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 frozenwastes wrote:
Let's be honest about the points system:

It's just the Battletech BV2.0 points system divided by 100 and rounded appropriately. So that means you have the stuff statted out for one game, but the points system is based on how it performs in another game.

It's probably thought of as a good guide that will work most of the time, but it's very, very breakable. Just like in classic Battletech, plus now you're using it for a different game.

I would not recommend a 40k or Warmachine/Hordes approach to force building for either Battletech or Alpha Strike. If people go into it with the idea of making a broken force, they'll probably succeed. You have 4500+ units to choose from, then narrow them down to your era/technology base and then hunt for optimized choices.

You can break it if you want, but if you use it as a general guide, it should work. I built two 50 point demo lances and have played both and won and lost with both yesterday night. I gave each one a light, 2 mediums and a heavy and put a veteran pilot in the heavy. The end result was a very even matchup.

Now imagine I took that same 50 points and bought 20 2 point vehicles with indirect fire and 10 1 point fast spotting vehicles.

Good points. Battletech has always been a system that is easy to break. It's a system that really needs scenarios to be engaging for the long haul.

Put simply, Battetech or Alpha Strike are not good systems for those who can't get out of the 40k/WM headspace of crafting an army soley based on the abilities of the units and their cost-effectiveness points-wise. You have to have the willingness to talk to your opponent, decide on a scenario, work together to figure out what kind of forces would logically exist in such a battle and then play it out. Forces are usually based on fluff and what a given faction would have access to. Luckily BT has an encyclopedic amount of fluff detailing what units had access to what kinds of hardware. There's also dozens of scenario books with scenarios detailing "historical" battles and the units that were involved.

Basically it's best to let the fluff and scenario determine the units and then rely on generalship (rather than list building) to win the day. It also helps if you're willing to fight battles that are imbalanced knowing that sometimes you will loose. There's alot of those kind of battles in BT history.

40k/WM competetive style players can still engage in deathmatch or arena style games with tricked out mechs, but that's not really the focus of BT and AS.

Alpha Strike does have a bit of wonkiness in the point system.

Half of it is that it was already present in BV2 so things that are bad under BV2 aren't suddenly much better when divided by 100 and used in a new system. The rounding can simply make this more apparent because it is more granular. For an example of this, we have the Fafnir. The initial version, the -5 is 26 points for 10 armour, 8 structure and a 5/6/2 shooting profile with no OV.

It has a contemporary variant, the -5B. For 26 points you have 10 armour, 8 structure and a 5/6/4 shooting profile with no OV. It is better in every way for the same cost.

Why? Well, because the original HGR is pants and only gets worse with rounding. At close range, its individual shot raw-damage makes no real difference in AS. Because for the saved weight, the -5B can pack enough additional weapons to make up the difference in terms of raw damage. But because the -5B packs normal gauss rifles and an ER large laser, it is a much better sniper than the -5. Thus for no loss at close range firepower (especially in AS) it packs a lot of extra heat at long range.

This gets sillier once we can use the "fixed" version of the original model, -5X. For 26 points, you get the same armour and structure but with a 5/6/5 shooting spread. And this is mainly because the iHGR is a right beast that doesn't suffer from range bracket problems on a weapon that has all the drawbacks of a sniping weapon saddled to horrible damage drop-off. It is a sniper-range AC22.

There are likely many other examples of similar weirdness. And on the whole the difference between the -5B and -5X aren't so horrid. But it really outlines why the -5 is bad in CBT and why rounding for AS only makes its problems worse.

But that is fairly easy to spot and nicely controlled by making sure to set engagement eras (if you set a battle during the FedCom Civil War or slightly after, the -5X wont exist as a choice).

But Alpha Strike really breaks if you ever let players start designing custom units for it. This is bad enough in CBT, but AS can really see some nasty stuff built to take care of the new cases it creates.

But for all that the Alpha Strike tends to be fairly balanced so long as you use a relative mix of canon units. A few units will be a few points over, some will be a bit under. But across a whole company (reinforced) it should even out unless people take some of the few canon units that AS treats really well (haven't really looked for these yet, though I am amused that the Hellstar isn't quite the monster it is in CBT now that it doesn't threaten four potential 1-hit kills a turn). At the very least all things being equal, it is no less balanced than CBT and player skill will still play a larger role in most cases.

And of course, this is to say nothing of scenario-based play where you don't use a point system to balance things but do it via mission objectives and eyeballing the opposing forces (something CBT was always good at). Just run off and grab some background material (hopefully with a TO&E listed) and play out the scenarios. Because AS scales up really well, you can play some of the more iconic (and large) battles without having to put a weekend aside.

 warboss wrote:
They really named a mech "Awesome"?? I anxiously await the Cowabunga mech.

