Me and a friend have been playing CBT for about 5 months now and the one complaint we've always had was the length of time the game takes. Move, do some math, roll dice, roll dice more, roll dice more, roll dice again, fall down, roll some more dice. Next turn.

We aren't the fastest players in the world because we talk out what we're doing and take time deciding on things. We've figured out that for all of those dice rolls, what we needed was more dice being rolled at once. Between the two of us we were able to come up with 10 matched sets of D6s.

With this in mind we would call what weapon each dice represented and roll a fistfull of them at once. The weapons that miss get pulled out of the pile and roll them all again for locations. A game that would normally take us 6 hours to play at the table yesterday was shortened to 2 hours. By the end of the day we got in 12 hours of CBT in the space of 6 hours including figuring out what we wanted to play and printing out sheets on HMP.

The other thing we have been using to make figuring out targets easier is movement dice. We use a d10 for each mech and it can represent a 0-9 modifier. The d10 is placed in the hex in front of the mech it is representing pointing away from the mech. Being pointy the movement die can also represent facing easily by moving it to the hex left or right of facing. We include movement and currently occupied terrain into the number to give an quick target mod to look at.

With enough dice of the right colors we could have rolled an entire lance worth of attacks all at once, checked them to see if they hit, and then rolled up hits on targets. As it was we were doing things one mech at a time to avoid confusion.

Just wanted to share this with those of you who hate how much time CBT takes up. This just shoved dark age a little further into the closet.

I never would have assumed that all those dice rolls suck up so much time!
I used a d20 for the movement, but a d10 is cool too. When i play, I tell players that they have 2 minutes to do movement. I find that this is where the massive figuring comes in. Just like chess, the finger comes off of the mini, your done moving.

Always glad to hear from another CBT player here!

Allocating damage is what takes up most time IMHO.
Especially for LB-X or SRM damage, where location rolls are aplenty. But we usually conclude a 6 mechs a side game in 2-3 hours.

I had written a program back when I graduated college (95-96) that took mech designs and imported them into a database. You then just told it which mech was firing on which opponent with what weapons and what modifiers were on each unit. It did the attack rolls and damage allocation automatically. Pretty much megamek without the map. That sped up the game dramatically. But it just wasn't quite the same as rolling the dice yourself.

I think if you know all modifiers by heart, you can be almost as fast by just rolling everything in order, from top to bottom on the small weapons list below or next to the Armor Sheets.
I can also only suggest using sheets that do NOT use the stylized Mech, but simple rows of 10 armor points grouped together - much easier to mark off correctly. Drawing board creates these with "non graphical" checked.


Other then that, simple d6s (which everyone has and which can be bought in those fantastic 36 piece bricks) suffice.
The only modifiers that are the same for a mech everytime are those from its own movement and the terrain it currently occupies. So we use d6s since you very, very rarely would get a 6, and count 6s as 0s.
Another thing to do in multiplayer battles (we play with five to ten players usually) is that people that have already moved and are 99% sure that they will fire on something that, too, has already moved could start rolling their attacks and locations and not them down. That way, after all have moved, a few attacks can be handled by a quick "Ok, Quirin, you get 5 on your Center, 8 on the Left, and 2 on each Leg".

At the start of your turn put a white 1d10 in front of each mech with 0 showing on the die. As each player moves each mech he notes how many hexes it has moved and figures out from the chart how much of a modifier that would give his opponent to shoot him and he changes the die to represent that modifier. If you don't move then take the dice off. Ideally you could have d10s of different colors. If you walk use a green d10. If you run use an orange d10. If you JJ use red d10.

Example: Mech A uses JJ to move 3 hexes. The player takes the white d10 which is currently at 0 and changes it to a red d10 with '2' showing (1 for moving 3 hexes + 1 for using JJ, red die due to using JJ). If the mech torso twists then move the die to the hex where its torso is facing (if the mech didn't move and thus has no die then note the facing by using a generic token, bead etc). This way both players can tell from a glance what mechs have moved so far, where all the torsos are facing, and what the penalty for firing for both players are (i.e. the owning player can see what movement mode he used to determine the penalty on his shot, and the player firing on a mech can see the penalty on the to-hit-roll for that target).

