Quote from: Chris24601;1143044That makes sense, though I'll admit I was selfish enough to hope that it would also include handling 'Mech combat solidly within the d6 system as well.

How the multiple attacks (typically without a multi-action penalty) damage/armor crossed systems was my primary interest... particularly given that my groups always found the biggest obstacle to a successful Mechwarrior campaign was not the personal scale, but that as soon as you hopped in Mech the system defaulted back to the wargame rules where PCs became just as vulnerable to being one-shotted as nameless Mech pilot #3 and, just owing to the nature of probability and being on the receiving end of multiple attacks in every battle, you'd often see a complete PC turnover inside of half-a-dozen battles... which is fine for a war game where you're basically the behind-the-lines CO of multiple units, but sucks as a traditional RPG.

Which was why Mekton was a great alternative (and Mekton II arguably more than Zeta since II had power plants and thrusters "purchased" with weight/Kills as they are in Battletech)... because the cockpit area was much better protected and because your defense was a roll instead of a target number, you could actually burn the system's Luck resource to avoid a fatal blow.

I'll have to see if I can't dredge up my old Battletech to Mekton conversion notes. If I CAN I'll post them here. It'll only really cover the 3025-era, though I'm sure someone eager enough could adapt the Lost/Clan Tech onto that if they really wanted to.

Both your and Brad's ideas are pretty good, and I'd like to see your conversion notes (I only play 3025-era, and with the "unseen," too!).  But I'm beginning to this I'm going to have to write the Mech RPG I want to play.  Darn it, guys!  Every time I try to avoid writing a game, you go and pull me back in!

Quote from: Eirikrautha;1143058I'd like to see your conversion notes (I only play 3025-era, and with the "unseen," too!).

Well, I'm still digging for the actual thing, but I can give you the gist of the starting points. For ease of conversation I'm going to use "Mekton" to refer to mecha produced using Mekton Zeta rules and "Mech" to refer to the Battletech units.

First, the conversion we did started with the idea that while Mech's internal structures were way too light on their own; once you added the cockpit, gyro and engine weights to them (all of which are free in Mekton Zeta) you end up with something that reasonably approaches a typical Mekton's servo weight.

Second, due to Mekton using 50m hexes instead of 30m ones you can use a Mech's walking MP value as the running MA of a Mekton (i.e. a Mech with 5/8 MP has a top speed of 86 kph, a Mekton with 5 MA has a top speed of 90 kph; close enough for our purposes).

So we found the best ground speed a Mekton mecha of a given weight could achieve (ex. a 55 ton Mekton with a Supercharged powerplant has an MA of 6) and then calculated the internal structure + cockpit + gyro + engine weight of a Mech with the same speed (a 55 ton Mech with a 6/9 speed has an internal weight of 5.5+3+4+24.5=37 tons). This determined the Servo Kills for all Mechs converted into Mektons of that weight (ex. all 55 ton Mektons have 74 Kills of servos).

For each slower speed we cut the power of the engine (from Supercharged to Overcharged to Standard to Undercharged) and added weight efficiency to bring the weight down to that of the internal structure, engine, etc. for a Mech with that weight and speed. Reducing the engine power saves more points than weight efficiency adds so it all works out.

One fun bit is that, with the exception of the Locust and UrbanMech, all the official 3025 Mech speed profiles can be matched by the above system. The Locust needs to be built as a 19 ton machine (which is pretty easy as the one ton shaved off is the difference between the weight of a 7/11 engine and an 8/12 one) while the UrbanMech becomes dirt cheap via a combo of an undercharged powerplant and the rare weight inefficiency flaw making it perform like a 60 ton Mech instead of the 30 tonner it is.

For servo locations, head, torso, two arms and two legs (or no arms and four legs for a quad) was the default.

Converting Mech armor to Mekton is also pretty simple. Use the weight of the Mech's armor for the Armor carried by the Mech. These numbers are pretty low relative to Mekton (a full 19 tons of armor would only be 6-7 SP per location) but is actually reasonable given how it ablates (1/hit instead of 1/point of damage) and how much damage the weapons ended up doing.

