Lance McMillan wrote: ... Weisman's basic system for Battletech was an obvious derivative of the ancient (1930's vintage) "Fletcher Pratt's Naval Battles" game: players rolling dice to determine the location and extent of damage inflicted by each individual weapon, and then checking off little boxes on status charts to keep track of the totals. ...
Pratt was a writer and a naval expert (before he died in 1956 he had written some 60 books about naval and military affairs), and one day, in 1929, "bored with seven-card stud, backgammon and craps," he and a group of maritime minded friends decided to invent a naval game. They bought a division or two of model ships, pushed back the furniture in Pratt's living room and set to gaming. By the time they were done, they had come up with the rules for a mammoth contest that required up to 60 people on a side, a large ballroom to play in and vast fleets of accurately scaled ships, and the Naval War College started sending down experts to take lessons. [See The World's Most Complicated Game at SIVault, it's a good read.]Pratt's game even had its own version of Battevalue:
There was a vast formula for calculating the fighting power of each ship: (Gc[2] X GN + Gc'[2] X Gn' + 10TT + 10A[2] + 10 A'[2] + 10A" + 25 Ap + M) Sf; + T, and elaborate tables for telling each captain what had happened to his ship when the turn's shooting was over.What that formula means I have no idea, but now I want to find out. I located a source for the original rules at John Curry's History of Wargaming Project, which also has more details about the game:
One of the main facets of the game, the gunnery, is commonly decided by dice. Therefore, games can seem to consist of large numbers of dice rolls reflecting the low hit-rates of long range naval gunnery. To many, the sheer number of dice can make the game seem dull. Pratt aimed to change this by using estimating ranges as a way of determining hits. He also experimented with shooting, darts and tiddle-winks against paper silhouettes as alternatives, but he settled on estimating as the final method. The inspiration of using estimating the range for gunnery accelerated the pace of the game and gave naval wargamers control of the most important aspect of the naval warfare, namely hitting the other side.
It even has it's own miniatures.
I had another email from John Curry informing me he has opened up his ship cards for download. Here is an example.
It's official!I was just informed that the Origins Crew is now being formed, as the VWE pods will be there. The plan is to bring twelve pods out, the price is going to be three game tokens (six bucks).
However, these details may change. And per VGL policy, harassment by staff is always free and will be in stock the entire convention.
Actually, if you commit to being a volunteer, you get free games. We are bringing extra cockpits so our volunteers get a LOT of game time.Here is the Virtual Word Battletech training video:
Sign up to become a MechJock: RedShirt by emailing your availability to propwash@mechjock.com. Put Origins in the subject line.
Better yet, check out the online training manual from MechCorp.
More videos at Virtual World Entertainment. (Realplayer only)
"Big Red" was one of my first Battletech Miniatures (Atlas mini on the left). The enamel paint is badly chipped the the arms are off of it again. Though I'm always tempted to strip off the paint and redo it completely, I like to keep it as an example of how much my painting has changed in the 7 years or so since I came back to painting miniatures as a hobby. It's in bad shape though, so I need to do something about it.
The other miniatures in for repairs are a dis-armed Initiate and an Assassin. This Assassin is another one of my reposed minis, again running instead of standing. Because it is pinned to the base through the left leg, it has a tendency to break free and swing around on the pin. Both minis will get CA glue where they need it.
Next up are a Daishi and Night Gyr. The Daishi (left) is modified to a walking pose, and I cut and pinned the left "elbow" to put the arm in an extended position. This required me to do a bit of sculpting with green stuff (plumbing putty) to make it look right (part of my ongoing quest to learn how to sculpt). This arm is a bit of a weak point and the putty has split from the metal where the joint is pinned, making a crack in the paint. I was hoping a bit of glue would mend it well enough that no one will notice. Unfortunately, it's fairly visible if you look closely.
The Night Gyr (right) saw some rough service 2 years ago at GENCON and needs both arms to be reglued (I really have been putting this off too long). This has a very basic panel scheme, but I worked really hard to get smooth shading on it, which turned out nice.
