Battle Rider

[clair_rand]

while BR is a tad simplistic, has anyone worked out a way of converting MT units to the system used in BR?

BR is real easy to play, and nice and fast, but i likes to roll me own fleets.

Essentially looking to use the BR system to fight a campaign cus its fast enough to handle it

 

[The Oz]

What you need is a ship conversion system from MT to TNE, and I don't know of one. Without that, the best thing I can suggest is to convert your MT designs into TNE equivalents based on the ships provided with TNE/BR, taking your best guess as to their TNE/BR stats.

Or you could retrofit MT sensors and ship combat to the BR basic rules. That might be easier.

 

[clair_rand]

tis kinda what i figured.. TNE is something i never really liked, MT i got a fair bit of stuff for hence wanting to use that.

Looks like a re-write.. ho hum..

 

[The Oz]

I am working up a "quick and dirty" conversion system from HG/MT to TNE/BR. Give me some time and I'll post what I come up with.

 

[TheDS]

Something I noticed, if you look in the BR book in how to convert BL to BR, if you look at the ratings for stuff like the big battleships, they have an armor rating of like 5000 or 10,000.

So look at your ship counters for assistance in making your conversions.

 

[The Oz]

Here's the first part of my HG/MT to BR conversion: a table for converting meson guns.

Bay means any meson gun bay of factor-9 or less. In BR terms I just don't think there's enough difference to warrant separate ratings.

The BR rating is short range in BR hexes:damage at short-medium-long-extreme range.

MG size BR rating
Bay    2:1-1-0-0
A    2:1-1-1-0
B    2:2-1-1-0
C    3:2-2-1-1
D    3:3-2-1-1
E    4:4-3-1-1
F    4:5-4-2-1
G    5:6-4-2-1
H    5:7-5-3-2
J    6:7-6-4-2
K    6:8-7-4-2
L    7:9-7-5-3
M    7:9-8-6-3
N    8:10-9-6-3
P    8:11-9-7-4
Q    9:12-10-8-5
R    9:14-12-9-6
S    10:15-13-10-8
T    10:16-14-12-11
U    11:16-15-13-11
V    11:17-15-14-12
W    12:18-16-14-12
X    12:18-17-15-13
Y    13:19-17-15-13
Z    13:20-18-16-14

I based this on the meson guns given in the BR game, plus the TNE conversions of CT/MT ships I found in various places. I doubt it's exact but it ought to be close enough to work with.

I'm still working on the rest. Some of it is easy.
</font>

• The HG armor factor equals the BR armor rating.</font>
• The MT nuclear damper factor equals the number of BR nuclear dampers.</font>
• The MT meson screen factor doubled equals the BR meson screen rating.</font>

I'm still working on the rest.

How does this look?

 

[mike wightman]

Excellent work Oz, thanks

 

[The Oz]

I now have some proposed BR factors for particle accelerators. Most of these I just made up with the idea that weapons should get more powerful as they got higher HG factors.

PA factor    BR rating
Bay    4:2
A    6:2
B    6:3
C    6:4
D    8:4
E    8:5
F    8:6
G    8:8
H    8:9
J    9:9
K    9:10
L    9:10
M    9:11
N    10:12
P    10:12
Q    10:13
R    10:14
S    10:15
T    10:16
U    12:16
V    12:18
W    14:18
X    14:20
Y    16:20
Z    16:22

The first number of the BR rating is the range in BR hexes, the second is the damage.

I think the number of BR missiles is the number of missile launchers (turrets with at least one missile rack or bays) times two. The number of missile directors for dedicated warships with lots of missiles seems to be 1/5th the number of ready missiles. For non-warships it tends to be 1/2 of the number of ready missiles (this give the "clipper" class ships a lot of missile directors, by the way).

Lasers are proving to be difficult. I've not figured them out yet.