You've obviously never played a game with an Awesome. Naming it probably came from their first playtest experience. Awesomes are AWESOME (especially in 3025).

 Ronin_eX wrote:
Alpha Strike does have a bit of wonkiness in the point system.

Half of it is that it was already present in BV2 so things that are bad under BV2 aren't suddenly much better when divided by 100 and used in a new system.

So is a partial quickie solution to just instead keep the first decimal then?

 warboss wrote:

 Ronin_eX wrote:
Alpha Strike does have a bit of wonkiness in the point system.

Half of it is that it was already present in BV2 so things that are bad under BV2 aren't suddenly much better when divided by 100 and used in a new system.

So is a partial quickie solution to just instead keep the first decimal then?

Nah, I should have put that while it doesn't make it better, it really doesn't hinder at all either. BV2 is a high-sum system and often times one will be hard pressed to really understand what a >100 point difference will even mean on a unit. Since it is achieved by a byzantine series of calculations that are based on a complex set of assumptions (and many times they are not really accurate assumptions), you end up getting a lot of drift and error as you go through them. So units will have messy costs like 1732 or 2459. Rounding these or dividing them by 100 doesn't really change much, and in fact I actually kind of prefer it.

Keeping decimal places wont make the system any more accurate though. I mean, the three Fafnir variants will still basically be the same cost (with the -5B being the priciest, the -5 being the middle and the best one, the -5X being cheaper than the others; all by less than 50 points of course). The only major difference is that while using BV2 and its set of (already innacurate) assumptions, AS basically abstracts a lot of considerations out and takes the already innacurate BV cost of a mech, rounds it off and then applies a lot of game-layer changes that may vastly alter how well it operates.

In CBT you have a lot of interplay going on with things like the heat curve, high-damage weapons as opposed to low-damage multi-hit weapons and a bunch of other things. This tends to remove edge cases and makes some marginal or over-specialized designs a bit worse for wear when their edge cases no longer exist at the Alpha Strike layer.

So it is a two-fold thing. BV is already skewed and the changes in AS make a lot of the assumptions of BV a bit less true due to abstraction.

A true fix to AS's point system is not using BV. But honestly, as I said, it isn't a huge issue at the full game level unless someone is taking a lot of the (very rare) super-efficient canon units or making custom designs. Most of the canon designs are fairly middle of the road and taking a mix of them will mean a good game one either side.

Hell, you can probably get a fairly good game out of using random assignment tables for an era (a cool suggestion was to randomly roll for a certain number and then fill in the rest of the points with chosen units to normalize things a bit).

Either way, the point system is rough and ready enough to eyeball things within reason. With Battletech, the point system is better used as a guideline than the holy writ it is in other games. This does mean it gets better with experience but it definitely has a bit of a learning curve to it (one of the downsides that still plagues BTech).

Either way, I think Alpha Strike is definitely still a great little game. I just hope, down the line, it gets its own point system. At the very least it would be a lot easier to make than the BV system. Just apply it after simplifying stats and you have very few variables to work with.

I think the points system works fine if you stick to the small selection of mechs in the Alpha Strike books. And as they publish more era specific supplements, they too will probably have small selections that if you stick to, everything will be balanced.

The problem is that such an approach sucks if you want to field anything else or play in another era. And it's contradictory to their provision of 4500+ stat blocks for free on the Master Unit List.

The most obvious problem with BV2 converted to Alpha Strike points is that it's a points system made for another game entirely. Imagine, for example, if you took a 40k codex, divided the points by 100 and used that as a basis for Epic:Armeggon army lists.

From the actual games I've played so far, the points system sort of works as long as you approach the game game as something you are setting up together with your opponent and not as a "I build my army, you build yours and then we fight" like it's 40k or Warmachine or something.

Well, yeah, sticking to a given era probably works out pretty well no matter what. Maybe even using the Random Assignment Tables as a guide or "army list" of sorts.

But honestly, Battletech has always been more of a scenario-based game ala Rogue Trader and Stargrunt II to use another couple of 80's contemporaries. Point systems were seen as either optional or unneeded back then. And while BV was an improvement over tonnage and BV2 is an improvement of BV; you can still likely achieve the best balance by organizing a scenario based on historical TO&E's or by getting a GM/Ref to come up with something.

Battletech came from a time when scenario play was all the rage. That is why you originally only had rough balancers. They were more useful for someone design a scenario around a rough balance using both force size/composition as well as mission objectives.

But again, I'd honestly say that while Alpha Strike isn't super well balanced, it also isn't so bad that using the point system is unworkable. It works well enough for new players (who wont have the system mastery to know how to exploit it) and for veterans (who have the mastery to spot pitfalls and avoid them). It also helps that player skill matters quite a bit in Battletech so given two roughly equally costed forces, the better player will tend to win even if they have a handicap.

