[Medicineman]

at first I wanted to write it in English, but Alas my English isn't good enough(ImO) to translate that sentence properly without twisting the Meaning.
If I would've written :
 and that's a good & right thing
It would've deemed wrong in the Meaning to me,
(see , Zweiblumen tried and didn't get the true Meaning right....sometimes there simply is a Gap that you can hardly cross )

with an unassured dance
Medicineman

[jim1701]

The only conclusion I can draw is that the owner loves battletech so he wants to get it right and makes sure, with community support, it's is fixed if it's not right.

100% wrong.

I agree that there is waaaaay to much hyperbole there.  Speculating on motivation is less than helpful.  However, the fact does remain that the Battletech team has developed an effective infrastructure for collecting, evaluating and disseminating errata to the players that the Shadowrun team COULD, as far as I can tell, avail themselves of if they chose to do so.  There are also the rules forums where players can ask for clarifications on rules and/or game mechanics in the various core books not to mention the Ask the Devs and Ask the Writers forums where players can ask questions and the appropriate powers that be can answer (or not) at their leisure.  The latter forums are all restricted so that the only ones that can post to a thread is the person who created the thread (e.g. the player) and those designated to answer the questions (generally devs and/or writers.)

[PeterSmith]

I agree that there is waaaaay to much hyperbole there.  Speculating on motivation is less than helpful.

Yup.

However, the fact does remain that the Battletech team has developed an effective infrastructure for collecting, evaluating and disseminating errata to the players that the Shadowrun team COULD, as far as I can tell, avail themselves of if they chose to do so.  There are also the rules forums where players can ask for clarifications on rules and/or game mechanics in the various core books not to mention the Ask the Devs and Ask the Writers forums where players can ask questions and the appropriate powers that be can answer (or not) at their leisure.  The latter forums are all restricted so that the only ones that can post to a thread is the person who created the thread (e.g. the player) and those designated to answer the questions (generally devs and/or writers.)

While I won't speculate as to why the SR forums are not nearly as structured as the BT forums, I do feel the need to remind people of something very important:

BattleTech, both from a gameplay standpoint and an organizational standpoint, have the advantage of a significant amount of continuity. Going back to when FanPro got the license to produce both BattleTech and Shadowrun BattleTech has changed Line Developers twice, from Randall Bills to Herb Beas and back to Randall. Shadowrun? To be frank I can't name all of the LDs (almost all of my time was on the BattleTech side of the house). I know Rob Boyle was the first, Jason is the latest, and there were a number between the two. That lack of continuity will have an impact in building up the support structure for Shadowrun. Gameplay? In the time that BattleTech's Total Warfare rulebook was released (2006) Shadowrun went from 4th Edition to SR20A to 5th Edition. Two major editions plus what I consider a half edition overhaul. BattleTech released a half edition overhaul and has been running with it for ten years now. Plenty of time for people to play enough to be experts at it.

Can the BattleTech system be adopted for use by Shadowrun? Sure. Should it? Maybe. It would require a time investment to get everything set up, which is time taken away from product development.

My personal opinion? Sure, I would love to see some of BattleTech's approaches carried over to Shadowrun. Specifically the errata section of this forum patterned after the BattleTech forum, with the exception of an errata team being the ones to post in the errata forum. Build a development team interaction sub-forum for the players to ask questions/clear up inconsistencies. Once answered the information gets posted to the errata forum, with the information compiled into an errata document on a regular basis (quarterly, semi-annually, annually, etc...). Also, for crunch heavy books release the PDF as a beta. Set a hard date for submissions, roll fixes back into the book, then ship it to the printers. People who bought the beta would get the updated PFD through the usual upgrade mechanism.

[Sendaz]

Now I have not played BT in ages, but from my time there part of the stability I saw with BT is that its a bit more straight forward in many ways.

You don't try stealthing in an Atlas the same way your runners do, so things like Perception are handled a bit different.
You can use terrain for cover and jumping over hills, but you still had a pretty good idea where everyone was.

You have a lot more skills in SR the devs have to track of and keep balanced.
And how the skills can be applied is a bit different, SR tends to find very creative uses for these skills where again it is a lot more straight forward in BT.
Compare a called limb shot on a mech (is it still pretty much a penalty to hit anywhere with no head shots allowed?) to the plethora of called shots/special effects you get from Run & Gun.

BT has pretty much one plane of battle going on at any given time, the physical field with environment though you can spice it up with some air support, but it's still one plane.
SR has things going on in three possible planes: Astral, Physical, Matrix each constituting their own 'battlefield' with some overlap.
And while most GMs handle it one at a time, as we said there will be overlaps and again keeping this balanced is the trick.
See also the ongoing wireless ON debate and hacking/defending your gear.

In BT the fluff was nice background, but it's impact was not as great outside of who you might be allying with because Mechs can just ride through a lot of it if you didn't want to pay attention to small details. Or when the fluff did tie in, it was fairly easy to define in the rules if needed.
In SR the fluff seemed to me to tie in a lot more with the players because well you darn well had to slog through that setting, so of course they ask more about rules covering those effects.