Here is "Big Red" again after getting touched up. I panel painted some parts so it is no longer solid red, and I think the contrast make it look more distinctive. I used acrylic paint on top of enamel though, so it will probably chip off again soon.
The Night Gyr is ready for action again too.
Here are my raw session notes for Ian Schreiber's GDX talk, Duchamp, Pollock, Rohrer: Games as the Next Avant-Garde. This is my best attempt at a transcription of what he said. Any mistakes or misinterpretations are mine and mine alone. My comments are in square brackets.
I’ve got a bone to pick with Battlevalue. As I was in the process of doing my research, it came up on the CBT forums recently. Unfortunately it didn’t get the discussion i think it deserves.
BV seems to function as an attempt to express in numbers the imbalances in the game. Imbalances that increase for every variable (equipment) added without adjusting existing variables (rules and equip). BV as a game design choice is a problematic at best. [emphasis added]
Definitely problematic, but Ian has hit on a greater truth: BV is a game design choice. Battle Value (BV) takes a lot of criticism for it's flaws, and rightly so. Most people though, fail to recognize what BV really is. When we agree to play a game that is balanced (for better or worse) by BV, then it becomes a de facto rule of the game. For example, BV is known to penalize too much (reduce final BV) for Mechs without sufficient heat sinks, therefore the overgunned mechs that cannot fire all their weapons without overheating become the Mechs of choice faster than you can say "Black Hawk Prime".First: Does anyone find it necessary to keep track of all BV destroyed while playing a game to understand what the situation is? Of course not. Destroying equipment is an act that already has in-game value. ie. It effects game play. Point systems that have no other effect than their comparative value are arbitrary methods of evaluating game events compared to what they are supposed to represent.Ian is 2-for-2 so far. It does not matter the BV you destroy, rather it should be much severely can you damage the other players units given the relative BV of both sides. In other words, if you can battle someone to a draw using less BV than the other player, then you should be counted as the winner. The usual tournament scoring rules do a very poor job of measuring how damaged each side really is. (I should note that the rules for the Battletech Open 2.0, which will premier at ORIGINS this summer, are a step in the right direction.)
Second: If I play a ‘mech with a point value of 1000 against a carbon copy of myself running a ‘mech with a point value of 999 on a symmetrical map. Which one will win? No idea? Me either. What about if [I] had a 950 point ‘mech? Any idea now? Maybe? 900 points? 800? Where are the significant figures in this measuring system?Ian does it again. The present BV system (there is little difference between 1.0 and 2.0) assigns arbitrary numbers with no meaning. What is amazing is that they work as well as they do. This is a completely ad hoc scoring system that makes a number of unfounded assumptions and demonstrably wrong calculations*. Most people don't realize where it goes wrong either.
This book is one of the optional texts for Ian Schreiber's Game Design Concepts class I signed up for this summer.Ian Writes: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, by McCloud. While this book claims to be about comics, many of the lessons within can be applied to game design and other forms of art. It also happens to be a comic book itself, and fun to read.Ian is correct, it's a great little book and I can easily see how most of it can be applied to games as well as comics. I did a little web searching on Scott McCloud and quickly came up with even more good stuff: Scott McCloud's Web Site including a blog and much more, Scott McCloud's TED lecture, and of course you can pick up your own copy Understanding Comics for $16.55 + shipping at Amazon.
[image scottmccloud.com]
These minis are back for assorted repairs. The Fafnir (left) has a bent gun on the left arm and some chipped paint.
This is one of my favorites. The original Cicada is in a static and unexciting pose, especially for a battlemech that is supposed to be fast. For this modification I had to do extensive cutting, reshaping, and pinning, and the whole thing is mounted on a piece of music wire running out the back of the base and into the right leg, so the whole miniature is literally suspended above the base, posed in mid-stride and both feet off the ground. The antenna are toothbrush bristles. I did the sharks grin with micron markers (red and black on white paint) and a lot of practice on paper before I dared to try it on the mini itself.
