So my buddy Rhodes and I were looking at a friends Mechwarrior 3 book and remembering what fun we had with Battletech when we were kids and seeing how badly Mechwarrior 3 (MW3) handles combat and many other things that Shadowrun does rather well. The lifepath system however is really cool. The other problem with running MW3 is there are just too dang many factions, at last count there are at least 15 clans with different agendas, that leaves out the 5 different inner sphere houses, un numbered multitudes of merc companies and conspiracies by the dozen. Sounds like Shadowrun eh?

Basically what I am thinking of doing ignoring the clan invasion, and keeping things fairly simple. I like how the matrix is handled in SR4 so I am going to borrow that and use it for the coms in populous areas and in less populous places I am going to go more wired, with sat links to the planetary social core.

I welcome any constructive comments and feedback, all flames will be suffocated and not allowed the oxygen of response.

Not sure how I am gonna scale damage yet. may pull a card from Rifts and say that personell weps don;t harm mechs and state that mecs do MDC lol thats Mecha damage as opposed to mega-damage. I am going to basically be using 5 mechs at about 470 tons.

I found this page which describes how to introduce BattleTech simulators into SR, so it explains how translate the skills from SR into the BT tactical games. Just need to create a Mech Piloting skill for use as the Piloting rating, and use heavy weapons (or whatever the vehicle mounted weapons skill is) for Gunnery.

As for weapons, I'd say most 'mech weapons are likely to take out a (meta)human. For the "lighter" weapons (eg MGs, SRMs), use the equivalent SR weapon to see it's damage (eg use a rocket launcher for single LRMs/SRMs,a HMG for a 'mech mounted MG and the Assault Cannon for an AC2). Anything larger is going to be an outright kill I'd say. Only weapon you may need to look at is the Small Laser, not sure if there is an equivalent in SR4 yet (SR3 had laser weapons in one of the sourcebooks). Shouldn't be too hard.

As for other weapons affecting 'mechs, I daresay anything smaller than the weapons mentioned above aren't going to affect a 'Mech. A heavy pistol might scratch the paint, but the MechWarrior won't worry too much (until s/he gets out and sees the "damage").


Introducing awakened creatures against 'mechs would be interesting though... I'd love to see a dragon vs the 'mech of the same name

Strip it down to the Impossibillium internal framework, rebuild it with SR parts, and if it's not a great, the dragon (critter) has problems. I would guess most of the Mech-V-Mech weaponry would be naval scale.

The skills needed are already in SR.

Use Anthroform Piloting.

They can even be controlled remotely, but then you risk losing control due to jamming. Which explains why the pilot is inside and not somewhere else in a bunker.

Riggers win.

Hah, actually this just gave me a cool idea. My current character is a rigger, gonna look up some Mech background and have him and his rigger buddies have an online clan or something.

There is some sort of rigging controls available in btech...kinda sorta...though its not remoteable.

Its called EI(edit its EI not IE EI for Enhanced Imaging)....and it makes you go fragging nuts. Gotta love those clanners...and their penchant for taking something and improving it to the point of it blowing up and then toneing it down just a hair.

Right. Note to self, don't point Maelwys at things, some of the answers aren't worth having...