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I really want to continue with the existing campaign.

0 (0%)

I’d prefer to continue with the existing campaign, but would be ok if we reset.

3 (25%)

No preference between continuing and starting over.

5 (41.7%)

I’d prefer a reset, but would be ok with continuing the existing campaign.

4 (33.3%)

I really want a reset.

0 (0%)

None of the options really cover it, let me explain below.

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 12

[Hat]

Ok. A few notes.

1. You can change your answer as people may change their mind based on the discussion.
2. There are at least a few ways I can think of that would allow us to retain the same paint scheme if desired, so a change doesn’t have to mean starting over from a minis point of view.
3. No end to this poll as people can change their minds. The goal is to use this thread for the discussion, and we finish when it’s clear what the direction is.
4. We don’t inherently have to figure out what would replace it unless that other option or options are critical to the choice.

[Hat]

Rob: how much of an overall work difference is it to rebuild everything rather than deal with an entirely new campaign creation?

[Darrian Wolffe]

Rob: how much of an overall work difference is it to rebuild everything rather than deal with an entirely new campaign creation?

We'd have to do character creation again, which can be wildly variable.

However, entering things into AtB generally takes about:
-10 minutes on campaign settings
-3-5 minutes per "person" (all unit personnel). There's about 400 personnel who need to be entered.
-about an hour just resetting the TO&E to the base variants in the hanger
-5-10 minutes per customized Mech.  There's about 75 custom Mechs.
-45 minutes-ish per contract customizing it ex post facto and advancing through the days; I'd have to start back on 5/1/3044 and advance literally day by day, resetting all of the contracts and resolving battles manually to ensure your Dragoons score was correct.  IIRC there's about 10 contracts.

So... about 50-60 hours of work, give or take, to get the campaign back to where it was when we had the data loss.  Once I have ANY copy of AtB reinstalled and working, of course.

Also note that I do have campaign save backups. The backups are also non-functional, because all of the file lookups have changed, and I can't even load the save game to correct the file lookup locations unless the file lookups are all correct in the first place.

[Hat]

There are 11 contracts + Sudaten + the Investiture, just for reference.

I'll be curious to see what the remaining votes are.  I made sure Ryan voted, so it's possible to get to the full 12 votes, whether we will or not, we can see.

If there aren't strong opinions either way and it's mostly balanced I would call it GM's choice.  Again we'll see what the remaining 2 people chime in with.

One thought, if the campaign resets, July 23rd could be used to do character creation and any campaign related discussion / work as it's already scheduled.  Just a thought.

[Ice]

We have pretty much an even split. Most don't care what happens and I will admit I want to play it out since I spent money and time on the Atlas. That doesn't mean that its worth taking up 60 hrs of Robs time though. If its better to hit the reset button and get the momentum going so be it. I vote we keep same unit colors and we don't have to necessarily start from 3039 or now but would prefer pre clan but post Tukayyid so we can ramp up to actually fight them. I was hoping we would play it out through at least the civil war and into the jihad. Not like we can't still or if we restart ramp back up and do it again. Gives us a chance to rebuild the lances into what we want them to be again. Robs call all things considered but who else wants to toss stuff out there?

[Hat]

Ok.  In trying to be helpful by adding a poll, I did Rob a disservice by effectively stifling a discussion.  Mea culpa.  So, I wanted to share my thoughts on why I selected what I did and more general thoughts around the process.  I encourage everyone to do the same.

I'm going to start by saying I'm really enjoying the campaign we're currently playing. I enjoy it's history and how it's colored things along the way and the opportunity to include a significant RP event for my PC.  From both an overall unit and lance perspective I think both are solid with room for improvement and working that direction.  I wish I had more money and more parts (who doesn't?) but that's a goal I'm chipping away at.  The unit's in good shape.  It's near ideal from a transportation perspective, the only improvements there would potentially be an upgrade from the Triumph or the Dictator into an Excalibur and a second Overlord.  As a Merc company though we can fully haul all of our stuff everywhere ourselves.  We don't have a full complement of vehicles, but the ones missing are non-combat and honestly the combat ones with the exception of artillery are pretty much there for fluff.  The infantry and battle armor are pretty exclusively fluff with a bunch of that as liabilities given changes in MegaMek.  For the mechanics that matter, we're in good shape as a unit from a money, tech, and personnel perspective, with as many elite admins as we need, the techs to fix things and approaching full elite artillery crews.  Even with the heavy hit at the end of the last contract, lances are good to great shape.  Losing pilots suck but mostly it's a losing pilots with great/preferred/effective SPAs which is gravy on top of their Vet/Elite rating.  As a group we've done really well and are well positioned to take on tough challenges and beat them.

