Battleforce/Quickstrike Modifications

When it comes to Quick Strike or BattleForce cards and calulations:


Here is what I do differently than SO:
- I calculate heat efficiency by range band.  SO would make a unit with 10xML, 2xERPPC, and 30 heat sinks have attacks of 4-4-1, my method makes it 4-4-2.  Basically, I don't count weapons that can't reach a range band in calculations for heat.  
- I do not subtract 4 for heat efficiency calculations.  This is because 4 heat, over 3 battletech turns, is 12 heat.  It doesn't make sense, so I don't do any removing.  I do count the maximum of jump movement or ground movement heat (XXL engines being 2/4 instead of 1/2).
- I round normally, not up.


These are my new abilities, most of which have an * to denote they are mine, and all can be ignored if you desire:
- PUL:  This unit is 100% pulse equipped and gets a -2 to all to-hit rolls.  Note that the weapons damage is not increased by 20% like pulse weapons normally are.  I remove this, it wasn't worth it and I hate pulse weapons anyway.
- BG#:  This means "Big Guns #", where # is the number of weapons that can do 12+ damage.  If you have this value you have a whopper of a cannon that can, in 1 hit, do massive damage (or knock off the head).  This gains you a free critical roll on any hit, even just armor, adding the big gun value to the roll.  I may tweak how these rules work, but you get the gist.  I removed this, I didn't know how it'd work, so its gone until I figure out a good method.
- RL #/#/#:  Rocket launchers have their own attack, which is used instead of all other attacks.  It can only be used once, but can add in ballistic overburn.
- Attacks can have a plus (+) sign in them.  This is typically for units that do <5 damage in a turn, often infantry.  If you see a number in the damage column like "3+", if you hit your target you must roll 3+ on 1d6 to do a single damage point.
- Attacks now often have 2 values, separated by a dash.  The first value is ballistic attacks, the second value energy.  If there is only 1 value and the unit has ENE, its obviously an energy attack.  In normal battleforce/quickstrike you'd just use the first value, but I provide the option to track and resupply ammunition.  If underwater the energy attack is used instead of the normal attack.  Note that some units have no energy attack, and would have a - in the place.  This means when the unit is out of ammo thats it, it can no longer fire (but could still do melee).
- LA #/#:  Limited ammunition shots/tons.  When using a ballistic attack you use ammo, the LA ability shows how many times you can use that ballistic attack, before the tons value of ammo must be used to resupply the unit.  Many units only have a few turns of ballistic ammunition, while sufficient for a single engagement, after that they really need to resupply or loose much of their effectiveness.
- Some systems like Clan NARC have 2 values like 1/1.  This is to show that the item can be used in SR/MR range bands.
- I ignore PPC capacitors unless they actually increase average damage over 2+ turns.  Only firing every other turn makes them less effective over multiple turns than the unmodified PPC.
- I don't reduce damage for weapons with <10 shots, instead I track their ammo with LA #/#
- One-shot weapons are treated as rocket launchers
- I don't modify FLK damage by 1.05 for its -1 to hit, instead apply a -1 to hit when you use it.
- Aerospace and Conventional Fighters have DT #, the number being the damage threshold.  I thought about leaving this out if it was 1, as fighters nearly always take a crit on each hit, but I didn't yet.
- Aerospace and Conventional Fighters have STR #, this is the attack used when strafing ground targets.  If there is no STR #, the unit can't strafe and must use strike or bombing attacks.


Rules changes I recommend:
- Instead of rolling to hit, use the missile hit table instead, applying all normal modifiers to it.  Its stupid that either every single weapon over 3 turns hits, or every single weapon over 3 turns misses, all based on 1 roll.  The missile hit table pretty much ensures there are always a couple damage done, but rarely full damage.  Skills should be negative or positive modifiers with this though, instead of 0-5, as an elite pilot with -4 would do more damage, statistically, than a green one with +1 on the missile hit table.  Missiles, UACs, and other items that typically use the cluster table already would be treated as doing the maximum possible damage for damage calculations, though I'm not sure how artemis would then work.  Damage could be based on a scale so up to -3 could be applied from pulse/TC so there would be no way a unit could do more damage than it is actually capable of, even if super accurate.
- I think Battletech is more fun by multiplying ranges by 4.  This is actually true scale for the miniature, but it just makes more sense.  Lets face it, a locust, in 10 seconds, can move farther than it can shoot.  An M2 Bradley IFV would have a speed of about 5 in BT, but a range of over 100.  Basically, in Battletech ranges close WAY WAY WAY too fast


Things I'm still thinking of changing:
- I don't like that BAR armor is reduced in count.  It should be easier to crit, but the points shouldn't be reduced.  Not sure how to deal with this, perhaps just a free crit per attack against it or a free crit per X number of damage.
- The critical table needs to be redone, I don't think it models what all can happen properly.  Since I am doing this with a computer, it would be possible to actually create unique critical tables for each unit, placing them on the QS/BF card.  This could be kinda neat, though some may think its more time consuming, you still roll the same, you just look on the card instead of a table in the book for the results.
- I'm thinking of adding a rear attack to units with rear facing weapons, instead of ignoring them completely.  It would replace all other attacks, but often give a 1-1 attack to the rear arc when outflanked.  Not many units have rear firing weapons though.
- A 20 point AC20 hit gets a single critical roll in battletech when hitting internal structure, while a LB20X could have up to 20.  Plus, the LB20X has up to 20x the chance of a head hit (though obviously not as catastrophic).  I want to deal with this somehow, not sure yet.
- Adding a value after special attacks, like SRM 3-3 (2).  The number in parenthesis is the types of special ammo it gets.
- Adding fuel for aerospace fighters, though even with 240 fuel points and spending a minimum of 2 per turn to stay up, thats 40 battleforce turns of fuel.
- XL/XXL/Light engines.  Instead of having less structure, they have the same amount, however on engine hits the unit is destroyed instead.  Just a thought.
- Add C3PV #, this would be a number that represents the additional points if the unit is part of a C3 network.  It may end up just being +1 point per unit in the network or something.

Things that are still broken:

- No threshold for fighters

- A unit like the TI-1A Titan should have 1-1 ballistic and 3-3 SRM, not 2-2 ballistic and 1-1 SRM.  Special attacks get reduced and it seems to take precendence over regular attacks.

- Things like warships, dropships, mobile structures, etc, don't work yet.  The system tries to make them work, but it usually fails horribly.  Mechs/CV/PM/BA/Infantry all seem to work ok, other stuff may or may not.
- Turret damage isn't separated out on anything.