The Battlemech Equipment Survey is an ongoing, swiss-style tournament which pits equipment for Battlemechs against one another. I like brackets and tournaments and I don't know a lot of the new Battletech equipment so it's a great opportunity to get familiar with a lot of it.
Surveys below. The listed matchups aren't the only ones in the survey; just the most eye-catching ones. I've also included the 'mechs I've made which use the included technologies. Surveys close Friday evening.
The swiss bracket is doing its job. It's separating good equipment and bad into tight matchups. I might just be in a funk, but that last round of tight matchups between equally irrelevant equipment failed to inspire. As of right now it's sitting at 8 votes and I don't blame anyone.
I like a lot of the write-ups I've done here. I think Mother & Monitors is a bit 'bleh.' The rest are written to as to have been lost to history, which makes them feel a bit one-note. 3087 it's not.
Round 4, Survey 1 - Gauss Rifles versus Omnimech Technology, feat the Risccing, a RISC test platform omnimech carrying a variety of gauss weapons.
Round 4, Survey 2 - Streak SRMs versus all other special missile munitions, feat the Superchoad, a rebuild of Round 2's Maquess after it was fielded, defeated, and salvaged.
Round 4, Survey 3 - Cruise Missiles versus the Light Probe, feat the Paradigm, or at least a recreation of the allegedly groundbreaking 'mech whose original model and inventor were destroyed in the opening salvos of The Jihad. It was simply a few advanced technologies and a set of two completely unique 'mechs created by a talented Periphery engineer with pirate connections. No mystery at all.
Round 4, Survey 4 - Nuclear Weapons versus Triple Strength Myomer, feat Mother and Monitors, a control 'mech and two drones which patrol a vacuum world occasionally torn by storms.
Round 4, Survey 5 - ATMs vs MMLs, feat Neuron, a Raven variant commissioned by The Society around the same time as the Capellans' own RVN-4LC. Not pictured are variants with the MML 7 swapped for iATM9 or the Streak LRM 10 and the NARC Beacon swapped for an iATM3 or Streak LRM 5.
Round 4, Survey 6 -Single Heat Sinks versus...Rifles?, feat Bubblewrap, an undocumented, unnamed, jury-rigged ultralight outfitted with Rocket Launchers that saw one battle against oppressors on a Periphery world.
Still working on the nation interaction game and the Mercury System and the Battlemech Engineer's Handbook.
And the Bookclub on the Edge of Forever. And a vacation next week. And doing something for the patreons and Morning Perfect Base and The Based Report.
And playing Alpha Strike and hammering out a simple Alpha Strike campaign system and doing dishes and doing laundry--oh crap I didn't do laundry.
2 comments:
Nation interaction game? -skiltao
When I did 3087, it was nominally directed by my players. They chose their techs and some of them made their own designs and we hashed out a little bit of history as well.
I didn't have an arc because Insane Player Logic drives stories better than anything I can make up. I'd become accustomed to letting them drive stories. 100% organically with roleplaying.
I also made a nation building game I posted 1,000,000 years ago, where the history of nations was done as a game with various abilities inspired by the RPG for A Song of Ice and Fire on cards which were played straight as a buff or inverted as a malus. Nations would have a handful of characteristics and two eras of history to define them ('Recent' and 'Historic' and sometimes 'Ancient,' if someone pulled the 'Ancient Society' card).
So I had nations and a rough system for creating nations, but I didn't have a 'gamified' way of putting them into motions. Nothing beats Insane Player Logic, but a generic-but-not-too-generic storytelling system driven by the actions of states--the push and pull of central versus regional power, of stability/control versus anarchy/freedom, and of competitions for resources both hot and cold--is still the holy grail.
This week is busy (I know I say that every week), but time permitting, I'll post about it on Wednesday or Monday.
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