Either way, bottom line, don't let grognard talk of imbalance scare you off of Alpha Strike. It is a wonderful intro to Battletech and I can see it becoming a great new line of development. It's balance issues are really no worse than most other minis games that exist (and seriously, play any game long enough and even the smallest things in an otherwise balanced system will scream out at you... I have similar rants for Infinity, and that is a game that I actually rank as "good enough" in terms of balance).

The nice thing about AS is that so long as you have the Master Unit List open and thumb through a couple variants it is REALLY easy to tell when you shouldn't take a given variant. In cases where it isn't obvious then it is probably alright.

And of course, Alpha Strike has some nice effects on gameplay as well. Fast lights are an excellent choice for cheap harassers if you can stick them in cover whereas in CBT they tend to get swatted fairly easily unless they are very careful.

All in all, despite what I may sound like, Alpha Strike is probably my favourite new Battletech release in years and I can't wait to see more stuff for it. If it ever gets its own Tech/Tactical supplement with a new costing system and other goodies then I may well bow down to it as my favourite way of playing Battletech.

 Ronin_eX wrote:
All in all, despite what I may sound like, Alpha Strike is probably my favourite new Battletech release in years and I can't wait to see more stuff for it. If it ever gets its own Tech/Tactical supplement with a new costing system and other goodies then I may well bow down to it as my favourite way of playing Battletech.

Me too.

I've played it a handful of times already and the thought of going back to a 4 hour slog playing classic has become less appealing. They captured the feel of BT and it resolves a lot faster and allows for larger forces and better integration of aerospace and conventional military assets into a given scenario.

frozenwastes wrote:I think the points system works fine if you stick to the small selection of mechs in the Alpha Strike books. And as they publish more era specific supplements, they too will probably have small selections that if you stick to, everything will be balanced.

The problem is that such an approach sucks if you want to field anything else or play in another era. And it's contradictory to their provision of 4500+ stat blocks for free on the Master Unit List.

There are already many sourcebooks detailing the units avaialble in other eras. TRO's, Scenario Packs, Sourcbooks, etc. They're not going to be perfect for Alpha Strike, but stick with the base versions of the mechs from the respective eras and you should be fine.

Ronin_eX wrote:Well, yeah, sticking to a given era probably works out pretty well no matter what. Maybe even using the Random Assignment Tables as a guide or "army list" of sorts.

But honestly, Battletech has always been more of a scenario-based game ala Rogue Trader and Stargrunt II to use another couple of 80's contemporaries. Point systems were seen as either optional or unneeded back then. And while BV was an improvement over tonnage and BV2 is an improvement of BV; you can still likely achieve the best balance by organizing a scenario based on historical TO&E's or by getting a GM/Ref to come up with something.

Agreed. It just takes a bit more of a collaborative mindset. Even if the force lists in BT scenarios or sourcebooks arent' perfect for AS, they at least provide a neutral third party reference for what to use.

I think it just requires getting out the "perfectly fair and balanced" mindset (something that doesn't really exist in 40k anyway) and accepting that war is unbalanced, certain scenarios are going to have a slant, and it's the job of the general to make the most out what they have in a given situation. Raids against a superior foe, fighting retreats, holdouts against all odd's, assaults on heavily defended positions, etc. These can be the stuff of really exciting and engaging games. Historical players already get this, and if more sci-fi players to too, then that can only be a good thing.

 Ronin_eX wrote:


Battletech came from a time when scenario play was all the rage. That is why you originally only had rough balancers. They were more useful for someone design a scenario around a rough balance using both force size/composition as well as mission objectives.

I think that's actually one thing that bugged me that simply wasn't an issue with 40K and maybe it's gotten better but I remember looking through my 3rd Ed book, or the compendium maybe and not really finding direct guidance on how to just set up and play. Which I mean WH40K scenarios are often ambiguous as far as army sizes go thought the rulebook has some guidance on subject. While I remember the Compendium having BV's but not necessarily saying much about using them. Oddly enough that's one thing that got me to play MWA. They butchered some of the designs, and the plot, but the game itself was designed guided you into playing a game that could simply work competitively AND worked really well with scenarios (until WK got lazy and stopped making those).

Still think I'll have to check out AS though of course.

FYI there's an open playtest of the new points values calculations for the upcoming Alpha Strike companion.

http://bg.battletech.com/?p=5411

Thanks for that! Downloading it now.

The re-print of the introductory set is now (27th feb 2014) up for pre-order (which presumably means they're on the way)




http://www.battlecorps.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=3296

you can also pick up 2 sets and get an extra set of minis (same as in the box) for free

http://www.battlecorps.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=3297

If there are two people in the UK who are interested in getting their sets from battlecorps, I certainly wouldn't mind chipping in for the 'extra' set of minis. I would quite like to replace the ones I got from the previous introductory box set