Oh, I certainly wouldn't try to suggest Solaris should be adopted whole hog, I just said what Brohawk was doing looked interesting.

A move and shoot should totally be a special attack, like charge, because the whole action thing is too far outside the standard MW design paradigm of simplicity. You need a chart just to play Solaris, to keep all the actions straight.

Yeah, with the damage reduction, the minimum damage is always 1.

If they decided to use speed cost to implement a Move & Shoot, I would suggest using half a Mech's speed as the cost (like for Transports). There could be a penalty to attack and/or damage, but by using "half speed" instead of a set movement (like with VTOLs) it allows all Mechs to participate with the lighter, faster ones gaining most of the advantage (but they usually do less damage, on average).

I think this would make a lot of sense but they would need to be implemented as a special attack like a Charge or a DFA (of course armour would have to be reworded to make them useful against these attacks.

May I suggest that both of them could cost one heat to pull off.
The majority of the fast moving mechs with long ranges (Cynthia Kelly, Bart Bradshaw) would have a tougher time hitting and if they do they can deal a rather poor one damage if they decide to move full distance and fire, if they half move they could face a bigger mech catching them.

This also give people a lot of choices in tactics and units selection.

Example
I'm using a J. Tadaka and I'm facing off against an A. Kirasawa.
I could either decide to half move and hit him for a full five but I'd come dangerously close to a squad of DF Shock Troopers.
OR
I could full move, it's a harder hit for J. Tadaka but if I do this I can move away fromt he infatry and avoid their threat but may take a hit from Kirasawa.

I like simplicity. But, for some reason, something seems wrong with move and penalty shoot. After all, you can still Run and do full +1 AP damage with Charge. Of course you are then taking heat and 1/2 DV yourself - and the range is shorter (all things being equal).

Are we talking about giving heat for M&S?

I think it stands like this, Melicien:

1) Move-and-shoot: This 'Mech moves at half its printed Speed and is allowed one ranged combat order. No penalties on the roll, but the 'Mech takes one click of heat (or two if pushing).

2) Run-and-shoot: This 'Mech moves its full printed Speed and is allowed one ranged combat order. The target adds 1 to its Defense and reduces the damage taken by 2 (to a minimum of 1). The attacking 'Mech takes one click of heat (or two if pushing).

Neither of these can be used on a breakaway, and both are special attacks involving a ranged combat order, which means that crits do work.

Now, I have two questions: First off, shouldn't EVERY unit get a form of M&S? And second, if every unit does get it, should 'Mechs be allowed the ranged combat order at any point in the move? That could be their one advantage.

The fun part of allowing M&S for every unit is that the DF Schmitt would no longer be as good a candidate for tank-drop, since it could do it on its own.

We adopted the solarus system for all units. Mechs get 3 orders and all the rest get 2. Giving mechs a move and shoot requires this. No other units are worth playing if only mechs can move and shoot.

Mechs can shoot once for each weapon. This tends to balance out mechs like Arnis with no secondary weapon.

A full move or shoot command costs 2 actions. The base mechwarrior game is still intact. Half moves and quickshots (-1 att and damage) cost 1.

Move and shoot works well on several levels:

1) It naturally draws units together. This makes for fast aggressive games.

2) It brings ranged combat back into the fold. There is a natural balance achieved with long range and fast movement. No mech dominates. I have not tested the new CA mechs yet.

3) More SEs become useful. Even ECM has a role to play.

4) Artillery takes a back seat. The game is too mobile to base an army on artillery.

5) It feels right for a modern combat sim.

So far, move & shoot has met all my design goals. Still smoothing out the rough edges.

mlotoole0, are you sure the same balance couldn't be achieved by simply having M&S be a special attack?

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "Mechs can shoot once for each weapon. This tends to balance out mechs like Arnis with no secondary weapon."

Are you saying the 'Mech can halfmove-quickshot-quickshot (or whatever order), but only if it has two ranged weapon slots?

Good take on this is Mech's can move and be given a ranged or close sombat order for a click of heat. Adding a charge onto a move order is a bad idea. The idea behind this should be to make Mech's more playable as ranged weapons, and not as hunks of metal that run into each other. Two problems I can see so far. 1 the map becomes really small. 14" range with a decent move of 8 or higher and combat starts almost from the begining of the game. This could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the situation. 2. This rule will make Mech's very powerful. This is compounded with the 450 point build. You could make a three mech army that would be very hard to beat. Vehicals would see even less play than they do now. This doesn't include Artillery and VTOL's. However the balance of the mech's heat dial does balance things out well.

