Woot, I got it up!

Just a bit of an update, since I've been stalled lately.  I apologize for not being done with everything.

New Server/Forum News:

• The new server is up and running.  I have a few more tweaks I want to make, as well as moving it to my buddies data center for temperature control, but I've gotten phpBB setup and a domain purchased.
• I have a 1gbps connection on the new server, but only a 100mbps network card, oh well:
• I could really use a phpBB experienced moderator (even if only a little), mostly for maintenance sorta stuff, not monitoring users so much.  Shoot me an email if your interested, I'll let you use my server for your own site.
• It should be up within a few days, though I'm kinda busy this week at work (15% raise tho, woot!) so it could get delayed again.  Stay tuned!
• I curious if I'll get many users, as there are other BT forums without much activity, and to setup something unused is kind of pointless.

Battletech Engineer News:

• I broke it.  Yeah, completely, 100% broke.  I rewrote over 7000 lines of code this last week to better enable support for all the unit types.  I'm not done yet, still have the time consuming but easy part left (logging) and then onto debugging, but the hard part is done.
• I rewrote the Alpha Strike conversion stuff too.  Based on some testing I'll be sticking with the "best damage per range band based on heat efficiency" method
• I'll try to get many of the features I initially planned implemented.  One of the biggest would be a way to track your units online (with the ability to share it with your opponents).
• Site should be back up in a few days, to a few weeks.
• Thank MechAdmin over at http://mech.thompfam.net for me getting back into Battletech.  

I had some comments in here about some Alpha Strike conversions being incorrect on the forums.  But it turns out most of them were just me "missing" things and they weren't incorrect.  So the designs over there are valid, though a couple do need some errata in their appropriate TRO/RS files.

And my silly soapbox bellowing:

But you know what, that makes me really wonder why the hell I support a company, that essentially said "fuck you" to somebody who spends on average, $80 a month at battlecorps (and yes, I can back that number with documentation).

So, a question or two.  Can anybody give me a reason why I continue to support Catalyst Game Labs, when they obvious couldn't care less about me, a paying customer?  Can anybody give me a reason I don't return the "get lost" attitude they gave me, and zip my 411 book/11GB battletech book folder and throw up a constantly updated torrent?

I've done everything I can do to help the product.  I couldn't tell you the amount of times I've volunteered time, QA ability, and my programming skills, (which go for well over $100/hr in "the market"), not to mention thousands of dollars in products, and tens of thousands in miniatures (granted, they don't get any of that), and nobody seems to care.  I've essentially even groveled back and apologized, and nothing.  I stepped forward 2 feet, and didn't get 2" in return.

So why do I care, and should I continue to?

Do they even care about accuracy anymore?

Not to dog Alexander Knight, as I'm sure he is trying hard using the tools he has available, but in this thread (p22) on the forums he lists the Nephilim (Capture Team) [HMG] with the following stats:
Type:  BA
Size:  1
MV:  4"f
Armor:  3
Structure:  2
Damage:  2/1/1
PV:  6
Specials:  BTAS6, CAR6, LMAS

So granted, CGL hasn't released errata for SO to do conversions, but even then, this seems nuts.

First, the move.  4", or 2 battletech MP.  However, DWP's are mounted with the tasers.  So this unit should only really be moving 2" until the tasers are used.  Perhaps BTAS6(-1 MP) would work for that.  Essentially, this battle armor is twice as fast as it would be in a BT game.

Second, "CAR6".  Nephilim's are 2 tons each, with 6 per squad, so really that should be "CAR12" as something with only 6 tons of cargo couldn't carry a squad.

Third, damage.  Ugh, one-shot sorta weapons simply should not count the way they are treating them.  The entire squad of 6 can fire 12 LRMs, *once*, yet in the conversion, as well as Battleforce, this unit suddenly becomes able to fire those 12 LRMs forever.  So this unit now has a long range attack, with twice the MP, yet the PV stays as it would be in Battletech, where a 1 shot weapon doesn't count for very much.