Jump Jets were similarly easy. Add the weight of the Jump Jets as fuel, then buy the jets as thrusters (in Mekton thrusters have no appreciable weight relative to the servo they're mounted in, but their fuel does). For range, divide the total distance by 50m for the Thruster MA needed.

Weapons were generally built to match the weight profile of the BattleTech weapon and deal about half the damage of their Battletech equivalent (i.e. a medium laser weighs 1 ton and does 2K damage). Range used the Battletech medium range bracket for the Mekton range (i.e. a medium laser's medium range is 6 so the Mekton range is 6). Of note... the default weight and range of a 2K beam weapon are 1 ton and range 6 so its a 1:1 conversion.

Machine guns and flamers have the dual-use/anti-personnel option. LRMs and AC/2s have the long range option.

Also of note... because of how they function in Battletech, SRM and LRM systems are built as projectile rather than missile weapons with a burst value equal to the number of groups they have (i.e. an SRM4 can hit 4 locations so it's BV4, an LRM groups the missiles into 5's... so an LRM15 is BV3). In keeping with the half damage above SRMs do 1K each, LRMs do 2K per grouping of 5.

Often times Mekton weapon weights ended up a LOT less than their Battletech equivalents (ex. an AC/5 weighs 8t in Battletech, but a 2K ballistic weapon is only 1 ton. We made this up by a mixture of adding additional ammo for ballistic weapons (because the ammo needs in an RPG aren't the same as for a war game), fudging the stats slightly (ex. Rounding up for the AC/5 damage) and reducing the amount of weight scaling needed for the Mech.

The same goes for heat sinks, which don't have a Mekton equivalent, so instead reduce the cost by reducing the amount of weight scaling needed. Ex. a 35 ton Mech with a 5/8 engine would be built with 6.5 tons of weight efficiency. If it carried 14 heat sinks (4 extra tons) it would on need to pay for 2.5 tons of weight efficiency.

Sometimes a Mekton just ended up weighing less than the original Mech and that's okay too. Mekton cares more about a unit's CP value than its actual tonnage; some 55 ton Mektons will cost more CP than a 60 or 65 ton Mekton depending on what it's equipped with and Mekton assignments should actually be based on CPs not tonnage (anyone familiar with Battletech knows there are certain breakpoints in the system where engine weight vs. speed, armor weights to achieve full coverage, etc. all converge to create a superior unit... those elements generally translate to Mekton, but unlike BT tonnage, Mekton CPs catch those and result in the breakpoint units costing more than the slightly suboptimal ones to either side).

Finally, for weapon-linkages, you can link all the weapons of the same type, but if firing them all would lead to overheating, choose weapons whose heat is twice the overheating amount and give them a 1 turn recharge option to represent staggering the rates of fire.

All the documents I'm looking for are just all the work for the above already done... but that's the gist of the Mech conversions we made as I recall them if you wanted to start from scratch.

Quote from: Chris24601;1143318Well, I'm still digging for the actual thing, but I can give you the gist of the starting points. For ease of conversation I'm going to use "Mekton" to refer to mecha produced using Mekton Zeta rules and "Mech" to refer to the Battletech units.

First, the conversion we did started with the idea that while Mech's internal structures were way too light on their own; once you added the cockpit, gyro and engine weights to them (all of which are free in Mekton Zeta) you end up with something that reasonably approaches a typical Mekton's servo weight.

Second, due to Mekton using 50m hexes instead of 30m ones you can use a Mech's walking MP value as the running MA of a Mekton (i.e. a Mech with 5/8 MP has a top speed of 86 kph, a Mekton with 5 MA has a top speed of 90 kph; close enough for our purposes).

