Newsgroups: rec.games.board
Subject: Re: BTECH: Veichle construction
From: taia_a@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 04:53:58 GMT
Reply-To: taia_a@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz
 <1992Jul14.015733.2002@cs.uow.edu.au><1992Jul16.100027.24673@peponi.wcc.govt.n
  z>,<NIGEL.92Jul16181215@rs733.GSFC.NASA.Gov><1992Jul18.001147.18018@peponi.wcc.govt.nz>,<NIGEL.92Jul21123553@rs733.GSFC.NASA.Gov>
Organization: Wellington City Council, Wgtn, NZ

In article <NIGEL.92Jul21123553@rs733.GSFC.NASA.Gov>, nigel@rs733.GSFC.NASA.Gov writes:
>In article <1992Jul18.001147.18018@peponi.wcc.govt.nz> taia_a@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz writes:

 [ Infernos and vehicles and how they are vunerables etc deleted ]

>Die and lose movement are two different things.  The big advantage to
>some vehicles is that to destroy them you need to crit.  Granted that
>the BTech crit chart is overly generous in this respect but mostly you
>find movement loss or turret lock not actual vehicle destruction.

 Granted that this is true, but then they did design the game with a very
heavy bias for mechs/meks! This is a game about Battlemechs and not
Battletank or Battlevehicle! :-)

>Mix in a small amount of mechs for target practice and you give people
>more interesting choices to make...shoot the mech which is hard to
>replace, kill the tank with the twin gauss cannons making your day
>miserable, eliminate one of the scads of little hover tanks with a
>single gauss cannon or nuke the annoying hovertank with ECM, C3
>slave, popgun med laser and a small supply of homing missiles.

 I agree with this, but I do prefer meks for their versatility! Vehicles
are cheaper to produce and maintain. The Ferrari (mek) againist the old
Ford (vehicle). The Ferrari is expensive to purchase and maintain, but
the Ford can be jury-rigged (I am unsure of the exact US term) and costs
a lot less.

>    Infernos aren't very realistic, but that's the game mechanics! :-)

>Yes, and it shows how much vehicles are feared that they would design
>game mechanics to deliberately nuke them.  House rules favor the more
>combined arms approach...we rule that crits occur only after rolling
>over 8, infernos have no more effect on fusion vehicles than on mechs
>and hull down vehicles get -2 to be hit and all damage is applied to
>the exposed turret.  Mechs are more survivable anyway and on the
>assault where dropship space is premium you carry mechs since they are
>much more bang for the tonnage.  Some get hauled around for infantry
>moving, dropship zone security and that sort of stuff.

 I use vehicles in a background roll, mech recovery, engineering, artillery,
MASH, BHQ, Administration, infantry transport etc. Where meks come in is
with orbital drops, all terrain movement and survivalability. This makes
them great for fighting battles on odd planetary terrain. Jungle, Airless,
Desert, Water etc. Vehicles are mostly for planetary militias etc, but
I still wouldn't want to meet a lance of Demolishers in a city!
 BTW I like the hull-down rule and I'll consider the inferno amendment. I
try not to have too many "house rules" as I get messed up for tourneys.

>Nigel Tzeng
>..sig under construction

 Yet again....
Tony Taia
 tai-shu@akeake.vuw.ac.nz, TAIA_A@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz
3067:The Stacalkas-Nomen, when the Combine destroys the Clans!
 *sigh*Not another Cluster, we'll be here till Christmas.
 HEY! VUW and WCC don't know Btek, so you know that this is mine!

PS for those that asked I base my Btek unit on the Second Genyosha (46 meks)