CT Only: Convert Battletech Mech stats to Traveller

[jaz0nj4ckal]

So, I am in the process of converting my Battletech and Mechwarrior characters to Traveller. I am not worried about a direct translation – because I am recreating the characters in Traveller; however, what I am looking for is ideas on how to deal with Mechs.

Currently – I am thinking about handling them as ships; however, I am not sure how to even start to do this. So again – I am turning the Traveller community for suggestions.

Thanks
JJ

 

[aramis]

Rather than mechs, grav tanks.

 

[Carlobrand]

What do you mean by, "how to deal with them"? How to build walking war machines? Or how to find a Traveller equivalent that will serve your characters while being true to the Traveller ruleset?

Walking war machines in the Traveller universe are the next best thing to the Maginot line. If you want put your players in something suitable for a Traveller setting, go with Aramis' suggestion and put them in grav tanks - they're the knights of the Traveller setting.

If on the other hand you actually want walking war machines in your setting, you're going to have to house-rule in some changes that turn a walking bullseye into a believable fighting craft. First is you probably need to abandon gravitics. Trav gravitics allow an enemy to be both heavily armored and jet-plane fast, allowing him to bypass your walking armor and go wreck your rear lines. To justify a mech, you need the enemy on the ground with you or flying in things with wings and little or no armor.

Second, you need to make standing tall in a battlefield something less than suicidally foolish. One idea - almost a must - is a mech-size nuclear damper to keep this thing from being an obvious target for a mininuke. Another might be very good point defenses, so the thing can't be stopped by any infantryman hiding in a foxhole, or maybe a magic-tech force shield, something that limits threats to heavy weapons and maybe needs a big machine to carry it - so it justifies having one big thing on the field instead of many little things. Think Martian War Machine, 2005 version. The challenge here is to find a way to defend the thing while at the same time leaving it able to fight an opponent similarly defended.

Third, you need to ask yourself why you're building a thing that stands tall in a battlefield instead of building a thing that hugs the ground making itself harder to hit while letting an expendable and much-harder-to-spot drone do its high-level observing. That one I don't have an answer for. The Martians in my above example expected to fight a foe that couldn't hurt them - ergo no reason to stay low. Maybe weaponry is so precise that anything that doesn't have a shield is doomed, and the only things that can carry a shield are too heavy for flight, so standing up in a shielded machine is the only way to get a good view. Of course, that leaves you with the problem of extremely precise weaponry, something you might not want.

Mechs are fun, but it's challenging coming up with a setting in which they're actually a reasonable weapons platform.

 

[aramis]

As carlo correctly intuits... Grav Tanks fill a similar setting role as Mechs.

Since BT lacks gravitics, and ignores the massive cross-sectional area of a hominid form relative to mass... but Traveller has gravitics and doesn't completely ignore the C.S.A. ... they're really the two roles that don't have equivalents, and thus the two roles that mesh up.

Note that MT, TNE, and T4 all have walker mobility as an option in the vehicle rules. They don't do battlemechs all that well, but if you REALLY must have walkers in Traveller, it's a viable option.

Here's a role comparison.

Battletech	Traveller
Mech	—
—	Grav Tanks
Infantry	Infantry
Jump Infantry	Grav Belt Infantry
(Airmobile Infantry)	Drop Troops
Mech Inf	Mech Inf Light Battledress
Elemental	Heavy Battledress
Armor, Wheeled	Armor, Wheeled
Armor, Tracked	Armor, Tracked
Armor, Hover	Armor, Hover
Aerospace Fighter	Small Craft/COACC
DropShip	(Rider)
Jump Ship	(Tender)
Warship	Warship

 

[rancke]

Wil, Carlo, are you saying that the Traveller rules are not flexible enough, not generic enough to handle a Mecha style setting? :devil:


Hans

 

[mike wightman]

You can use the rules to model them no problem. Using CT you can upscale personal combat and design mechs as characters, alternatively ou could use Striker to build them, or you could just modify tyne ship construction rules, you could even just use the BT mech design system and then convert them to Traveller combat stats. That's the easy bit with many solutions.

The problem is that they don't fit in the OTU and they don't work in any version of "realistic" science fiction without massive fudges like Carlo's force field suggestion.

The only reason mechs work in BT is the setting is designed in such a way that missile technology is only slightly more advanced than first century Chinese bottle rockets.

 

[rancke]

The problem is that they don't fit in the OTU and they don't work in any version of "realistic" science fiction without massive fudges like Carlo's force field suggestion.

Did the OP say he wanted to use them in the OTU?


Hans

 

[mike wightman]

I thought Traveller is the setting in your view

The wording of his OP makes me think that he is converting characters from the BT universe to a Traveller universe, now as to what his Traveller universe is like I have no idea yet...

 

[rancke]

I thought Traveller is the [OTU] setting in your view .

Yes, but I realize that not everybody agrees with me. Indeed, there was a poll many years ago that showed me that not even the majority agreed with me (which surprised me, I have to confess).


Hans

 

[GypsyComet]

Battletech is already 2d6 Traveller with a variant vehicle design and combat system strapped on and most of the RPG elements flensed away. Why "adapt"?

 

[Jame]

Battletech is already 2d6 Traveller with a variant vehicle design and combat system strapped on and most of the RPG elements flensed away. Why "adapt"?

Actually, they do have an RPG for it, which is also 2d6. It's more versus target numbers as I understand the newest version.

 

[aramis]

Actually, they do have an RPG for it, which is also 2d6. It's more versus target numbers as I understand the newest version.

3+ fairly different RPGs, actually.