 

[The Oz]

Lasers were handled so differently in TNE that translating HG/MT ships to BR is really not directly possible. What I have done here is to examine the different types of lasers presented in BR and assigned them to various battery configurations from HG/MT, to get an effect where more powerful HG/MT batteries produce more powerful BR lasers.

Lasers for HG/MT in BR
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">TL and factor BR rating
TL15 factor 6+ 10:2
TL15 factor 5- 10:1
TL14 factor 6+ 10:2-2-1-0
TL14 factor 5- 10:1-1-1-0
TL13 factor 6+ 10:1-1-0-0
TL13 factor 5- 10:1-0-0-0
TL12- factor 6+ 4:1-1-1-0
TL12- factor 5- 4:1-1-0-0
TL14+ energy 2:1
TL13- energy 2:1-1-0-0</pre>[/QUOTE]The identification of some weapons as energy weapons (fusion and plasma guns) is very tentative and mostly just for effect. I couldn't really identify any BR weapons as plasmas or fusions. There's no HG/MT battery codes with those because I couldn't be sure of any, if you wanted to give some variety I would say that the energy weapon codes given above are for smaller batteries (factor 5-) and I would give larger batteries doubled damage (or a damage of 1 instead of 0 where appropriate).

 

[The Oz]

So keeping in mind that all this is extremely tentative and that your guesses would be just as good as mine, here are two old friends from Supplement #9, the Tigress-class DN and the Azhanti High Lightning FI (in the original configuration) all dressed up in their new BR clothes.

Note that the Tigress shown is only J-3 and has an Auxiliary Bridge. I agree with those who say that the J-3 rating in the USP in Supp#9 is correct and the J-4 in the text is wrong, and I can't see building such a ship without an AuxBridge.

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">DN Tigress-1
M(-2)10:16-14-12-11 -4
P(x3-2)4:2 TL-15
L(x12-2)2:1 FC: -6
L(x3-2)10:2 M:160(860)
A:16 P:8 J:16 Msk (SP) J3 6G
AV:15 AuxB ~
MS:18 SC:3 D:18 335

FI Azhanti High Lightning-1
P(-2)10:12 -3
~ TL-14
L(-2)2:2 FC: -5
L(x6-2)10:2-2-1-0 M:10(48)
A:10 P:8 J:10 Msk (P) J5 2G
AV:5 AuxB ~
MS:10 SC:4 D:12 108</pre>[/QUOTE]In making these designations, I did make use of the optional rule about multiple weapons batteries to find the number of weapons bearing.

Questions? Comments?

 

[mike wightman]

That's a lot of work you've done.

Thanks for sharing

 

[The Oz]

You're welcome, Sigg. I do it for fun. Now I'm trying to figure out how to put fighters into BR.

 

[mike wightman]

Individually or as squadrons?

Could the simlified missile rules be adapted in some way to squadrons of fighters I wonder?

 

[The Oz]

As squadrons of 10, operating in groups of 4 to 12 squadrons. Basically, it's how they operate in PP:F, along with the house rule I proposed to Dom for large numbers of fighters in PP:F.

I'm not sure what missile rules you're referring to, Sigg. Could you explain, please?

 

[mike wightman]

In BL each missile maneuvers like a ship. You have to keep track of each one.

In BR missiles are fired as a spread controlled by a missile director (max. no. of missiles in a spread is equal to the number of missile directors). Each missile spread maneuvers as one counter.

So fighter squadrons would move as a unit (but don't require a director) they in effect behave like self guided missiles that can fire repeatedly (if laser, energy weapon, meson or PA armed) or have a limited number of missile like attacks before returning to the carrier to re-arm.

 

[The Oz]

That's more or less what I have in mind, Sigg. As I said, it's much like the way fighters are handled in PP:F. They are grouped into squadrons of 10 which act as a single ship in all ways. They don't take much damage (in PP:F, one or at most two hits will kill the entire squadron) but can help out, especially with defensive fire against incoming missiles.