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Big update to OpFor Command and the Paint Scheme Planner, and most of it came from people running actual games and telling me what was broken. Cheers to all of you.

The big one: run speed was wrong on about half the roster. Run MP is Walk times 1.5 rounded up and the data was rounding down, so a Wolverine 6M was showing 5/7/5 instead of 5/8/5. That is fixed, along with the heat scale, which was putting the movement penalty at heat 8 when Total Warfare has it at 5.

Also fixed: objective orders that told you to hold a position and charge the enemy in the same breath.

New in OpFor Command:

• Clan units now give orders like Clan units, including a zellbrigen reminder
• Pilot names and backgrounds pulled across from the Lance Builder, and the background sets how that pilot fights
• Buttons to roll temperaments, pilots and move order in one click

The Paint Scheme Planner now shows your scheme on a proper record sheet style armour diagram instead of a list of swatches. Click a panel to change which colour it wears, and there are camo patterns in there too.

Give it a refresh if you have used the tools before.

www.battletechhq.com

The solo tool I've been building only ever knew about the enemy force. It ran the OpFor for you but had no idea what your own mechs were, so the best it could do for targeting was "shoot the lowest TMM you can find."

You can now add your own lance too, with the same variant picker, and set each mech's condition and whether it moved this turn. That turns the fire advice into a real concentrate-fire call at the top of the orders. It weighs three things off your actual mechs: who's wounded and worth finishing, who's genuinely easy to hit (real TMM, or standing still), and who's the biggest threat when everything's fresh. So instead of a vague hint you get "whole lance onto the Jenner, it's crippled, finish it before it limps away."

There's a called-shot line when one of your mechs is hurt but still up, and this update also adds mission objectives, force-wide, four types, weighed against the fight each turn rather than every unit beelining the same marker.

Works in Classic and Alpha Strike. If you don't enter your own force it runs exactly as before.

battletechhq.com/opfor-command.html

Feedback welcome, especially if a specific mech or target call reads wrong in play. That's the useful kind.

https://preview.redd.it/935zhf0tfggh1.png?width=1127&format=png&auto=webp&s=d81632c6ec7bfd4d6710b408384c7ad0a81ed2da

https://preview.redd.it/psedaziqfggh1.png?width=1124&format=png&auto=webp&s=30d7c772c9cb647cedb806f75ca8de0c933550ba

The solo tool I've been building only ever knew about the enemy force. It ran the OpFor for you but had no idea what your own mechs were, so the best it could do for targeting was "shoot the lowest TMM you can find."

You can now add your own lance too, with the same variant picker, and set each mech's condition and whether it moved this turn. That turns the fire advice into a real concentrate-fire call at the top of the orders. It weighs three things off your actual mechs: who's wounded and worth finishing, who's genuinely easy to hit (real TMM, or standing still), and who's the biggest threat when everything's fresh. So instead of a vague hint you get "whole lance onto the Jenner, it's crippled, finish it before it limps away."

There's a called-shot line when one of your mechs is hurt but still up, and this update also adds mission objectives, force-wide, four types, weighed against the fight each turn rather than every unit beelining the same marker.

Works in Classic and Alpha Strike. If you don't enter your own force it runs exactly as before.

battletechhq.com/opfor-command.html

Feedback welcome, especially if a specific mech or target call reads wrong in play. That's the useful kind.

https://preview.redd.it/fdv2vcbefggh1.png?width=1124&format=png&auto=webp&s=81863abfb73406e19299cca6d862aa33afbd1993

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Let me be up front, this comes across as self promotion, but really I just wanted to make something the community can use, but if it still seems to the mods like self promo then so be it.

When I've played battletech solo, the worst part was running the other side. You know what you're planning, so the enemy never does anything you didn't expect.

Most solo aids give you a generic behaviour table that treats an Atlas and a Trebuchet exactly the same, which is no help at all.

So I built one that reads the actual loadout.

The bit I care about most is how it works out where a mech wants to fight. For Classic it ignores the Alpha Strike damage numbers, because those squash minimum range and each weapon's own brackets into one figure and you lose everything useful.

Instead it walks the hexes in each band, checks which bracket every gun on the mech falls into, applies minimum range penalties, turns the to-hit into a 2d6 hit chance and adds up expected damage. Then it weights that by role.

So a Trebuchet wants long, because LRM 15s reach 21 and its backup lasers are dead past 9.

An Atlas wants short, because the AC/20 and four mediums all peak inside 3 hexes.

An Awesome 8Q sits at medium instead of charging in, because three PPCs have a minimum range of 3 and getting close is genuinely bad for it.

Weapon stats are off the Total Warfare tables and the Tactical Operations advanced weapons tables. Variable damage weapons get handled properly, so Heavy Gauss reads 25/20/10 and Snub-Nose PPC reads 10/8/5.

