Jeffro’s Car Wars Blog

I guess it’s just as well that the “missing mechs” are gone. Although it’s hard for me to conceive of the Battletech universe without the units that appeared in the original 3025 catalogue (er, I mean, Technical Readout…), those original Mecha were the source of many an irritation.

The problem was that the design system seems to have been made first before the decision came out to use those licensed mecha images. You could not design the most of the mecha pictured in the 3025 Readout!!

A classic example is the Rifleman. If you look at the picture, it should have 4 humongous lasers. The design in the Readout specified two lasers and two autocannon. To make matters worse, the Rifleman couldn’t fire even two of his lasers without generating lots of extra heat…. Grrrr….

Then compare the Marauder to the Warhammer. The Warhammer’s PPC’s should be meaner and longer ranged. The autocannon on the Marauder should be much meaner than an AC/5. The Warhammer should have 6 monstrous single shot rockets– not to mention an extra pair of LRM/10s in the side torsos.

And speaking of rockets… where exactly are these mechs supposed to store all the reloads? From the pictures, the Archer should have at most one or two reloads. (Those are mighty big rockets in there….)

The problems go on and on. Robotech weaponry simply does not exist on the basic lists of the original BattleTech game. The ‘mechs look good… but their designs don’t really match their pictures. I guess it’s a good thing then that these Robotech mechs are being removed. Even though they were the Cannonical Mechs of the game for so long, they still don’t really fit with the Battletech idiom anyway!

I was pretty irritated waaay back when the Car Wars Compendium altered the VFRP so that it fired 6 1d rockets instead of 3 2d rockets. This invalidated dozens of old designs and ruined a perfectly good weapon. (Thankfully, the the 5th edition has set things right again.) I see now that this sort of thing is very minor compared to what the Battletech crowd has had to go through.

I noticed recently that they no longer sell the basic Battletech set with a set of plastic figures. I asked a miniatures buff about them and he told me about the Robotech lawsuit. As a consequence of it, all of those units have been erased from Battletech’s history. It’s just like Back to the Future.

Ouch.

(Hmmm…. So that’s why Battletech products no longer feature ‘mechs like the Warhammer and the Rifleman. What kind of ‘mech does Natasha Kerensky pilot now…? What does this do the old novels like Decision at Thunder Rift…?)

It’s really too bad. My favorite mechs to play include the Griffin, the Wolverine, the Battlemaster, and the Marauder. A lot of FASA’s other designs just look like walking boxes with missile ports on them. Oh well.

I still haven’t found any good information regarding FASA’s closing, but the following site outlines the missing mechs and also shows their precursors from the anime series:

http://brianscache.com/unseen/

I picked this up at the used book store last night– the Battletech counterpart to the “Car Wars Compendium”.

It’s not a redesign of the old game, but it does clarify and compile a lot of stuff. It leaves out Aeorotech, though– but that’s okay, we never really used it! (Though LAM rules would have been nice for the transformable Jet type mecha….)

Most significantly, it adds equations for establishing the “Base Value” of a unit. (Very similar to the BPV in Star Fleet Battles.) Also there are several scenarios built around the BVs. The Battletech boxed sets that I’ve seen really don’t come with any decent scenarios, so that’s very handy. Finally, there are equations for calculating the cost of units. I don’t know if they are any good– if they’re the same ones that were in Mechwarrior, then they give the idiotic result that one Atlas can be bought for the price of 3 Locusts.

Many of my irritations with the system are addressed here, so I feel bad about slamming the game a few posts back.

On the other hand… I’m especially sad to see that Fasa really is gone.

(Moment of silence, please.)

Here’s a link on that:

http://dumpshock.com/FASA-FAQ.html#4.1

I really wish I had more details on this:

“After 20 happy-and difficult-years in business, FASA Corporation is closing its doors.

“The adventure gaming world has changed much in those years, and it is time for the founders of FASA to move on.”

What are the market forces that they recognized there and in what way are those forces going to affect Steve Jackson Games?