And finally, "LMAS" is for a CAMO system, "MAS" is for Mimetic armor, at least according to the latest Strategic Operations stuff I can find, and it appears the values are reversed.

He also keeps mentioning things like "2,703 out of 4,513" completed.  Here are the current counts of items officially released in the BattleTech Universe (minus TRO 3145, which isn't out yet, but Alexander includes):

3162 BattleMechs and IndustrialMechs
81 ProtoMechs
1180 Combat Vehicles
173 Conventional Infantry Platoons
525 Aerospace Fighters
296 BA
5,417 supported by Alpha Strike

252 Support Vehicles
48 Buildings
153 Dropships
23 Handheld Weapons
24 Jumpships
4 Mobile Structures
38 Small Craft
20 Space Stations
98 Warships
660 not supported, or partially supported, by Alpha Strike

Even without the Aerospace Fighters and Conventional Infantry, both of which are supported by Alpha Strike, there are still *hundreds* of units that aren't being counted.

I am starting to think they are doing these conversions by hand, and oh my god, what a stupid thing to do.  The amount of errors and inconsistencies, tagged on with vanishing support for released products, will make any such list impossible to be used for any form of balance, and honestly, you may as well just pull numbers out of your ass in some of these cases, as the results could be more accurate.  Sheesh, hate me or not, give me an hour of time and I can have all 5417 (plus many of the other units) knocked out by the end of the week.  I just can't fathom how a company would voluntarily waste so much time when they have people like me, whom they could never afford, are so eager to volunteer to help.  Heck, if they'd have been more receptive they probably wouldn't hate me, but love me instead, as I could save everybody over there massive amounts of time.  Oh well, I digress.

So, bitching over, onto good stuff!

I sent the 80 cards that are in my color file to a playing card printer.  The backs will have the alpha strike cover, the fronts will have all the cards.  I should get them in a week and may post my first youtube video showing all about it.  Since they were double sided, and I only ordered 1 batch, and a few other unnecessary price hikes, with shipping I paid $17 for the 81 cards (1 is blank).  I can even get them printed on *plastic*!  Though double the price (so more like $28, since $6 was shipping)

I am thinking of taking the BV calculator for weapons and using it, as well as other BV calculating things, to *recalculate* BV for Alpha Strike units.  Thing is, BV/100 simply does not produce an accurate representation of a units value (assuming BV is, haha).  You can look around and see obvious issues with this quite easy.  I'm sure smarter people than myself could come up with better algorithms, but I'll give it a try.

I think CGL regrets posting that pretty card image that Herb posted on facebook.  It seems to have gone away on the forums.  While perhaps they are like "hey, that bad-syntax asshole is copying our shit!", it isn't like people being able to print these on paper is any substitute for the good cards they could sell individually.  Heck, I'll be buying 4 or 5 boxes of them (so I can have a full lance/star of everything) and I can print these things all day long.

I came across a forum here about the health of BattleTech.  It was kind of enlightening on all the reasons people just avoid the official forums.  That place is a politically drama filled playground, and a horrible place to visit for many folks apparently.

Ok, enough bitching for real this time.  I setup phpBB and have been configuring it.  I think its mostly done, not exactly a whole lot to do.  Got it running with my battletechengineer gmail account, created a battletech forum with a couple subforums for projects of mine.  I want to register a new DNS name for it but just not sure what to go with, or if I should just use cooltexan.com.  I was thinking something like whm6r.com (my favorite mech), successionwar.com, thestarleague.com, battletechsource.com, and so forth.  Any good ideas that aren't registered feel free to shoot my way.  I will make it available before the end of the week, promise.

However there *are* a few other Battletech forums out there.  The only thing I'm offering they aren't is pretty much no restrictions/rules (just don't be an ass to others) and more tie-ins with the products I've made, or could make if the support was there (like a replacement for all the probably-never-to-be-released heavymetal stuff).  

