The Mercury System

It's been a crazy week. Not so crazy I can't  type a few stupid words. That's on me.

Let me talk about the Mercury System.

Actually, let me whinge about omni-mechs. I love 'em. I think they're a great idea. They're stupid and bad, too.

Free carry capacity for battle armor, the ability to swap out micro lasers for a gauss rifle at no real cost, and ease of repair more than offset the logistical and monetary costs of making them. Can't have a big gun in an arm and still punch with it.

And because each one is mostly a tonnage, movement profile, and armor level they don't have as much 'character' as conventional Battlemechs. Even if the Catapult is just an Archer with jump jets and smaller missile racks, it still feels like its own 'mech with its own identity. Omnis are chameleons with none of their own personality.

If you read this blog regularly, and that's just one person, you probably know I like fewer, distinct options instead of a flood of similar or slightly-different options. "Soup" I call it. Omnimechs are like soup, but they also promise a battlefield of fewer, distinct units.

Wherefore: The Mercury System

At What Cost?

What would I do to make more distinct omnimechs with objectively worse, more distinct technology? A system built on the Mercury battlemech's versatility without being a full omnimech. I'd create a new system circa 3049 and add construction-level costs and real pod restrictions. The Mercury System.

Construction-wise, the real costs are tonnage, crits, in-game effects (heat, to-hit modifiers), and out-of-game effects (repair, maintenance, etc.) I do realize that repair and maintenance are effects in other types of Battletech gameplay. If you've used those, let me know how omnis work in them.

This system is still in progress. I'm just spitballing because it's so fucking barebones. I'd just a 5% tonnage penalty. 5 tons for 100-tonners and 1 ton for 20-tonners. Seems okay. Losing a medium laser from a light 'mech is a hefty price.

Maybe 2.5% to make it more marginal. Maybe a structure surcharge. 12.5% structure of omnis. Let's pin that there. Half a ton for the lightest 'mechs and 2.5 for the heaviest.

You Kids Like Hardpoints, Don't You?

So then, distinction. I had a few seconds of revulsion the first time I played a Battletech video game with hardpoints, but then I instantly loved them. They jibe with my reckoning of the universe and my desire for 'mechs to have a unique character instead of being a lump of critical slots tied to a tonnage slider.

Label ever-so-many crits as hardpoints which can only carry certain types of equipment. The simplest division is: lasers, missiles, ballistics, and general equipment.

That's weaksauce though.

Lasers have pretty high energy requirements and they need way more cooling. Technically, a small laser requires less cooling than an AC/10 or LRM 20, but it's a place to work from. Jump jets also require a healthy amount of power. Gauss rifles need power even if they don't need cooling. Heat sinks, paradoxically, also need to be patched into the cooling system.

Missiles and ACs are both basically self-propelled. That is, they don't use energy from the fusion core to deal damage. That's why they don't need power amplifiers when paired with an ICE engine. The difference is that missiles use a more advanced tracking system for their guided munitions. That implies a more complex targeting and computer interface than simple ballistics.

That interface would also apply for C3 systems, targeting computers, ECMs, BAPs, AMS, and other sophisticated systems. Maybe even RACs for the complexity of unjamming them. Probably ammo for the same.

The mounts for ACs would be simple. If they aren't the basic hardpoint type, they'd be close. Ammo feeds and basic targeting data. MRMs, Plasma Cannons, Machine Guns. Maybe even TAG since it's just a target designator and not a weapon or a sophisticated system.

I'd be tempted to make a "stupid weapon" hardpoint type, but so few fit into this hardpoint type that I'd keep melee weapons, rocket launchers, B-pods, etc. in this one.

So we have High Power Hardpoints, Advanced T&T Hardpoints, and Basic Hardpoints. They take up however many crits you choose and they can only carry equipment of that type or simpler.

Alternatives

The simplest alternative is just using weapon types. Energy, Missile, Ballistic, and general equipment. That's boring and also I don't buy that that the same pod which allows the sophisticated EM and data parsing of a C3 Master would also plug directly into the engine to house a Supercharger. 

Yes, normal omnimechs do that, but it's one of the reasons I think they're kinda stupid.

So what about using tech sophistication, D, E, and F, as a measure for this? It has a lot of pluses, the biggest one being that it uses existing game infrastructure and doesn't require the use of more lists. It also aligns general technological complexity which addresses some of the C3/Supercharger issues.

I don't really have any cons. It's not perfect, but it marries abstraction with simplicity.

Another option would be gross tonnage/crit categories. A 12-crit hardpoint could carry up to 15 tons, a 6-crit system could carry up to 10, and a 3-crit system could carry up to 5. That seemed like a hat-on-a-hat, where you're designing your mech for well above it's rated tonnage and then performing an extra tonnage pass for all of its weapons. I liked the bloated hardpoints killing crits, but then it also makes mounting things like heat sinks and ammunition a bit to restricting. 

That's all theory though. I haven't done the design work for any of these alternatives.

The Fourth Amigo

The only other hardpoint I might add would be a High Energy and Advanced T&T Hardpoint. But I don't know what would go in there. An energy weapon with a lot of mechwarrior choices? Maybe Variable-Speed Lasers, Bombast Lasers, and Superchargers? Radical heat sinks? Maybe bigger missile racks like an LRM 20? I'm not opposed to a HEATT Hardpoint, but why not take it over all of the others? Why not take HE or ATT Hardpoints over basic ones?

Also, there's not a lot of decision-making by painting a set of crits one color or the other. There kind of is, because each crit of one type can't be the other, but it's not engaging.

What if we mix up the boring 2.5% structure surcharge and the hardpoint type rules. Each hardpoint type--no matter how many crits it takes up--adds to the surcharge.

Simple Hardpoints- 0.5% to Mercury System Surcharge per Simple Hardpoint.

HE and ATT Hardpoints - 1.0% to Mercury System Surcharge per HE and ATT Hardpoint.

HEATT Hardpoint - 1.5% to Mercury System Surcharge per HEATT Hardpoint. 

The tradeoff of efficiency of an all-in-one hardpoint I think balances against just saving weight and committing to an energy/missile hardpoint. The associated equipment might change that calculus. On the other hand 2% might be sensible since you'll always take this one if you're going to add HE and ATT 'points to a location.

Dedicated Mercury System Weapons

Dang. The problem there is that I really, really wanted to give the omni/MrS versions of equipment a weight penalty as well to emphasize they're omni/MrS-ness. I kinda wanted to shift it into the reverse engineering equations I've been working on that rely on fractional accounting. 

Otherwise--as much as I may like the challenges it would pose, you'd have crushing penalties for light pod weapons and have omnis that heavily favor fewer, large wepaons.

Back to the drawing board.