It sounds a bit complex but once you get it down it makes things go pretty quick.

Much like StormFox, me and my friend would use the little tiny d6's for movement marking.

During the weapons phase, we'd both just resolve our attacks at the same time (calculate, roll, note results) on scratch paper. Then we'd exchange notes and start marking down the results.

This sped things up a bit.

We also used a little program I wrote on the Commodore to calculate attacks, and to roll missile hit locations. Just using the missile portion sped things up (as that was often the most tedious)

Janx

Oh, the tables are not really a problem. After a few dozen games, at least a few participants in a game should know most results and modifiers without looking them up. The missile table, for instance, is not too complicated once you got the hang of it. Rules of thumb often do it in bigger battles - being off once or twice by 2 or 4 damage points will not make a difference on the outcome.
I think the only thing we frequently have to look up are the side hit locations. We often ditch them and use the normal locations if its the first volley to ever hit a unit or just an attack on some NSC ´Mech in our campaigns.

What I was implying with LB-X & SRM is you make a number of location rolls, each time for 1 or 2 points, then have to check off one or 2 amor points... That's the only thing that does slow the game...

D6's for movement, 6 as zero. (If someone actually moves over 15 hexes in a turn, we generally remember it).

Rolling all the dice is interesting, but the problem I would have is you have a fight at 6 hexes, with an assortment of mediums, medium pulses, ER Mediums, larges, ER larges, large pulses, and LRMs, clan LRMs, it just seems more complicated.

By matched sets, do you mean each set is a different color? Do you have a set order/how do you keep track of which pair represents which weapon?

I like to watch rolls, because it's the really exciting part. It depends how big the game is. Generally, though, more than a lance/player is a really bad Idea.

Anyways, once you know target numbers, we found in our battalion on battalion battle, that it helped if we wrote down all the attacks with target numbers next to them. (both sides can do the list at the same time),
e.g.
Battlemaster:
ER PPC 5+
ML 7+
ML 7+
ML 7+
ML 7+
ML 7+

Or perhaps:
ER PPC 5+
ML x 5: 7+ +,-,+,+,+, (hit, miss, hit, hit, hit)

One person rolls, the other person follows the checklist. That way you get a feel for rolls. 2 "miss" 3 "miss" 4 "miss" 3 "miss" 5 "miss", and anybody can double check calculations in case the combination of caffeine and optimism gets suspicious. (it's easy to forget a +1 or 2 here or there once in a while). Works best with teams, but 2 player would work to.

Or go down the list *roll* "seven" "hit" *reroll* "Center torso"
*roll* "four" "miss"
*roll* "two" "miss"
So, at the end, chart might look like:
ER PPC: 5, RT
LL: 5, Miss
ML x 4: 7, Miss, miss, miss, RT

For smaller battles, the key is good mech sheets.

1. Make sure you use the mech charts with weapon range and damage on them.

2. I like the idea of the non-graphics rows of 10, but generally marking off the damage is the fun part, so I always use graphics.

3. It might be easier to record heat on the side of the sheet (label turns 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, et cetera down the side, then just write heat), erasing is slow.

4. Glare menacingly at people using LB-X ammo early in the game. It's really only useful when each bit gives you a shot at criticals :-p

5. Cheat sheet. Give everybody a cheat sheet, either copied out of the Compendium, or homemade in notepad. Missile charts and hit locations (yeah, i can do hit locations in my sleep), but if you're semi conscious, having the side charts is nice. Especially if you make them with lines and font 14 :-p, you can take out most of the stuff once you get the hang of it (you really only need locations). Also, I can see why you'd forget punch or kick, because normal and kick start on the right side, but punch starts on the left. I believe. I haven't played in nearly a year.