Though I am trying to support canon Alpha Strike, I find it difficult as it is so broken in many ways.  I'll will have alternate data, and cards, for my own system which mirrors BattleTech better, supports campaigns better, support all the optional rules better, and speed up quick strike by getting rid of some things that simply don't make the game more fun, and bog it down.  I may try to make this work with the $3300 in Robotech Miniatures I have coming soon too.  However, Robotech Tactics I think will be far more fun than Alpha Strike, with far better looking miniatures, though the universe is extremely small and shallow in comparison.

Oh, and what the heck, I posted stuff about doing Alpha Strike cards and had like 30 comments, then I actually post an Alpha Strike Card Maker and get 1.  That leads me to think that my app sucks ass (complain and I'll fix it) or that I haven't created enough controversy lately :)

Final thing.  All my current projects and downloads will soon be removed from online.  They will have new links up, and a forum account required to download them.  I might even make the forum hidden unless you have an account, as I get a *huge* number of hits from a hidden forum (well, hidden to most folks anyway, muhaha) over at bg.battletech.com.

Battletech Alpha Strike Card Generator, With Alpha Strike Cards!

Well sorry, I meant to release my EXE to make cards last night, but with the beautiful new color image 'ph423r' made I added support for gorgeous color cards!  So, if you want to make a card, or a thousand of them, quick and easily, just download this EXE and run it.  When you create a card it copies it to the clipboard automatically.  When you batch create it just saves them the same place the EXE is located.  PV/Skill *must* be integers or things will break, that is because you put in the actual PV, and based on the skill is what gets rendered as the points in the top right.

Here is a screenshot of the EXE, it comes with a text file you can copy/paste into it, or excel, to create thousands of cards all at once!  

And since I had a complaint of somebody not being able to download, plus what I'm throwing out there today is 180mb, I figured I'd use 4shared.com instead of my horrible time warner internet connection at home.

What is 180mb you ask?

Well, there is a 170mb file, containing 10 pages of color Alpha Strike cards from the Alpha Strike book. There are 8 per page, and look like this:

And there is a 10mb file, which is the exact same units, but these are in black and white and much more similar to the templates in the back of the Alpha Strike book:

While doing this, I discovered these cards simply won't work, as there isn't enough space for movement (try to fit 16"/12" in that area), not enough armor slot (only 18 circles?  not enough for a 200 ton superheavy with modular armor), no support for the "extreme range band" optional rule, no place for the ID without having to flip the card, not enough room for the various types of critical hits (counters for this could be acceptable I think, but I haven't seen any... if anybody says they'd like I'll whip some up), and I don't think enough space in the special area but I'm not 100% sure on that, just my gut.

Now, the bad news.  The beautiful new cards are pretty sure, but 99% of my artwork doesn't have a great transparent background, and if you just add the standard white TRO imagery, it'll be a big square on the card, and kill the beauty ph423r came to the rescue about this as I was updating the blog, and we may have a fix.  Though I made these cards, I think these are better for CGL to produce since they have the great little miniatures to drop in there, and I don't (and it does look like they'll be making them, HOPEFULLY not just PDF but hard laminated cards).  I think most of you would prefer black and white anyway, to save toner and stuff.  I made all these, but if you have *any* thoughts about them, positive or negative, or suggestions, let me know, I can update them quite easily.

So, the download links:
Fileconvoy.com, both files, EXPIRES August 7th
4shared.com Color
4shared.com Black and White
My Server, AlphaStrikeCardMaker.zip (windows/.net 2.0 required) - 3mb
My Server, Color File
My Server, B&W file

Let me know whatcha think, and if you use them!

EDIT:  Sure enough, they are going to have an "Ad Hoc" boxed card set, with 90 cards (80 regular mechs, 10 character mechs) at GenCon.  Laminated and full cards, even though I can make Alpha Strike cards all day long, I'll still purchase at least 1, if not 4-5 (so I can have a full lance of everything, as I always try to deploy identical units) of the boxed sets.  Anyway, you can see more here.

