Never say never!

Well never say never I guess.  Due to popular demand, and FM 3085 having *full* data for the whole IS in a single year (first, time EVER in the BTU), I'm slightly back into it.

The files are back online, but are probably out of date, get a newer version here:
http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=9578.new;topicseen#new

Cartographer is another story.  I put together a quick DirectX version that ran *really* fast, but it'll require less than crap hardware to run.  While normally I'd try to avoid that, I noticed that with a lot of eras and grids loaded cartographer was using nearly 2GB of ram anyway, so maybe I'm aiming for too low of a common denominator.

I have been tinkering with a design system.  Something that lets you, within a SINGLE application, and a SINGLE interface, design the following unit types:
BattleMechs (including superheavy)
IndustrialMechs (including superheavy)
ProtoMechs (including ultraheavy)
Battle Armor
Combat Vehicles
Support Vehicles (including very large ones)
Conventional and Aerospace Fighters
Small Craft
Dropships
Jumpships
Warships
Space Stations
Mobile Structures
Buildings

What it doesn't have is infantry platoons and RPG characters.  I *might* be able to have infantry platoons later, but the RPG stuff will never fall within this application.

This program will be highly dynamic and object oriented.  It'll be versatile, so when new rules come out anybody can add them.  Hardly anything is hard-coded.  It won't be the fastest thing as there is a LOT of enumerating through 2000+ pieces of equipment and 200+ different chassis configurations, but it should work for *everything*, which is something we've never had before.  Not sure if I'll finish it, I do have a congressional campaign that *should* be using up all my time (if only I really wanted to win, instead of feeling compelled to run) so no guarantees on anything.

I may post some succession wars ideas here soon, for posterity reasons just in case I can never finish my projects based on that.