Both rulesets are in there and kept separate. Alpha Strike gets OV, heat, shutdown and TMM. Classic gets the weapon model plus the full loadout and heat sink count on the card, and it will never quote you an Alpha Strike damage number.

Orders also know how fast the mech is. Someone flagged a Sagittaire being told to close to short range. The range preference was right, five Medium Pulse Lasers and two Large Pulse is a knife fighting loadout, but the thing walks 3 and runs 4. That's three turns crossing open ground barely shooting back. Now it tells you that, and sends slow mechs cover to cover instead of straight up the guts.

Things it does not do. It only runs the OpFor, not your force, so it can't work out your TMM or pick targets for you. It has no idea what your terrain looks like.

It's free, no signup, runs in your browser. If a specific mech reads wrong in play I want to hear about it, that's the useful kind of bug report.

battletechhq.com/opfor-command.html

​

I do a lot of solo BattleTech and running the other side is always the bit that ruins it. You know what you're planning, so the enemy never does anything you didn't expect. Most solo aids give you a generic behaviour table that treats an Atlas and a Trebuchet exactly the same, which is no help at all.

So I built one that reads the actual loadout.

The bit I care about most is how it works out where a mech wants to fight. For Classic it ignores the Alpha Strike damage numbers, because those squash minimum range and each weapon's own brackets into one figure and you lose everything useful. Instead it walks the hexes in each band, checks which bracket every gun on the mech falls into, applies minimum range penalties, turns the to-hit into a 2d6 hit chance and adds up expected damage. Then it weights that by role.

So a Trebuchet wants long, because LRM 15s reach 21 and its backup lasers are dead past 9. An Atlas wants short, because the AC/20 and four mediums all peak inside 3 hexes. An Awesome 8Q sits at medium instead of charging in, because three PPCs have a minimum range of 3 and getting close is genuinely bad for it.

Weapon stats are off the Total Warfare tables and the Tactical Operations advanced weapons tables, not from memory. Variable damage weapons get handled properly, so Heavy Gauss reads 25/20/10 and Snub-Nose PPC reads 10/8/5. That's about 99.8% of the weapons across 3,753 variants covered.

Both rulesets are in there and kept separate. Alpha Strike gets OV, heat, shutdown and TMM. Classic gets the weapon model plus the full loadout and heat sink count on the card, and it will never quote you an Alpha Strike damage number.

Orders also know how fast the mech is. Someone flagged a Sagittaire being told to close to short range. The range preference was right, five Medium Pulse Lasers and two Large Pulse is a knife fighting loadout, but the thing walks 3 and runs 4. That's three turns crossing open ground barely shooting back. Now it tells you that, and sends slow mechs cover to cover instead of straight up the guts.

Things it does not do. It only runs the OpFor, not your force, so it can't work out your TMM or pick targets for you. It has no idea what your terrain looks like. The role weightings are my judgement, not out of a book. And about 45 really obscure weapons still fall back to a rougher method.

It's free, no signup, runs in your browser. If a specific mech reads wrong in play I want to hear about it, that's the useful kind of bug report.

battletechhq.com/opfor-command.html

G'day guys, I've just finished a comprehensive guide for painting your first 'Mech.

https://battletechhq.com/articles/battletech-painting-tutorial

The guide covers:
- Essential supplies (with specific product recommendations)
- Primer selection and application
- Layering techniques for armor
- Weathering and battle damage
- Sealing your work.

I know the images are not a battlemech, I couldn't actually find any that I have taken and my mini's are all packed away somewhere after a recent move, but I've been painting minitures including Battletech, 40K, Warhammer, Dystopian Wars, Infinity just to name a few.
Hopefully it's helpful to some new painters, if you can think of any other tips or tricks comment to spread the love.

Cheers.

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G'day guys, i've been hard at work on improving the lance builder.
After all the feedback i've added some new features.

• All factions (at least all I could find data on) have been added including clans
  • Choosing a faction will now limit your mech choices to units that faction would normally take
  • The lance generator will take this into account as well
• All Era's from the age of war through to Ilclan era have been added with mechs specific to the time frame.
• All mechs I could find data on have been added, some I didn't even know existed, a total of 620 chassis and 3753 variants.
  • Updated the infomation panel with even more intel!
• Now when choosing a faction the faction logo will display in the background.
• Search function implemented
• Sorting mechs by tonnage, BV or PV depending on which system you've picked and the mechs role
• Speaking of roles mechs now have defined roles, Scout, Sniper etc this is included on the print out.

I know there are other tools out there, but I hope that the ease of use with this tool will make a difference for new players, and with these new features even some of you older grizzled mechwarriors.

As always I would love more feedback, what else would make this better, Vehicles? Areospace? Infatry?, let me know and I can work on adding it, if it is possible.

https://battletechhq.com/
https://battletechhq.com/lance-builder

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