Hey y'all, I'm probably forgotten in these parts by now. It's me! Hylius! You know, ELP? Eridani Light Pony? Coolest pony fans around? No? Okay nevermind that then. Point is, we're a bit low on people for our second run on a Megamek "season" (league-like competition). I noticed this forum, saw you were still posting in it and there was previous interest/mention of some competition, and figured why not. I'm here to see if y'all may be interested in joining us for these games. It's nice to have the game roll dice to murder me with other people. For reference, here's how Season 1 went down as far as rules: -Tech and year limit (we did tech 2, 3058). -Each player picked 15 unique units, and 5 common ones (common ones could be used multiple times, example one Elemental in common meant you can use up to 3 Elementals of that type in the battle). Some substitutes were able to be done a few rounds in. -Players used either Clan or Inner Sphere, no mixing. -Battles had 8 unit cap per person in a battle. Victory by destruction or highest BV at turn limit. -Maps and BV limits were set before picking units. They were primarily randomly generated. -Everyone played everyone in the division once, 1v1. You had 2 weeks to complete your match. -A final tournament at the end, seeded by the season. At least, that was the theory. Never happened in the end due to complications. That about sums it up. First one went off pretty well, but unfortunately people got busy/dropped off, so we're a bit low on player count to run something like this. We're still in rules refinement stage if one or two things above are nitpicky on ya. I just wanted to see if there was any interest we could draw here. If not or I'm just bugging the crap out of ya, feel free to toss this.
Oh my God, it's a Hylius. Welcome back! Now..... I'm not sure what sort of interest you'll get from our boys and girls, but I'm sure there'll be some. Myself, I'm a bit to busy to do two MegaMek things, so I won't be able to participate. However.... I could see at least one or two, if not more that may just be interested enough to take part. I'll make sure to point anyone I know that plays a bunch of MegaMek to this thread for ya.
Hello Hylius, always interested in more megamek. Quick question. 15 unique units and 5 common... meaning? Is it that one would be able to customize 15 mechs and choose 5 stock ones, and in a drop be able to use up to 3 common units of the same kind but only one of a unique unit if it was selected? Can you elaborate on that?
First off, I sincerely thank you, Hylius, for the invitation to the tournament. I wish you the best of luck with it. There is one aspect that you should be aware of though: We are rapidly approaching the launch date of our Reunification War campaign. The new game mechanics I have been working on for three months are up to date and balanced. We are mostly just waiting for Skwi to get back from his honeymoon. Also, our campaign involves some 12-16 players so as you can probably imagine... it is quite extensive. That said, as long as this tournament doesn't interfere with our campaign, I fully support anyone who wants to get involved. EDIT: Judging by your last tournament, if you are worried about attendance/balancing/etc. issues (or want an outside "educated" opinion), I can certainly help you refine your tournament model to keep progression at a good pace. If not, no worries, I'm just offering.
Replies and recognition already! I feel so popular. This is what I get for trying to simplify things: I make it more complicated. Here's how it worked last time (again, everything is subject to change based on feedback of people participating: You had a "stable" of units and pilots. 15 of these were declared to be "unique". Unique units had any pilot skill you wanted, but once set at the beginning it could not be changed. You could also use only one of them. For example, if I wanted to field two Nova Primes (I'm a clanner bastard, sue me), I'd need to include two in my original unit list. I would also be stuck with whatever pilot values I assigned before tourney start: if I listed both as 3/4, then so they'd be. Even if I had the BV and desire to make them 2/3, or want to reduce it to 4/5 to fit another unit in, I'm stuck at it. The other 5 "common" ones could be used up to 3 times a piece. These were commonly used for tanks, infantry, battle armor, and other things you'd want multiple of to round out your force. For example, I'd only have to list one Clan Elemental [Flamer] and could field up to 3 of them in a single match. You could put anything you wanted here, but they had to be 4/5 only. All units were canon and official units only to prevent insane builds and min-maxing. We did not take any post-battle things into account (no units are destroyed/damaged, you have them all to select from every game). This way it made your initial lineup choice very tough (especially on me playing Clan and trying to fit into BV limits). You had to be wise with what you wanted to potentially field. It's also why substitutes were allowed to replace portions of your list partway through the tourney in case you completely screwed up somewhere. Ah, your own campaign! Sounds like fun. And complicated. I'd definitely not want to interfere with anything, that's for sure. I don't think our current system would conflict anywhere though. What we do is announce the round start and a reminder of who faces whom. From there, it is up to the two competitors to schedule a match time they can both attend. Rounds officially lasted two weeks to give people with busy schedules time. So as long as the person has that extra slot of time (battles often took up to 3 hours depending on how careful people were playing) somewhere in the schedule, shouldn't interfere at all. I'll admit sometimes the "two weeks to fight" bit drew things out, but in the end I personally felt it was better than our previous tournament's one week deadline, which often left me with no real time to schedule or think about it and just throwing my forces at my opponent to get it over with. As far as attendance/balancing, I'd always appreciate feedback. It held up pretty well last time, aside from some people just completely dropping off the face of the earth due to life and all I reckon. We haven't gotten to tweaking the system yet until we know who is playing, so all the potential players can have their input.