So we found the best ground speed a Mekton mecha of a given weight could achieve (ex. a 55 ton Mekton with a Supercharged powerplant has an MA of 6) and then calculated the internal structure + cockpit + gyro + engine weight of a Mech with the same speed (a 55 ton Mech with a 6/9 speed has an internal weight of 5.5+3+4+24.5=37 tons). This determined the Servo Kills for all Mechs converted into Mektons of that weight (ex. all 55 ton Mektons have 74 Kills of servos).

For each slower speed we cut the power of the engine (from Supercharged to Overcharged to Standard to Undercharged) and added weight efficiency to bring the weight down to that of the internal structure, engine, etc. for a Mech with that weight and speed. Reducing the engine power saves more points than weight efficiency adds so it all works out.

One fun bit is that, with the exception of the Locust and UrbanMech, all the official 3025 Mech speed profiles can be matched by the above system. The Locust needs to be built as a 19 ton machine (which is pretty easy as the one ton shaved off is the difference between the weight of a 7/11 engine and an 8/12 one) while the UrbanMech becomes dirt cheap via a combo of an undercharged powerplant and the rare weight inefficiency flaw making it perform like a 60 ton Mech instead of the 30 tonner it is.

For servo locations, head, torso, two arms and two legs (or no arms and four legs for a quad) was the default.

Converting Mech armor to Mekton is also pretty simple. Use the weight of the Mech's armor for the Armor carried by the Mech. These numbers are pretty low relative to Mekton (a full 19 tons of armor would only be 6-7 SP per location) but is actually reasonable given how it ablates (1/hit instead of 1/point of damage) and how much damage the weapons ended up doing.

Jump Jets were similarly easy. Add the weight of the Jump Jets as fuel, then buy the jets as thrusters (in Mekton thrusters have no appreciable weight relative to the servo they're mounted in, but their fuel does). For range, divide the total distance by 50m for the Thruster MA needed.

Weapons were generally built to match the weight profile of the BattleTech weapon and deal about half the damage of their Battletech equivalent (i.e. a medium laser weighs 1 ton and does 2K damage). Range used the Battletech medium range bracket for the Mekton range (i.e. a medium laser's medium range is 6 so the Mekton range is 6). Of note... the default weight and range of a 2K beam weapon are 1 ton and range 6 so its a 1:1 conversion.

Machine guns and flamers have the dual-use/anti-personnel option. LRMs and AC/2s have the long range option.

Also of note... because of how they function in Battletech, SRM and LRM systems are built as projectile rather than missile weapons with a burst value equal to the number of groups they have (i.e. an SRM4 can hit 4 locations so it's BV4, an LRM groups the missiles into 5's... so an LRM15 is BV3). In keeping with the half damage above SRMs do 1K each, LRMs do 2K per grouping of 5.

Often times Mekton weapon weights ended up a LOT less than their Battletech equivalents (ex. an AC/5 weighs 8t in Battletech, but a 2K ballistic weapon is only 1 ton. We made this up by a mixture of adding additional ammo for ballistic weapons (because the ammo needs in an RPG aren't the same as for a war game), fudging the stats slightly (ex. Rounding up for the AC/5 damage) and reducing the amount of weight scaling needed for the Mech.

The same goes for heat sinks, which don't have a Mekton equivalent, so instead reduce the cost by reducing the amount of weight scaling needed. Ex. a 35 ton Mech with a 5/8 engine would be built with 6.5 tons of weight efficiency. If it carried 14 heat sinks (4 extra tons) it would on need to pay for 2.5 tons of weight efficiency.

Sometimes a Mekton just ended up weighing less than the original Mech and that's okay too. Mekton cares more about a unit's CP value than its actual tonnage; some 55 ton Mektons will cost more CP than a 60 or 65 ton Mekton depending on what it's equipped with and Mekton assignments should actually be based on CPs not tonnage (anyone familiar with Battletech knows there are certain breakpoints in the system where engine weight vs. speed, armor weights to achieve full coverage, etc. all converge to create a superior unit... those elements generally translate to Mekton, but unlike BT tonnage, Mekton CPs catch those and result in the breakpoint units costing more than the slightly suboptimal ones to either side).