Of course from a timeline perspective we're in a dead zone for another 3 years or so until the Chaos March forms, then the repudiation of the Clans and after that the FedCom Civil War as some of the highlights.  Those 3 years currently mean probably another 3 to 4 contracts with the way things have been going, so 1.5 or so real life years until beginning to hit the interesting stuff again.  Not to mention it's still a moderately slow drip of technology increases as L2 equipment becomes more prevalent.  Most lances are highly customized.  Occasionally there's a mech that inspires someone to do something new/different, but I think the majority of salvage is being sold rather than leveraged.  So, regardless of what the official Dragoon Rating says, ton for ton you can put us up against virtually any opponent and we stand a good change of walking away victorious.

Personally, I'm interested in moving onto having us be involved in big events, either directly or related.  Story for me is something I really enjoy.

So in terms of options I picked #3 - I'm equally good with pressing ahead with the current campaign and fine with starting something new.  Why not one of the current campaign choices?  Because I think there are lots of opportunities for new stories.  I enjoy making characters and coming up with backgrounds.  If my wife got a dollar for every character concept I fiddled with across all the gaming systems, or mech builds, or just gaming/story ideas in general, she'd be independently wealthy.  The group at this point is fairly stable.  There are a lot of options for either themed backgrounds, Merc or not.  I was chatting with Brandon about ideas if we switched to a new campaign and he mentioned demi-lances, so 2 mechs each vs. the current 4.  Smaller stables and potentially even do 2 PCs rather than 1, though not sure if that's too much work or not.

It opens up the possibility of a story driven game rather than random contract driven.  Apocalypse Rising has been hands down my favorite game of any I've been involved with in this group.  This isn't to say I expect a new campaign is story driven especially as I'm just 1 voice and not the GM.  It might be an option though.  There are lots of potentially cool campaign ideas.  In terms of ones that build on the current unit, could be just a time advance with changes based on new starting rules.  It could be a sub-unit if the Rangers increased to a Regiment+ with the original unit off doing whatever.  We could simply keep the paint scheme for simplicity and have a new unit if people are concerned about the cost for minis.

There's also the very real impact to Rob for rebuilding the current campaign.

So thoughts?

[Hat]

We have pretty much an even split. Most don't care what happens and I will admit I want to play it out since I spent money and time on the Atlas. That doesn't mean that its worth taking up 60 hrs of Robs time though. If its better to hit the reset button and get the momentum going so be it. I vote we keep same unit colors and we don't have to necessarily start from 3039 or now but would prefer pre clan so we can ramp up to actually fight them. I was hoping we would play it out through at least the civil war and into the jihad. Not like we can't still or if we restart ramp back up and do it again. Gives us a chance to rebuild the lances into what we want them to be again. Robs call all things considered but who else wants to toss stuff out there?

I was working on my response as you posted yours.  In terms of a reset I will say I'm strongly opposed to playing anything from the end of say the 2nd Succession War through 3055.  I don't want to bridge the gap between L1 and L2 tech.  We just played through all of that.  I really don't need to rehash it.  From a story perspective, I'd be cool playing through the Capellan unification war with St. Ives, the fight against the Clans to basically refuse their invasion and go to the Clan home worlds, though to my mind that would require either 1) keeping with the current campaign or 2) being a part of one of the established units that actually went.  I'd be fine with the FedCom civil war as well, though for both that and the CapCon reunification war if it's a core story, then either the unit canon or not should be appropriate or there should be time to establish a unit that would be pulled in to either.

[Hat]

Ok, a couple of campaign ideas if we end up moving on.

1. Republic Era, starting with the Blackout or shortly thereafter.  Play the Ranger incarnation then.
2. This one's more fleshed out as I was bouncing ideas around with Dan.  Start late Jihad or early Republic (late 70s, early 80s).  PCs are all elite Blakists, conducting operations at the tail end of the Jihad or on the run after it's official end.  In addition to each player having a Blakist PC, they'd also have a "Hunter" PC, again thinking Rangers in their post Jihad incarnation, could be something else.  The goal of at least the initial part of the campaign, or possibly all of it is to hunt down and KILL each of the Blakist PCs.  Players would not be forced to have a Blakist if they didn't want to.  If a Hunter PC is killed, generate a new Hunter PC.  Once your Blakist PC is dead, you're just playing the Hunters.  The idea being everyone plays a PC.  When we're down to a few Blakists, XP earned by people playing on the Blakist side can be allocated to their Hunter PC.  Both sides can claim salvage depending on the scenario, both sides have resources outside of that to replace units, etc. that are too damaged or destroyed.  Oh, and despite being Jihad related, no use of onboard nukes.