6. Movement: This really does slow stuff down. Encourage instinctive play. If you're vs novices, go really fast, make some mistakes, see if they catch on and take advantage of it. Ultimately though, it's the hardest part to do anything about, because it requires the most thought. And it's the easiest place for skill differences to show. (After unit selection, but if that's random, like we usually do it . . . )

Of course, 4 of us ran a MW2 campaign with battletech fights weekly for 3 years, so I now have a friend who refuses to play with us, because it's a science to us. Not, intentionally, but if you play that much, you See numbers. Experience is the only way to really speed up movement. But even that's not certain, I remember going to a battletech event, and the more experienced players (measured by years playing and times attending gencon) were given better pilots. Now, I'd normally say this was unfair, except us high school number crunchers (ah, to have my parents paying my rent again) who spent most of physics writing programs on our calculators won easily with equal or worse mechs, just because we saw the numbers. So I can't really see being upset if someone takes too long, a vet with the right mindset is putting a lot more thought into his 3 second move than a novice might be putting into their 1 minute move.

7. Other thought: if it's a campaign or something non-competitive, look for easy mechs. By which I mean, mechs without lots of little SRMs and such.

8. More cheat sheets. If you can find the space for listing weapons, you can have the turn order thing, all the charts, heat thing, and weapons on the back of your mech sheets.

You know
1 2 3 4 5 6
ML 7+
LL
LPL 5+
Movemnt: W
Heat (10): 4


Then circle or cross out the Target numbers as you use them. Number in parenthesis is heat you can dissapate.

Maybe add: Movement type: W, R, J5 (Walk, Run, Jump 5)

Then you put the missile chart, and hit location charts on there. Or of course, make it formulaic
Turn:
Weapon 1 2
________
________
et cetera,
Move Type:
Heat [ ]

so you don't have to edit each one, and you'd just fill it in in pencil

A minute of preparation is worth 10 minutes of game time. That kind of thing.

But, I'm fond of charts, if you haven't noticed, and such, I think it comes from DMing and GMing. Trick is to find a system, agree on it, get used to it.

Course, the fastest way is to just use darkage rule :-p (hey, I have to plug the game once - I'm still a die -hard CBTer)

Very good compilation there. Not unlike our way of playing.
What I tend to do when I attack is roughly the following:

Calculate my short range target number.
Group my weapons into those that have to fire short/med/long.
Fire them groupwise from top to bottom (or the other way round).
Make location rolls for all that hit (you can usually remember what hit and what not for a minute).
I then note the damage down as it falls, like:
CT 8
LL 5
If I get a location again, i put the second number next to the first, and at the end, I get a nice list like:

LL 5
CT 8 3
RA 2
LA 2
LT 2 2 2

That way, when the victim is ready, I can just tell him:
Ok, 5 left leg, 8 then 3 center ... both arms 2 each ... got it ? ok, then three SRMs on the left torso. That´s it for me.

Yeah, I'm especially fond of that list:

Ct 5, 5, 3
Lt 3, 5, 8, 20

method for summarizing damage in PBEM games

The group I used to blay with used many of those suggestions. The Movement modifier d6 was the most usefull (Someone brought that back from a gaming convention). In the time it took to get someone up to speed on the shorthand systems, they'd already learned to play the long way fast enough.

Rolling a lot of dice at once was contovertial - many of these guys were long term wargamers, and it was very apparent that dice rolling is a skill much like driving a car. Some people are better at it than others, no matter whose car they drove.

Some players were nudged into it by the designes they chose. Dan favored the Sandpaper approach to Battletech (ever fight a LAM with 15+ machineguns) versus the "Big Hole theory", so he tended to roll six matched sets at one time.

In defense of LB autocannons - these work very well against vehicles because the Hit Location table was more likely to kill you than the damage.

-Andy in Indy

Yeah, after you play enough, it gets going pretty quick.:)
We speed it up by using movement dice and movement/firing sheets to record fire declarations, etc.
I can email a nice printable pdf of a movement/fireing record sheet to anyone interested.:)