I hope they sell well enough to someday see a "Wolf's Dragoons, Alpha Regiment Boxed Set" and so forth, with 130 or so cards each.  It'd be cool, VERY unlikely, but uber cool to have something like that.  Each mech could have names, all be very unique.... good stuff.  I can easily print out a PDF with all of the Wolf's Dragoons stuff actually, I have all the data.... hmmmm.... anybody else wanna see that?  (and Eridani Light Horse, and Clan Jade Falcon/Wolf in 3052 or so)

Exclusive Battletech Alpha Strike Cards!

Well now I've done it.  I've produced the FIRST Alpha Strike card, totally canon, ever produced.

Yep, first one ever.  Not even CGL has produced one for the masses yet, which seems nuts since they must have tested the game at some point.... right?

Anyway, this was created with a tool I stayed up too late last night writing.  It is a very simple little tool, and just lets you plug in values, and it outputs the card.  AND I added command line support, so if you have a list of stats, it'll output them without interaction quickly and easily for you!  I did it using the older .NET 2.0 as well, to avoid incompatibilities.

ONE issue though.... anybody know the exact font used or that should be used?  I went with Helvetica but it wasn't a perfect match.  Then again, since this is the FIRST card, who knows?

I'll be available for download tonight, as well the 60 or so cards in the Alpha Strike book.

EDIT:  Nevermind, I made them all already.  Though I need to point to record sheet background art instead of TRO.  I also decided to go from a command line input, which means slow app startup, to an interface within the exe that lets you just copy/paste values from excel.  I'll also add color background support, so you can print cards in the "faction colors" they are in the Alpha Strike book.

Anyway, download link, with the executable, AND a batch file I used to create them (though it'll be useless tonight with the new release):

http://goodsects.gotdns.com/bte/AlphaStrike.zip

Not a lot of error checking, and I'm not yet changing the PV based on the SKILL, but all that will be done tonight.  If anybody has the font that should be used these would be *perfect*.

Oh, and also in this batch are the consolidated lance/star and platoon/binary cards, so you can play larger battles!  I did have to add a BIR there, which stands for "battlefield intelligence rating" for the larger units.  They are NOT canon, but all the single units are.

Enjoy, let me know what you think!

ANOTHER EDIT!

Color cards, with miniature pic instead of TRO pic:

http://goodsects.gotdns.com/bte/AlphaStrikeColor.zip

And yet ANOTHER update, boy I'm busy today!

Though I still have some work to do, I did find the font, duplicated the outlined text, and found a decent background texture.  However, the canon version still looks better... the rest is going to be much harder to duplicate for me :(

My version:

Canon version:

Why I should hate Catalyst Game Labs

So somebody asked me something today, combined with my free copy of Alpha Strike yesterday, and going through all 110 of my Battlecorps orders over the last few years and finding 5 items (need to double check, but at least 3) that I haven't even gotten yet and it got me thinking.

I went and got my order history from my 2 battlecorps accounts (not sure how that happened) over the last 5 years.  From August 2008, to this month, I have given CGL $2988.27 of my money.  On top of that, I've given IWM another $1809.20 ($255 of that through the Kickstarter).  I've also bought quite a bit of stuff at my LGS, but don't have detailed records on that.  I have at least 6 of the latest boxed sets, and more miniatures that I can paint in a lifetime.  I also blew $90 on a battlecorps subscription (well 2, because I couldn't disable auto-renew).

I have also spent thousands on ebay for miniatures, old book lots, etc.  I won't count that though, as that wasn't money into CGL's pocket.

So, on average, each month, over the last 5 years, I've given CGL about $80 per month.

Of the 6 of my "warnings" on the forum that got me banned, 2 were due to me talking about politics in a discussions about military sizes, populations, etc, you know, those threads that start every week.  2 more were in a thread that was only used by a group that met at a particular store on weekends.  I said "bring money, I'll bring mini's" sorta thing.  Apparently that was wrong too, even if no $ was mentioned.  The other I said something nasty about the amount of errors in their products.  I never flamed anybody personally, never attacked folks, never got "trollish", and always acted with respect towards others.  A couple of those "warnings" I'm 99% sure were just a difference of opinions between a moderator showing personal bias over their role as a moderator, but whatever, I got banned.

