OBT Forum

if they were green, bump em up to regular, if regular, Veteram, if Veteran Elite.  one major shift per major war seems like an easy and fair way to put it.

It started in the jihad books they had tracks that allowed for generic scenarios to be drawn up

I think it also allowed you to track experiance and work it out longer term

There was more in the Wolf and Blake Starterbook and then Total Chaos Sourcebook (i dont have) was the scenario builder

I'll have a look in the Jihad/Starterbook tonight see if I can find anything for could over a campaign

I think it could work out, Ice, btu it will all boil down to fluff.  Let's say your cluster is involved from day one, and hit DCMS/FedCom borderworlds, where the fighting is much more bitter.  The losses, henceforth are heavier, but the survivors gain metric craptons of experience.  Now, we're about a year in, your regular rated unit is a shell of it's former self, with only half of it's warriors left to reap the full benefeits.  Is your cluster illustrious?  is it downtrodden or disreputable within it's clan?  This matters, because of where your replacements come from.  Let's say another cluster is disbanded due to losses, and your cluster receives a supernova binary from them.  Now, you have, quite likely, some elite forces, some veteran forces, but nothing lower until your fresh-from the sibko replacements arrive.  Thus teetering you out at the veteran mark.

by the same token, your replacements if your clan didn't value your unit as much as it had, would be freebirths and unblooded warriors for you to blood.(Falcons were good for this.  Take a unit that got hammered, fill it with recruits, and hit a hard target with them.  Seems wasteful at first, until that battlefield experience turns into very capable commanders once they leave their blooding.) in which case you'd still be a regular unit.

Prestige plays a HUGE role into whether your unit will gain the experience required to move up in rating, or if it will be maintained as a regular line unit for other purposes.  Rarely does a unit which lacks prestige build into a more seasoned unit.  Individuals may be retained, but overall they'll remain the same when new recruits are drawn in.

The 1st edition RPG has guidelines for individual skill. Since they run into the thousands of XP, I used the encounter tables to translate them into something more tangible. Keep in mind that 1st edition characters were expected to spend between 5% (green) and 50% (elite) of their XP to modify individual die rolls during play, in a way roughly equivalent to modern day "edge" points.

Green "includes all player characters beginning their adventuring careers and all others whose practical experience at their chosen profession is not extensive." About 0-10 successful average battlefield objectives.

Regulars "have successfully completed a number of moderately complex assignments or a single major campaign, and have survived a few personal or 'Mech combats." About 11-52 successful average battlefield objectives.

Veterans "will normally have several major campaigns or many years of experience under their belts, and should be well versed in the techniques of warfare." About 53-347 successful average battlefield objectives.

Elite "are the creme de la creme of the MechWarrior universe, the best and the brightest (or at least the most persevering) the 31st Century has to offer. Elite characters have usually experienced and endured every kind of challenge and danger their profession offers, and have played major leadership roles in one or more successful campaigns. The Successor State warlords usually respect these elite highly, and their assignments reflect that esteem." The equivalent of 348+ successful average battlefield objectives. (Not that their objectives will be "average" by this point.)

[EDIT: These skill thresholds seem to go by powers of seven. ~7 missions to break from green to regular, ~49 to break from regular to veteran, ~343 to break from veteran to elite. Weird.]

The 1st edition BattleForce (I don't know about the 2nd edition) gives the distribution of individual g/p skills that are associated with each level of regimental skill. (These would be what all the old House books go by.) Looks like Green regiments average 4.6+ g/p skill, Regular regiments average 4.0-4.5, Veterans 3.4-3.9, and Elites average 3.3 or less (let's say down to 2.8, to give the Clan equivalent a lower bound). The book says lighter regiments tend towards the upper ends of those ranges and heavier regiments tend towards the lower ends, but I'm not sure its examples actually bear that out.

I think these metrics make good fluff. They may be a little frustrating to implement in Chaos Campaign type play though.

That sounds good, though instead of specifying "green" replacements, maybe say "replacements less skilled than the original level." I mean, replacing elites with regulars should decrease the unit's skill too. Another option is to leave the survivors and the replacements with different skill ratings, or if you know how many of each you have, just weight their average.

Interesting ideas.
I will probably try to merge them all into one big system 

That sounds good, though instead of specifying "green" replacements, maybe say "replacements less skilled than the original level." I mean, replacing elites with regulars should decrease the unit's skill too. Another option is to leave the survivors and the replacements with different skill ratings, or if you know how many of each you have, just weight their average.

Good points. 

Ice, have a look at how we deal with experience in the KU rules, that seems to work fairly well.