1E was a GURPS-like point build (4 stats, 100 point characters)
2E was a more white-wolf like design for Char Gen - templates plus points.
3E was similar to 2E except for the Character Gen... Which is similar to Renegade Legion Legionnaire.
I've not looked at 4E. I'm told it is updated 2E.

The personal combat rules and personal weapons stats are not entirely compatible between 1E and 2E, and they don't even have the same character attributes.

 

[GypsyComet]

The RPG is written as an excuse to play more Battletech.

The current RPG uses a progression of templates that echo Traveller, particularly Lift-Off.

I was, however, referring to Battletech itself. The Pilot and Gunnery rolls are Traveller skill checks that have been notationally flipped.

 

[Carlobrand]

Wil, Carlo, are you saying that the Traveller rules are not flexible enough, not generic enough to handle a Mecha style setting? :devil:...

... and they don't work in any version of "realistic" science fiction without massive fudges like Carlo's force field suggestion.

The only reason mechs work in BT is the setting is designed in such a way that missile technology is only slightly more advanced than first century Chinese bottle rockets.

What he said!

Seriously, I'm an old mech fan myself, but even within that game system it was hard to justify the value of the mechs. I had a scenario that I irked my friends with, where I'd pretty consistently make a royal mess of their mech force - and often defeat them if their mix of mechs favored me - with a bunch of hovercraft. Mind you, these were the supposed queens of the battlefield in a dark age where the elite mechwarriors were scrambling for parts, and I was tearing them up with an equal value of vehicles (as that game calculated value) that could presumably be turned out quickly with straightforward auto assembly line technology. They'd usually respond with something like, "You'd never get men to risk their lives like that," and I'd remind them that at Normandy our primary strategy was to throw a whole lotta men against a fortified defensive line and keep them advancing in the teeth of fire until they overwhelmed it.

Further, my hovercraft force was much faster than even their light mechs, so my meeting them on equal terms was a mercy. In a strategic level exchange, even in that milieu, a hovercraft-based opponent could mass forces where and when it wanted to either overwhelm mech units piecemeal or force them to cluster tightly together for mutual defense, in essence playing Mongol Warrior to the mechs' Armored Infantry. Only place mechs fared well was in mountainous or forested terrain, and I have a vague memory of burning forest being a bit of a handicap for mechs - that whole heat sink thing.

If it weren't for rules that deliberately handicapped ground vehicles, the mechs would be driven off the field even in that game system. I don't know if they ever plugged that hole - it was something like 20 or 25 years ago.

However, it's still kind of a fun SF trope to play with. You just have to either ignore any appeal to realism and go anime all the way, or else you try to find some logical reason why you're standing up and accepting hits instead of building something low and sleek, or why you need an airplane that converts into a humaniform bipedal tank.

 

[shadowcat20]

Hovercraft wave....Savana Masters??


The Hover craft that was unbuildable by their own rules? 5 ton with a med laser and quick speed?

 

[GypsyComet]

The Hover craft that was unbuildable by their own rules?

Ah, classic FASA.

 

[Jame]

3+ fairly different RPGs, actually.

1E was a GURPS-like point build (4 stats, 100 point characters)
2E was a more white-wolf like design for Char Gen - templates plus points.
3E was similar to 2E except for the Character Gen... Which is similar to Renegade Legion Legionnaire.
I've not looked at 4E. I'm told it is updated 2E.

The personal combat rules and personal weapons stats are not entirely compatible between 1E and 2E, and they don't even have the same character attributes.

I've never seen 2E. I know someone who's run/written for it and he says it's pretty deadly.
But 4E is templates plus points, with an optional points-only system. I prefer the points-only system because the templates don't make sense.

I have 3E and it captures the spirit of Battletech more than I think 4E does. But part of it is the new setting stuff; 4E is relying more on the supplements to capture it.

 

[RandyB]

Ah, classic FASA.

Yep. Canonical characters that couldn't be generated using their rules were common as well (FASATrek, oh, so flawed...)

 

[jaz0nj4ckal]

As always - thank you for the ideas and suggestions.

I see the point of having mechs and their poor performance in the Traveller setting; however, just wanted to give my players what they wanted, and slowly work them into the Traveller vehicles.

With the latter being said - I am going to possibly ditch the mech idea, and go with the grav tanks, and possibly scale back my mechs to be along the lines of super power-armor.

wow...did not know MechWarrior had so many versions - I only have 1e MechWarrior, Battletech, Citytech and AeroTech.

will check out the new stuff... I am a sucker for 2d6 games systems...But I think I found a system that I really love....Classic Traveller!!!!

thanks
JJ

 

[jaz0nj4ckal]

As carlo correctly intuits... Grav Tanks fill a similar setting role as Mechs.

Since BT lacks gravitics, and ignores the massive cross-sectional area of a hominid form relative to mass... but Traveller has gravitics and doesn't completely ignore the C.S.A. ... they're really the two roles that don't have equivalents, and thus the two roles that mesh up.

Note that MT, TNE, and T4 all have walker mobility as an option in the vehicle rules. They don't do battlemechs all that well, but if you REALLY must have walkers in Traveller, it's a viable option.

Here's a role comparison.

Battletech	Traveller
Mech	—
—	Grav Tanks
Infantry	Infantry
Jump Infantry	Grav Belt Infantry
(Airmobile Infantry)	Drop Troops
Mech Inf	Mech Inf Light Battledress
Elemental	Heavy Battledress
Armor, Wheeled	Armor, Wheeled
Armor, Tracked	Armor, Tracked
Armor, Hover	Armor, Hover
Aerospace Fighter	Small Craft/COACC
DropShip	(Rider)
Jump Ship	(Tender)
Warship	Warship

What is the different between Drop Troops and Jump Infrantry/Grav Belt Infantry? They both sound exciting names for the session I am working on for this weekend.