[adzling]

This would be fantastic if it was viable/ possible.

My personal opinion? Sure, I would love to see some of BattleTech's approaches carried over to Shadowrun. Specifically the errata section of this forum patterned after the BattleTech forum, with the exception of an errata team being the ones to post in the errata forum. Build a development team interaction sub-forum for the players to ask questions/clear up inconsistencies. Once answered the information gets posted to the errata forum, with the information compiled into an errata document on a regular basis (quarterly, semi-annually, annually, etc...). Also, for crunch heavy books release the PDF as a beta. Set a hard date for submissions, roll fixes back into the book, then ship it to the printers. People who bought the beta would get the updated PFD through the usual upgrade mechanism.

[jim1701]

Now I have not played BT in ages, but from my time there part of the stability I saw with BT is that its a bit more straight forward in many ways.

Sorry I'm going to have to disagree with you there pretty strongly. 

First, Battletech has multiple layers of rules that have to remain compatible (at least in theory) with each other.  There are the standard tournament rules, construction rules, advanced optional rules that cover areas in the previous rule sets plus campaign rule sets at both the tactical and strategic levels.  The exceptions being Alpha Strike and A Time of War the former being a "fast playing" version of the tactical game and the latter being the Battletech RPG game.  They are based on the core game but they don't have to remain tightly compatible.

Second, while Battletech proper does only have approximately two skills it does maintain literally hundreds of cannon units most with multiple variants.  All of which have to be checked for legality anytime a rule change is proposed.  Producing new sets of units of any stripe that are verifiable of legal construction is a very time consuming process.  Also, as a design decision made long ago, Battletech does not have the luxury of completely reinventing itself every ten years or so.  Imagine if Shadowrun had to maintain its rules so that characters made in 1st edition could be played in 5th edition with no conversion?  Granted it's not really an apples to apples comparison but that doesn't negate the complexity of trying maintain rules without invalidating units built almost 30 years ago.

I will grant that Shadowrun has multiple "battlefields" if you will though I will challenge the fact that makes the Battletech "battlefield" less complicated or easier to balance.  When you start taking into account Battlemechs, vehicles, infantry, fighters, artillery and (God help me) warships has been an ongoing process for as long as I can remember.  And don't even get me started on Inner Sphere tech vs. Clan tech, ack!

I knew you would bring up the fluff thing and I will admit from a personal standpoint that when I started playing back in the 80's I didn't give a lick about Great Houses or ComStar or any of that crap.  But the fact is fluff is just as important to a lot of Battletech players as it is to any Shadowrun player.  There is also a whole lot more of it to keep track of.  Imagine if Shadowrun were currently in the year 2275 and they had more than 250 years of history to keep track of rather than the 70 or so they do now.  Let's also not forget the number of players out there who would just plain freak if you so much as suggested that they use a unit that doesn't belong to the chosen faction.  Which is yet another layer of complexity managed by volunteers.  All those hundreds of units and someone has to go through all that material and figure out what faction has access to what and during what eras spanning hundreds of years. 

So while I would be the first to admit that there are different challenges to design, edit and maintain between Shadowrun and Battletech I wholeheartedly disagree that either is easier than the other.

[Sendaz]

Sorry I'm going to have to disagree with you there pretty strongly. 

*bows*  I concede as you have raised some very good points.

Like I said it has been ages since I touched BT and it seems it has grown quite a bit since my day, the Clans were just making their appearance at that time.

I followed the novels since then, but never had the opportunity to get into the game side of BT due to lack of players as most including myself had migrated to SR and other, though may be worth going back and have a look at it now.

[adzling]

This pretty much exemplifies the state of Srun 5e:
Another random thread on the internets told me that a drone can now run up to a number of Autosoft's equal to it's Pilot Rating.
See here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Shadowrun/comments/40q7dn/rigger_5_pg127_massive_stealth_nerf/cyxycjp

That should have been in Rigger 5.0.

It feels as though 5e is being held together with duct tape and bailing wire and sheer willpower of the freelancers.

I wish that Catalyst would spend less money on fluff and more money on getting the rules straight so I don't have to spend so much time on the internets divining the rules intent.

[Fabe]

This pretty much exemplifies the state of Srun 5e:
Another random thread on the internets told me that a drone can now run up to a number of Autosoft's equal to it's Pilot Rating.
See here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Shadowrun/comments/40q7dn/rigger_5_pg127_massive_stealth_nerf/cyxycjp

That should have been in Rigger 5.0.

It feels as though 5e is being held together with duct tape and bailing wire and sheer willpower of the freelancers.

I wish that Catalyst would spend less money on fluff and more money on getting the rules straight so I don't have to spend so much time on the internets divining the rules intent.

 I still don't think fluff is the problem but yeah that needs to be fixed before the book goes to print.  also do the  new rules in Rigger 5 or any other  book officially override rules from the core book or are they all considered optional?

[falar]

I still don't think fluff is the problem but yeah that needs to be fixed before the book goes to print.  also do the  new rules in Rigger 5 or any other  book officially override rules from the core book or are they all considered optional?