Then I'm like "Screw these guys" on my blog after, which even though a temper tantrum, it was on my own blog, read by at most 50 people, but probably well under half that.  Regardless, it was an off-the-cuff thing, and I pretty quickly got over it (or did I? :)).

As it really appears to me, justifiably, that CGL simply doesn't care about me as a customer, I wonder now why I'm sending them $80 a month to pay their bills, sustain their operations, and create new content.

I was one of the top submitters for errata out there, I created lots of new utilities for folks, wrote designers, star charts, and if I wouldn't have been banned I know that today we'd have builders for everything from warships, to mobile structures, to buildings, to bases, to RPG characters, in addition to the usual stuff.  I could have made vast contributions to the masterunitlist.info site.  I would have been fine waiting the couple months before updating my database with new products (for example, I added the LC 3145 stuff last night, though I haven't updated the database their attitude towards me doesn't justify me holding off either).  I was a positive influence on the game, the forums, and the fan base.  Heck, I would have ran demos and given away more miniatures at events (I have thousands I'd give away for a decent cause).  I bought everything, often multiple copies.  In every single way, I was a great customer.

That all being said though, I won't throw hate at Herb, Randall, or any of the folks on the staff at CGL, nor will I stop buying too much stuff.  My anger towards them is unjustified, as not one of them have ever said anything negative to me.  A couple of times I've spoken with them personally and not had any negative thing to say.

So I will direct my anger and disappointment towards the moderators of the forums at http://bg.battletech.com.  Not all of them, but many.  I see bias, hypocrisy, elitism, and trolling, not to mention unprofessionalism from many of the moderators.  It is the moderators (again, not all, but many) that I think are the root of the problems on the forum.

If I decide to not become a customer anymore, and with my current trend towards PDFs only that could very well happen, the moderators on the forums will have cost CGL $80 a month, or nearly $1000 per year.

The biggest tragedy however I think is the overall loss of quality of content on the official forums over the last year or so.  The topics are dull, interesting conversations few, and the number of posts where no information exchange takes place is astounding.  I have spoken, in person and email, from quite a few folks that have nothing positive to say about the forums as well.  Perhaps its just my viewpoint.

Soooooo, now for the good part, since I'm sure everybody has gone on to surf porn by this point and left this blog behind.

I will be starting my own phpBB forum.  I've gotten it running before (its actually on my site if you know where to look) but never advertised it as I didn't think my server, already overloaded making battletech PDFs and Alpha Strike cards, as well as a handful of other sites, could handle the load of a forum with decent response time.  Anyway, I actually work at a hosting company, and can get a new server up and running, well, within a few minutes, that should easily be able to handle the load, and has hundreds (yes, with an 's') of megabits of bandwidth available.

Initially I'll focus on Battletech, though I'll have Robotech, Heavy Gear, Star Fleet Battles, Traveller, 40K, and whatever threads I think may be interesting.

My forum rules:
#1.  Don't be an ass

I'll post an update in the next few days as I set this up.  Hopefully I'll have my site updated to print all the new Alpha Strike cards as well.

If anybody wants to be a moderator... well, not in protecting threads, but just maintaining the board (moving threads as requested, locking them, answering user requests, etc) apply within.  I can setup and get phpBB running, and can probably figure out updates, but I'm not a pro with it.

I actually thought about doing an appeal to one of the official CGL folks, but with me recognizing the biased and hypocritical moderators, I'd be hypocritical in even asking (at least not until they "clean house").

BattleTech Alpha Strike Counters!

2 updates in 1 day, but no, I'm not working on Battletech.

I made counters for all the companies in the Alpha Strike book.

I was going to print all the numbers on the back, but didn't know if anybody wanted these.  Having the numbers on the back means you don't need Alpha Strike sheets.  Instead, for things like damage/criticals, you can make up little counters to use, eliminating all paper tracking from the game.

