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Welcome to the Pukeko Battletech Wiki

This wiki is intended to contain a variety of information related to my experiences with the Battletech board game and its associated fictional universe. As a once avid player of the game, I didn't want my ideas to end up in the recycling bin so I thought I'd commit them down here in the hopes that they may find new life somewhere out on the web.

At the present time, it will focus on two key components:

• 2nd Royal Special Assault Brigade
• Power Rules

2nd Royal Special Assault Brigade

The 2nd Royal Special Assault Brigade was part of an alternate history/future timeline developed in direct response to the introduction of The Clans.

For a bit of background, with the release of the Technical Readout: 3050 in 1990, my friends and I were looking forward to a great expansion on the game we loved. In actual fact, we found the introduction of The Clans to be a totally imbalanced component to the game. We had been running an ongoing campaign with a mercenary unit that we had built up and fought with for almost 4 years. We'd taken the unit that started out as a single lance of green MechWarrirors and turned it into an elite and experienced combined-arms regiment. For a lark, we took an elite company against one veteran BattleMech Star and one veteran Elemental Star.

Using only the additional rules provided in the Technical Readout, the battle was an absolute slaughter. In a scenario where our company had a 3:1 advantage in tonnage, we ended up not standing a chance. After the first several Elemental attacks took down three heavy BattleMechs, the infantry was simply removed from the field of play before continuing on with the remainder of the scenario. The ultimate result was a loss of 10 units on our side to a total of two (the lightest) on their side. We re-ran the scenario again without the infantry, faring somewhat better but still ultimately losing. We then ran it a third time with (again without the infantry) using Star League era technology to customize our BattleMechs and still ended up on the losing side. I should note that this battle was conducted without knowledge of the formal rules of Zellbrigen or via the use of Battle Values, neither of which had been expressly detailed at the time. Ultimately, the use of ER PPC's and ER Medium Lasers could not be countered. The range-to-damage ratio of those two weapons were, in our opinion, what ultimately tipped the balance.

Suffice it to say, we more or less just ignored the The Clans and that part of the timeline and continued with our own campaigns. On my own, I began imagining a counter-balance to The Clans; equally advanced but in different ways and using different tactics. Out of a lot of brainstorming and plotting and re-reading the existing sourcebooks, I decided to come up with another Star League unit that had taken a different path than the Exodus Fleet. My goal was to allow this new power to integrate within the existing history of the Inner Sphere while still leaving it open ended enough to fit in with the ongoing timeline. Ultimately, the Clan Wolverine timeline (the real one) coupled with the Jihad and Dark Age weren't anything that I had anticipated and they really don't fit with what I originally designed the unit to be for. That being said, the unit should fit into most campaigns up to about 3067 and the dissolution of the Second Star League.

Power Rules

During the time I was playing Battletech, I was also playing another FASA game called Renegade Legion: Interceptor. The game was a space fighter combat game (much like Aerotech) based in the far future. While there were many differences in the game system, one thing that intrigued me was the construction system for the fighters. Everything was based on tonnage and power from the engine. You just tacked on equipment, an engine of a particular size, deducted the amount of power required to operate the systems and weapons, and then determined the unit's speed based on the total mass and remaining power. I thought this was a very logical way of constructing Battlemechs so went about creating a whole new set of construction rules called Power Rules.

All in all, they worked out very well. I was able to create and construct every 'Mech in the original Technical Readout: 3025 (the bible for us old timers). Every 'Mech was able to keep (and fire) its original weapons load and move at its designated speed. The Charger, which I never understood as a valid design, had its tonnage drastically reduced (as it should have been). I found that it was very difficult to design a "stupid' machine that didn't make much tactical sense. A few ['Mechs, the Warhammer especially, required the addition of a component I called a "battery", but it was more like a capacitor in order that it could fire all of its weapons without waiting one or more rounds to recharge. In addition, some units got a little heavier in order to account for their weapon loads and the power required to fire them.

In addition to the 3025 designs, I was able to make all of the designs in the [Technical Readout: 2750 work. The Clans proved to be a bit more interesting. Given their more powerful weaponry and the use of OmniMech technology. In this case, I adjusted the power requirements of the Clan weaponry but also increased the power output of their engines. The use of batteries to store power allowed me to find a good balance.

Power Rules were only developed for Battlemechs. I never developed rules for Conventional Vechiles, Aerospace Fighters, DropShips, JumpShips, WarShips, or any other type of unit. In addition, I only accounted for weapon systems listed in the Technical Readout:3050 as well as the standard 3025 weapons.

One change I made to the overall philosophy of construction was the use of unlimited amounts of armour. As long as a 'Mech allocates enough internal structure to mount everything, it shouldn't be a problem. While this rule can lead to munchkinism or powergaming, I felt that the peer pressure of any group using the system would be enough to keep the silliness to a minimum.