Battletech, Sky Galleons and How I Found Full Thrust(was Re: Designs systems)

Battletech had some problems. Not one of the mechs that I recall designing
myself used machine guns. Especially after destroying a Phoenix Hawk with a
small laser due to a critical hit that penetrated the MG ammo supply.
Something like that old Weathergirls tune comes to mind... "It's raining
mechs!"

And Sky Galleons is the reason I learned about Full Thrust. I was searching
for more SGoM information on the web, and the search wound its way toward Full
Thrust because of several conversions from Sky Galleons to FT that are posted.
My search slowly evolved into a Full Thrust search as I became intrigued with
this game system. And bless him, Mark Kotche's site was one of the first I
stumbled into. I read his Severed Dreams PBeM scenario and fell in love. From
that moment on I was sold on FT. Alun Thomas' and Tim Jones' maps, the
communications back and forth between players, it all looked excellent. I have
as yet to run that scenario here at home, but it will

happen! And when it does, I think I will have several new converts!

Well, I've taken up enough bandwidth with my reminiscences.

Bill

In a message dated 6/8/00 1:11:23 AM Central Daylight Time,
> maxxon@swob.dna.fi writes:

<< No, the problem with BTech (at least classic, I quit when the clans came)
was not really the nature of the sample designs but the quite simply the fact
that the design system was broken.

E.g. there was no good reason to *ever* take less than maximum armor. Some
weapons (e.g. MGs) were not only suboptimal, but downright dangerous to have
(ever calculated how much damage an exploding MG ammo bin does?)

The sheet mechs were built around the images in their licensed and house
artwork, so they ignored obvious clues like the above. Custom ones, OTOH,
chucked image and built for pure game effectiveness.

Likewise, in the old days of FT2 it was possible (downright simple, in fact)
to take any sheet ship and design a one that was better *in* *every* *way* for
pretty much the same points.

But this isn't the case with every game. Sky Galleons of Mars provides very
good sheet designs for example. DP9 systems look rather good. And it certainly
doesn't *need* to be the case with any game.
> [quoted text omitted]