Well as far as "conflicts" go it is mostly a time issue I am concerned about. Many games can take anywhere from 3-4 hours (and sometimes more). Our campaign moves fast enough that I need people to be fairly active and show up to drop at least once a week (but sometimes more than that). With all the other life responsibilities we all have, for some there is little time to commit beyond that. So yeah... there will likely be schedule conflicts for some involved in the campaign... SOME... not all. Like I said, as long as people are showing up when I need them, I have no complaints here.
Thanks for the offer Hylius! For myself, I'll be honest and say that the mech selection rules don't really float my boat. There's a lot of tech in there that I don't enjoy playing with all that much, especially when stock mechs aren't being enforced (min/max isn't really my bag). It sounds like battles are balanced based on the number of mechs being fielded? That seems like it would give people who elect to play as the Clans a massive advantage if it is the case.
There seems to be a few misconceptions here. Firstly, there are no custom 'Mechs: only stock variants are allowed, and only if the tech and time of creation fit the rules. For example, if you wanted to run a Dire Wolf, you could choose from the Prime, A, B, etc. variants. You can't just make your own variant. They also have to be official variants (non-official stuff, particularly the UK stuff, gets wonky and min-maxed to death). Second, battles are balanced purely by BV, so Clans have all the disadvantages you'd expect. For example, I once fielded two hovertanks and a Mad Dog against an Inner Sphere team that had an assault, heavy, and light 'Mech, along with 2 or so hovertanks. Our BVs matched, so it was a "fair" fight (I only won due to forcing the fight on an open plain to use my range advantage). The unit cap is to prevent outright unit spam that drags the game out, forcing tactical selection over just massive numbers. In this case, it does give the Clans slight advantage -try reaching 8 units with clans, it's nigh impossible- but it forces the IS people to upgrade their units, giving them better quality to play with instead of using 50 infantry squads as hex blockers and init-sinks. As far as tech level, that's always up for debate. Personally I can't stand tech 1. I have the worst luck with ammo explosions, so I'm forced to field energy-based loadouts which have crap for heat sinks. It doesn't help that I grew up on clan tech either: ER or bust. But I know a lot of guys also like tech 1 and pre 3050 stuff, so they may end up winning that one out.
Those are the first things I delete when I install a fresh copy of Megamek. I was first introduced to Battletech just as the Clans were showing up (3rd Edition + City Tech 2nd Edition). I went through my stage of Clan ER PPCs + Streak SRM 6s. In fact during my tabletop days, you could say I was a Clan tech whore. Eventually, time restraints got the better of me and I had to quit the TT. Years later, I found Megamek and its long list of easily implemented advanced rules. When I started playing with all (most) of the TacOps and other rules on, it completely changed Tech 1 gear for me. Some of the options such as dialing laser energy and alternate firing modes for ACs does a lot to make things more interesting for stock designs. A Warhammer with 16 single heat sinks makes a lot more sense when you can fire your PPCs for 8-9 heat each. In hindsight, I think I also like the aesthetics of the Succession Wars era... post-apocalyptic(ish) warfare hasn't gone stale for me yet. Also, from a practical standpoint, Succession War era campaigns are much easier to run simply because mechs were far fewer in number back then. Some planets were lucky if they had even a single lance to defend them. That is a godsend for GMs compared to later eras where regiment-sized battles were more commonplace. Perhaps my hiatus between the tabletop and Megamek allowed me some perspective... perhaps it is just me getting older. I think it has also made me particularly (although not intentionally) judgmental towards players that prefer to play only with Clan tech simply because I used to be one of them. The only thing I really have no tolerance for is anything from the Jihad era and beyond... the storyline just went straight retarded after FASA was forced to close its doors. They say the converted are the most radical. :disturbed: Which I guess begs the question... do you have a link for the complete list of rules for your tournament? I have yet to see one.
The rules used for the previous one (which we'd base this off of, after player feedback) can be located here on our site. Link for clarity just because it also contains links to selected maps, bracketing, etc. (though some of them may be dead due to a server switch we did, along with a software upgrade).
Hey guys, sorry to bug y'all again, but we're finally getting this thing off the ground. Honest! We're doing a rolecall to get numbers and names of those who want to play. I'm sure most of you who might want to play don't want to have to sign up for another website, so if you want just say so here and I'll mention it there. I'm sure we can work something out, either via crossposting, e-mail... something so you don't have to be infected with Teh P0nies. It really is contagious.
Sorry to bring this back up, but I'm wondering what I'd need to do to get involved in some Borg Megamek action. I've already played with bots a bit and familiarized myself with all the rules via videos and gameplay, so what's next? Any scenarios I can get involved in?
best way is to get on TS (which your should probably be doing anyway) and ask for someone who knows about megamek. there is also this: http://www.uobgaming.com/forumdisplay.php?268-Skjaldborg-Campaign