I also consolidated each lance/star into a single "element", and all 3 lances (or 2 stars) into a single element.  This is basically averaging out all the values.  But doing this means you can fight out your Alpha Strike battle, or, just average stuff out, and you could fight 2 regiments of 10 elements each, instead of 2 binaries of 10 mechs each.  The only recommendation I have for changes at this scale is that for each additional scale, half the range.  So if you want lance sized elements, half all the ranges.  If you want company sized elements, quarter them, etc.  Mathematically dividing by 4 is probably better, but units get slow and short ranged.

Anyway, the table for the consolidated stats is at bottom, here are some counters for you to print up and use for a game!  Oh, you will have to scale them, as I didn't create a PDF to ensure they'd always be the same size.  I got this idea from somebody posting on the forum about counters or mini's.

And creating these for any unit I have a megamek icon for, with any camo I have camo for, is quite trivial.  Let me know if you like/use!

BattleTech Alpha Strike, For Free!!!

Well nifty, I logged into DriveThroughRPG, looking to see if Alpha Strike was out yet, and apparently it kinda was.  I got a copy for $0 before they took it back offline.  I think I may have just snuck through an update!   Muhahahaha.  I'll still buy the hardcover though, as it does look to have some different stuff in it, but no longer need the PDF (which is a crime to charge an additional $15 for something you  bought in paper form)

As for Battletech.  Thanks to a few very persistent folks, I keep doing stuff.  I apparently can't escape.  The last 4 days now, and probably the next few, I've been going through all my conversion code for Alpha Strike/Battleforce.  When I say all of it, I mean ALL of it.  I'm finishing up code for things like Warships, Mobile Structures, and even buildlings.  ALL of it.  I'm mostly done now, but it'll still probably be a day or two before I update the site again.  Oh, you'll be able to specify the environment too, so if you want to play an Alpha Strike game underwater, or in a vacuum, or whatever, the card data will be modified appropriately.

I've found HUNDREDs, if not more, tiny issues in my database.  Almost all related to listing things like "Ferro Fibrous" instead of "Ferro-Fibrous", or just formatting issues, but I have validated just about every design now and my code works.  If you look at units now you see some debug info on how I got costs/BV/ratings, though it still isn't perfect.

However, I'm really thinking of changing the system a bit, though I'll try to have an option to see "canon" or "bad syntax" sorta values.  For example I'm thinking of dividing damage by 5, or even 3, instead of 10.  When doing your "to-hit roll", you roll 2d6, adding any modifiers, and apply it to a special table I made that looks a lot like a missile hit table.  It will then tell you how much damage you do based on how well you rolled.  Unit damage is still the same, divided by 30, but output will be much higher, as this way you see a more granular method of doing the damage.  I'll also have more stats for quick strike.  It'll still be simple, but I'll have a few more attack values and better conversions, plus a few more abilities.  

As for all my code, well, if you want anything inparticular email me, but I have an absolutely huge amount of stuff and its just been more than I wanted to bite off to pretty it all up and distribute it.

I'll try to do up some top view counters this week using megamek imagery and camo's.  I'll print them on .75 or 1" chunks.  For Davion, I'll do a yellow background with 1 of each mech in the intro boxed set (and all variants), in all camo's I have.  Then I'll spit it out as a big PDF so you can print whatever units you want.  Sure wish there weren't so many missing graphics in megamek tho :(

The Alpha Strike sheets need redesigned, they are woefully inadequate if you play a game with all the optional rules.  In fact, nothing out there is any good.  I made some with all the bells-and-whistles, but they kinda suck too :(  If anybody is creative artistically and thinks they can make a great template with well over 50 different places to put data, let me know as I can fill it in :)

I offered to give code to make a canon record sheets to the masterunitlist.info guys, no response yet, but they have far too many units without a card when the Alpha Strike book tells them to go there :(

So I'm done with Battletech, yet somehow very actively working on it.  Go figure ;)