With the new (Kickstarted!) turn-based BattleTech computer game out, I’ve been a) playing it a tonne (and enjoying it immensely) and b) thinking back on all the tabletop BattleTech I’ve played over the years. Which has also been a tonne. To this day I can rattle out many weapon stats from memory. And I fondly remember one summer laying down all the maps we owned on the floor (some of which were different scales, so we had to do this crazy linear conversion when we crossed over) in a friend’s basement for an epic battle between a crazy number of units. Took all summer.
The game itself is mostly functional* and models well enough the particular flavour of reality its going for. Stompy bot action, you’ve got it. There is, however, one major niggle that I noticed even back during those epic summers, and that became even more glaring to me the few times I’ve been able to play the past couple of years. And that is this: the math. Or, more precisely, the dice math. Continue reading
Lynx Thoughts 