeling that I am just missing something in the Tech Burner, but whatever it is keeps evading me.
Making vehicles is kinda like making weapons: You pay a certain number of points to have one of the ones that already exists, then you add traits to make it different. The rules are on pg. 384.
If you want to monkey with the tolerances, you could. You’d need a device (Reinforced Chassis, Ultra-Burly Hull Plates, something like that). I’m not sure off the top of my head how to burn it (probably Enhancement, but don’t quote me on that) but the easier way to do it is to give the vehicle armor or defensive systems by using the Device: Obstacle rules.
I am making something from scratch. Basically, I am trying to design Battlemechs, and doing quite a number of custom rules for it. I am taking a hybridization of Burning Wheel and Burning Empires to run Battletech.
I want to basically take aspects of the Move and Cover rules, Firefight, and Burning Wheel Fight rules to simulate Battlemech combat. I am looking at using the Burning Wheel armor rules to allow mechs to shrug off damage like they do, but have Armor degrade to represent armor being knocked off.
So, while the rules on pg 384 are handy, they don’t allow me to get things from scratch. It sounds like a lot of the tolerances were pretty much eyeballed to produced damage curve that worked with the weapons. I know what I want the weapons to do, which is where I should start. I will take a closer look at the vehicles and see if I can make some judgment calls. Thanks for the help. If you have any more suggestions, please throw them out there.
Well, if you’re adding armor rules to vehicles you’d need to hack the whole vehicle damage subsystem to make it work, so why do you need to know how to make vehicle tolerances the normal-rules way? You’ll need to fiddle the numbers anyway, why not just make up some ballpark figures and then fiddle those?
Overall I don’t think BE is a good fit for Battletech. It’s really not designed for fiddly tracking of single high-value vehicles. Besides armor and tolerances, you have problems with weapon systems. BE abstracts to one weapon system per vehicle, basically. The way shot ops are handed out would need to be totally reworked. Adding Range and Cover to the mix, you mitigate that somewhat (maybe some weapons are more lethal but with fewer positioning dice, maybe some offer better short-range dice and others better long-range, etc) but the system still gives little or no reason to fit multiple low-power weapons rather than just a few high-powered ones. Those are the first few problems off the top of my head, but ultimately I think the problem has to do with vehicle philosophy and may be insurmountable without a pretty complete rewrite.
Well part of it is I want to represent critical hits with integrity. That will represent internal structure. Basically, the purpose of armor is to represent how armor just gets knocked away in battletech. Not realistic in the slightest, but my whole goal is to catch the feel of it. VA will be a major part of it too.
Overall I don’t think BE is a good fit for Battletech. It’s really not designed for fiddly tracking of single high-value vehicles. Besides armor and tolerances, you have problems with weapon systems. BE abstracts to one weapon system per vehicle, basically. The way shot ops are handed out would need to be totally reworked. Adding Range and Cover to the mix, you mitigate that somewhat (maybe some weapons are more lethal but with fewer positioning dice, maybe some offer better short-range dice and others better long-range, etc) but the system still gives little or no reason to fit multiple low-power weapons rather than just a few high-powered ones. Those are the first few problems off the top of my head, but ultimately I think the problem has to do with vehicle philosophy and may be insurmountable without a pretty complete rewrite.
Actually, the combat system will be a complete rewrite. It is part of my plan. I am an out of work, video game designer with too much time on my hands, and I need to keep my skills sharp. Part of it is an experiment in system design, and the other part because Burning Empires has the Sci-fi feudal feel of battletech without the terrible system that comes with Mechwarrior.
I don’t know if I will be using the invasion mechanics for the game, but they intrigue me because much of Battletech is all about planetary invasions. I expect I would have to adjust some of the numbers based on terrain, since an invading human army wouldn’t get a disposition bonus for it being a water world.
I was actually thinking of using the Firefight rules for large scale battles and then have small battles between a few mechs.
The Battletech we are going going for will be 3025 Battletech, where mechs are rare, and it is probably your grandfather’s battlemech. Loosing the PPC on your Warhammer could put a serious dent it you family holdings because you have to replace it. So when you start taking serious damage, you will probably pull your mech from that battlefield. We want the total old school feel, rather than the crazy Clan-era Battletech.
