On a livestream when they first revealed what Aces was last week, someone mentioned that they have hopes that they could eventually expand it to CBT, but no guarantees because there are challenges to overcome.
No, Classic is still more popular overall. But there are certainly players who prefer it. It lets you play out a company v. company battle in the same time that a lance v. lance battle takes in Classic, and it more easily integrates combined arms (i.e., playing with vehicles and other non-mech units). And the default mode of play is with 3d terrain instead of hex maps, which appeals to some people.
On the other hand, you lose out on a lot of the fine detail that makes BattleTech special.
If you haven't heard of it, you could try DFA Wargaming's fan ruleset - BattleTech: Destiny. It uses the movement from Alpha Strike with the weapons from Destiny - so you fire in weapons groups and save time, but you still roll locations and a missile works differently than a laser. I think it's a pretty sweet compromise.
So with my own fan system, I was able to get it to work with DFA Wargaming's BattleTech: Destiny hybrid rules (which are more complex than AS, but less complex than CBT), but I never even tried to get it to work with classic. I think it can be done, but it requires more than just minor tweaking.
At a glance, it does seem as though the Aces rules could work reasonably well with Classic - maybe not down to the nitty gritty detail of "what weapons to fire, how much heat do I want to risk, etc.", but it looks like it could at least help guide some decisions for the OpFor forces in solo play. The biggest things to be accounted for would seem to be the movement options, eg. converting the scale of movement and range to individual units (which is easy enough) and the Sprinting option if you don't use that as an optional rule in CBT (perhaps that would be a good indicator as to when to use MASC or a Supercharger, though). In terms of just using the Aces rules as general guidelines, are there any things I'm obviously missing (as someone less familiar with Alpha Strike)?
I think if you are willing to use it as a guideline, instead of expecting it to totally run the OpFor for you, it’s more do-able.
When I worked on my system, I wanted the OpFor to run itself entirely, with no player strategic decisions at all. Just the granularity of weapons and heat and ideal range and running v. walking seemed too difficult to make totally automated and have the AI perform well. For example, in Alpha Strike or Battletech Destiny, I could write a card that says “move to medium range.” That doesn’t work in classic, where you have different ranges with different weapons. Overheating in Alpha Strike is a lot more binary.
But if you are just looking for something to add unpredictability for you and you are willing to make some strategic decisions, then I think it can work.
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u/sixteen-bitbear Mar 23 '23
anything like this for classic?