Finally, for weapon-linkages, you can link all the weapons of the same type, but if firing them all would lead to overheating, choose weapons whose heat is twice the overheating amount and give them a 1 turn recharge option to represent staggering the rates of fire.

All the documents I'm looking for are just all the work for the above already done... but that's the gist of the Mech conversions we made as I recall them if you wanted to start from scratch.

Thanks!  You've given me a lot to chew over...

One thing that you might think about, if you're interested in simulating the Heat issues in a different way, would be to create the heat profile of a mech as a Power Pool in the associated Mekton. Keep the heat values from the original weapons, or use the Damage as heat for energy weapons, 1/BV for projectile weapons, and 1 for missile weapons, and if the pilot exceeds that value they roll something appropriate in your mind (Pilot Mekton check vs 10+(Value of Overheat) comes to mind off the top of my head) to avoid taking a cinematic critical hit to the location of the last weapon fired. Or something like that. Just extra thoughts for you.

Action! System from Gold Rush Games was heavily influenced by Fuzion. It didn't have a power system to speak of, so it was hard for me to adapt, but it's a solid game with some fun add-ons. Pretty easy to convert OGL stuff to as well.

Quote from: Eirikrautha;1143344Thanks!  You've given me a lot to chew over...

Thanks. One example of the "breakpoint" phenomenon I mentioned is the 55 ton Wolverine at 137.5 CP (the Marik variant which I prefer is 143.9... no I didn't find the document yet, I just rebuilt a few units as examples) while the 60 ton Rifleman is only 134.4 CP and the only reason its even that close is all the weapon linkages the Rifleman has and that I deliberately increased the servo kills from what the internal structure + cockpit + engine + gyro indicated to 79K just to put it slightly higher than the 55 ton machine... and it STILL only topped out at 57 tons instead of the 60 it was supposed to be.

Anyway, here's some actual stats for those machines;

Wolverine (Marik-variant): 55t, 143.9 CP
 - Servos/Armor: Head - 10k/3sp, Torso - 20k/4sp, Arms (2 w. hands) - 10k/3sp, Legs (2) - 11k/4sp
 - Speed: Ground 5, Jump 3 (150m), Maneuver Value -4
 - Sensors: 1km range, comms 300km
 - Large Laser: acc +1, 4K, range 10
 - 2 Medium Lasers (fire-linked): acc +1, 2K ea., range 6
 - SRM6: acc +0, 1K (BV6), range 6, 20 shots
 - Other features: ejection seat, storage space (500 kg)

Rifleman: 60t (57t actual), 134.4 CP
 - Servos/Armor: Head - 11k/2sp, Torso - 22k/3sp, Arms (2) - 11k/3sp, Legs (2) - 12k/2sp
 - Speed: Ground 4, Maneuver Value -5
 - Sensors: 1km range, comms 300km
 - 2 Large Lasers (fire-linked): acc +1, 4K ea., range 10, 1 turn warm-up time
 - 2 Medium Lasers (fire-linked w. large lasers): acc +1, 2k ea., range 6
 - 2 AC/5 (fire-linked): acc +0, 3K ea.; range 12; 20 shots each.
 - Other Features: ejection seat, storage space (500kg)

Oh, one thing you may have noticed is that those servo values are already pretty close to top end (limbs cap at 12k, torso at 22k) and these are just mid-sized machines. But there's a rule in Mekton that you can pay a little extra in CP and spaces (which really aren't a problem for 3025-era equipment) to increase their Kills. In that case a limb with two spaces left caps at 17k and the torso caps with 2 spaces left at 32k). Then you just pay for space efficiency to squeeze everything in.

Quote from: Panzerkraken;1143363One thing that you might think about, if you're interested in simulating the Heat issues in a different way, would be to create the heat profile of a mech as a Power Pool in the associated Mekton. Keep the heat values from the original weapons, or use the Damage as heat for energy weapons, 1/BV for projectile weapons, and 1 for missile weapons, and if the pilot exceeds that value they roll something appropriate in your mind (Pilot Mekton check vs 10+(Value of Overheat) comes to mind off the top of my head) to avoid taking a cinematic critical hit to the location of the last weapon fired. Or something like that. Just extra thoughts for you.