Later rules in core rulebooks always overrule unless they are specifically labeled optional. So Rigger 5.0 rigging is the correct rules at this point (or 30 days after the book comes out in print for Missions games).

That said, I'm a little amused by people whining and complaining about needing to google-fu through five different places to get information. That's not constructive. Constructive is creating a wiki that pulls that all together and is properly maintained. Don't waste time complaining - be the change you want to see.

[adzling]

We've been told that Catalyst has no money to improve process/ hire more people.

So in a resource constrained development process you have to choose where you focus your energies/ resources.

My position, right or wrong, is that the focus should be on well written and crafted rules and the fluff can be trimmed to provide resources for this.

We know that Catalyst can author some good fiction (I particularly enjoyed the recent Technomancer novel and Critias' two novellas), however the same cannot be said for their Srun RPG rules.

Which is odd considering this is an RPG game they are selling.

This pretty much exemplifies the state of Srun 5e:
Another random thread on the internets told me that a drone can now run up to a number of Autosoft's equal to it's Pilot Rating.
See here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Shadowrun/comments/40q7dn/rigger_5_pg127_massive_stealth_nerf/cyxycjp

That should have been in Rigger 5.0.

It feels as though 5e is being held together with duct tape and bailing wire and sheer willpower of the freelancers.

I wish that Catalyst would spend less money on fluff and more money on getting the rules straight so I don't have to spend so much time on the internets divining the rules intent.

 I still don't think fluff is the problem but yeah that needs to be fixed before the book goes to print.  also do the  new rules in Rigger 5 or any other  book officially override rules from the core book or are they all considered optional?

[prionic6]

My personal opinion? Sure, I would love to see some of BattleTech's approaches carried over to Shadowrun. Specifically the errata section of this forum patterned after the BattleTech forum, with the exception of an errata team being the ones to post in the errata forum. Build a development team interaction sub-forum for the players to ask questions/clear up inconsistencies. Once answered the information gets posted to the errata forum, with the information compiled into an errata document on a regular basis (quarterly, semi-annually, annually, etc...). Also, for crunch heavy books release the PDF as a beta. Set a hard date for submissions, roll fixes back into the book, then ship it to the printers. People who bought the beta would get the updated PFD through the usual upgrade mechanism.

That sounds great!

[jim1701]

I still don't think fluff is the problem but yeah that needs to be fixed before the book goes to print.  also do the  new rules in Rigger 5 or any other  book officially override rules from the core book or are they all considered optional?

Later rules in core rulebooks always overrule unless they are specifically labeled optional. So Rigger 5.0 rigging is the correct rules at this point (or 30 days after the book comes out in print for Missions games).

That said, I'm a little amused by people whining and complaining about needing to google-fu through five different places to get information. That's not constructive. Constructive is creating a wiki that pulls that all together and is properly maintained. Don't waste time complaining - be the change you want to see.

Uh, no.  It would be nice if someone wants to do that but if I'm going to pay $50 for a book (or even 425 for a PDF) I certainly don't consider it whining to ask that the publishes the book to fix their mistakes in a timely manner.  Granted it is more helpful to avoid insults when saying so but you obviously don't know how to do that so maybe you prefer to do it yourself.  And if you think this is whining I really just don't give a shit.

[tytalan]

Adzling I am afraid you are not understanding the process the cost for a line of written material is the same weather it is fluff or rules and it is a different cost from hiring a team to help the Line developer manage the game.  They could cut product fluff or crunch it's all the same in order to have the money to create such a team but that would lower product which would mean less income so they would have to either produce even less product or get ride of the team they hired.  Catch 22. 

I would be more concern with the state CGL finances if it so tight that they can not edit and direct the game line this would suggest that they are one misshape away from closing shop.  If it is just a mater for budge priority's than the argument that Shadowrun is secondary to battle tech would seem right.  Either way I believe CGL needs to address our needs by explaining to us why they can not produce a quality game like so many other companies can. 

[adzling]

This may be true (costs are different for freelance writing vs. editing/ management).

However it does not change the fact that if they pruned the fluff and directed those resources towards rules that actually work and are accurately written we might end up with better product.

For example by spending the savings on fluff on freelancers to edit and review stuff for accuracy before it goes to print/ PDF publishing.

This seems like a no-brainer.

There are other good recommendations in this thread as well (that I and others have quoted).

All we can do is continue to express our displeasure at their repeated and ongoing failures to turn out even remotely acceptable RULES product.

In the end Catalyst will have to decide what they do, or even IF they do anything.

Adzling I am afraid you are not understanding the process the cost for a line of written material is the same weather it is fluff or rules and it is a different cost from hiring a team to help the Line developer manage the game.  They could cut product fluff or crunch it's all the same in order to have the money to create such a team but that would lower product which would mean less income so they would have to either produce even less product or get ride of the team they hired.  Catch 22. 

I would be more concern with the state CGL finances if it so tight that they can not edit and direct the game line this would suggest that they are one misshape away from closing shop.  If it is just a mater for budge priority's than the argument that Shadowrun is secondary to battle tech would seem right.  Either way I believe CGL needs to address our needs by explaining to us why they can not produce a quality game like so many other companies can.