Starting to give everything move and shoot seems like it should wait for MW 2.0 unless it is being done as a last resort. Giving it to ‘Mechs as it stands would make fast ‘Mechs like Arnis and Bart power beyond their point costs (in Arnis’ case far beyond). I could see it being adopted at some point although I think a –2 penalty on the attack roll at least would be needed along with an extra click of heat or action to balance things.

Yep, you can make any combination of actions you want as long as you only move once and use each weapon once.

The double shot comes into play only rarely. When engaging other mechs, you need to take these things into account. This is where the additional strategy comes in. You need to look at your damage capabity vs. the opponent's.

We found that vehicles needed a M&S capability similar to mechs. But it could not be on par with the mech ability. Otherwise, the DI Schmidts are too good. Thus, 2 actions vs 3.

The M&S capability has to be good. Otherwise, charging is still the premier method of mech combat. We added no extra heat effects for this reason. No mechs with bad heat dials are playable at the moment. Adding heat to M&S just make this situation worse.

I did not make M&S a special attack fo a number of reasons. I wanted lots of SE effects. Also, there is simplicity in the idea of one type of order allowing 8 different actions. No confusion over what SE can be used for which type of order.

It's not that I don't like the ideas I have seen here but I thought another idea could help.

Any non-VTOL unit may move up to 5" and make a ranged comabt attack.

If a unit moves from 5.1-7": -1AV
If a unit moves from 7.1-9": -2AV
If a unit moves from 9.1-11": -3AV
If a unit moves from 11.1-13": -4AV
If a unit moves from 13.1-15": -5AV
If a unit moves from 15.1-17": -6AV
If a unit moves from 17.1-28": -7AV

I think that covers all units.

Just an idea.

Heat issues would be handled as a walk unless a run order is required (evade does not cancel the heat in a move/shoot order) and then there is the push.

I think move-shoot will be done as a new SE. They haven't introduced any new SE yet in this game, while MK had a new SA only 3 or 4 sets in. Adopting Solaris might be ok, but there are some inconsistencies, especially with heat management that would need to be looked at.

This would be the worst possible scenario. Move and shoot obviously changes things considerably. Your old mechs would be basically useless if new mechs had this SE. I don't want to lose my current investment.

Maybe changing the move and shoot combo of the other units is the way.

Charge has been taken care of (a little but I think well).

Some of you have pointed out that if a mech move-shoots, he sould suffer à AV malus. Why the other units should not suffer the same? Why an VTOL has a move-shoot AV equal to his standing still shooting AV? Why after a tank drop a unit doesn't suffer a malus to his AV too?

Here's a proposition:

VTOL: if you move shoot, you suffer a -1 or -2 malus (should be playtested, so VTOLs are not made completly useless)

Tank Drop: the thing to take care is if it's a foot infantry or a towed unit or anything else:
- Foot move units don't suffer any penalities after disembarking (like in real life, infantry untis can be deployed quite fast on the battlefield)
-Towed units: suffer a -1 AV after disembarking (well the crew must put things up and it takes a little time to do it well, so a little malus)
-Any other unit: -2 to AV or half move. Those are the mechanical units, so their motors and targeting equipment are offline during transport and must put be on (even the hoover infantry suffer this, imagine the hoover engines running inside a truc?!!)

I think such solutions are simple and rapidly effective.

Xtatika

Well, the thing to remember, people, is that WK would like to keep it as simple as possible. I can definitely see mlotoole0's suggestion going over simply enough, but Terman8er's adds a bunch of numbers to keep track of. As for a M&S SE, I agree that it would be very bad.

@ mlotoole0,

If you don't mind explaining a bit more: a vehicle may take 1 attack action and a move action, or 2 move actions, or one "standard" attack action, correct? So I suppose loading or unloading would take 1 action?

Also, I presume the ratio of orders would not change, so that each unit type's order-ratio would be as follows: 'Mech 1-3, vehicles 1-2, infantry 1-2, VTOL 1-2 (and VTOLs still could only M&S as they do now). Is that correct too?

So then I guess you'd have to give bonuses to a unit that just stands there and fires, no? Like maybe you could do 1 action Aim (as in Solaris), 1 action ranged combat attack. That would actually bring ranged damage in line with Charge too. Hmm... I really like this, and it doesn't require a total overhaul. Nice!

[EDIT: having thought about this, I would rather M&S gave penalties to attack and damage, as opposed to the standard immobile shot which would NOT get attack bonuses - DF does not need for its Defense to be even more insignificant.]


@ Xtatika,

Props for using the word "malus". ;)