I'd thought about it at the time, but the problem was it concentrates all those weapons into a single, relatively fragile package and part of simulating the BTech feel was thin armor so you could get to those internal damage results where you lose a weapon but can still keep fighting. That Rifleman up there needs either six "weapons hit" results or both arms and its torso destroyed to actually remove all its guns.

Another reason why 3025 works well for this conversion is that the lack of all the weight-saving technology really cuts down on the number of weapons carried. There are no Blackhawks with a dozen ER medium lasers in 3025. The Warhammer is considered insanely armed with 9 weapons (with a lot of linkages in Mekton... that battery of 4 lasers in the side-torsos would certainly be linked, as would the twin machine guns and the two PPCs... its basically 4 weapon systems in Mekton). The ATLAS has just 7 weapons and the arm and rear-firing medium lasers account for 4 of those).

Quote from: Panzerkraken;1143363One thing that you might think about, if you're interested in simulating the Heat issues in a different way, would be to create the heat profile of a mech as a Power Pool in the associated Mekton. Keep the heat values from the original weapons, or use the Damage as heat for energy weapons, 1/BV for projectile weapons, and 1 for missile weapons, and if the pilot exceeds that value they roll something appropriate in your mind (Pilot Mekton check vs 10+(Value of Overheat) comes to mind off the top of my head) to avoid taking a cinematic critical hit to the location of the last weapon fired. Or something like that. Just extra thoughts for you.

Interesting.  Thanks for the idea!

One thing I noticed as I went through re-writing my conversion notes is that I probably over-complicated the whole servo weight thing.

The fact is that Mekton allows infinite weight scaling as long as you pay for it. Theoretically, you could build a unit with a megaheavy limbs on a megaheavy torso encased in megaheavy armor with a dozen PPC equivalents and, as long as you pay for it (which to be fair would be A LOT for that much weight efficiency), it could be a 10 ton machine.

It was while I was building up that Marik Wolverine that I noticed it; the amount of weight efficiency used on the frame was exactly matched by the extra weight needed to be added for the weapons (the SRM6 and its ammo were just 1 ton vs. the 4 tons it would be in Battletech. The large laser was 2 tons instead of 5 tons. The heat sinks accounted for 4 tons. The basic frame had 10 tons of weight efficiency so all those lighter systems cancelled the weight efficiency out entirely.

So, having gone back and dredged it up for the first time in probably 10 years I'm thinking it'd be just as fast to design a servo set for each weight and just say "add any weight efficiency you need to get the final weight down to the target afterwards."

Heat sinks in that sense matter for weapon "warm-up" times (ironically fluffed as "cool down time"), but otherwise don't worry about them.

The big trick in all this though is that you pretty much have to limit yourself to canon units (or at least to units designed with the intention to be played in Battletech) since it would be way too easy to game the heat sinks and other idiosyncrasies of the conversion to your advantage. The CP costs WILL catch those shenanigans if you're using those to balance what each PC gets, but if you're doing a straight conversion where someone is bringing their 55 ton "flashbulb" that they knowingly designed without extra heat sinks and someone else is using a bog-standard Wolverine you could end up with a pretty significant CP disparity.

Quote from: Chris24601;1143395I'd thought about it at the time, but the problem was it concentrates all those weapons into a single, relatively fragile package and part of simulating the BTech feel was thin armor so you could get to those internal damage results where you lose a weapon but can still keep fighting. That Rifleman up there needs either six "weapons hit" results or both arms and its torso destroyed to actually remove all its guns.

I wasn't actually thinking that the weapons would be part of a PP, just require the PP to avoid the heat issues as a SFX. Then you have spaces and points dedicated to heat sinks, which seems to fit the conceits of the setting better than just warm up times.