I don't have the time to GM a campaign currently, but thought I'd throw out a couple of suggestions for what to potentially do next as things have shifted a bit towards new campaign rather than being in balance.

[Black Omega]

Several good ideas there, Hat.  I too, voted in the middle.  There are times when I really hate computers and Rob losing his backups is one of those times.  I think picking up from the time we are now [maybe bump a couple of years] would work and I like the idea of a splinter of the Rangers but the blue scheme has to go.  I have also toyed with the idea of a Blake unit since I created that blue to grey Jihad variant paint scheme a few years ago. [I still have not finished painting all 6 mechs.]

[serrate]

So, I'm going to save my thoughts about a new campaign until we've decided that's the direction.

I'd like to hear more from Rob tbh. He's put the largest share of work into this awesome campaign, and he's the one who will be forced to spend a TON of hours repairing it if we carry on. Of course, there is also overhead in setting up a new campaign as well, which will still require an investment of hours.

So Rob, without feeling like your thoughts are the final decision, I'd still like to know what would make you the happiest? Is it restoring the current story or starting a new one? As the author of the campaign, that viewpoint matters to me.

[Ad Hoc]

I would prefer to continue in a campaign like the one we are currently doing. I really like our current campaign. But I don't have any problem switching to a new one, because I know I wouldn't want to spend 60 hrs reloading all the data. If we start another campaign I would probably like to skip a couple years in game years to a time a little more active. Don't want to go back in time. I also agree with Steve that I would like a different set of colors for the scheme of the minis. Maybe give guidelines of colors to use for base coat and highlights but allow each lance to decide the design. 

And like Bryan said I would like to know what Rob thinks because he does put in the most time to give us ours of fun.

[ItsTehPope]

Ok, a couple of campaign ideas if we end up moving on.

1. Republic Era, starting with the Blackout or shortly thereafter.  Play the Ranger incarnation then.
2. This one's more fleshed out as I was bouncing ideas around with Dan.  Start late Jihad or early Republic (late 70s, early 80s).  PCs are all elite Blakists, conducting operations at the tail end of the Jihad or on the run after it's official end.  In addition to each player having a Blakist PC, they'd also have a "Hunter" PC, again thinking Rangers in their post Jihad incarnation, could be something else.  The goal of at least the initial part of the campaign, or possibly all of it is to hunt down and KILL each of the Blakist PCs.  Players would not be forced to have a Blakist if they didn't want to.  If a Hunter PC is killed, generate a new Hunter PC.  Once your Blakist PC is dead, you're just playing the Hunters.  The idea being everyone plays a PC.  When we're down to a few Blakists, XP earned by people playing on the Blakist side can be allocated to their Hunter PC.  Both sides can claim salvage depending on the scenario, both sides have resources outside of that to replace units, etc. that are too damaged or destroyed.  Oh, and despite being Jihad related, no use of onboard nukes.

I don't have the time to GM a campaign currently, but thought I'd throw out a couple of suggestions for what to potentially do next as things have shifted a bit towards new campaign rather than being in balance.

This sounds like absolute madness.  I am in

[Darrian Wolffe]

OK, so here is what we are going to do.  This ruleset has generally worked and we're going to stick with it, which necessarily involves continuing to be mercenaries.  We will be starting a "new" campaign, with a starting date of 1 May, 3057.  The campaign will consist of a similar "co-op" lance setup, and the players will portray lance members attached to the newly-formed "2nd Regiment, Numenorean Rangers."

Effective immediately, all characters and lances are considered retired, with the following exceptions:
-Each lance may retain two RANDOMLY DETERMINED Techs, only one of which may be Veteran or Elite.  If neither Tech is at least at Veteran experience level, the highest-rated Randomly Determined Tech may be swapped for the Veteran Tech of your choice.
-Each lance may retain one RANDOMLY DETERMINED Doctor.
-Each lance may retain one RANDOMLY DETERMINED Wingman.  That Wingman may retain the Mech that they have usually piloted in the campaign up until this point.  Don't be an ass; I can see who tends to pilot which Mechs. 

Players will create a character and a new lance, with the above personnel being "reassigned" to the 2nd Regiment.  I will be working on a Version 5 of the rules that's going to clean up some of the character creation and XP advancement math; hopefully I'll have that posted prior to the Stanley Cup game tonight.  Once you guys have figured out a CO and statted that person up, I will also go through unit creation to figure out unit medics, admins, techs, and a war chest, and will try to get a DropShip and JumpShip.  If you receive a DropShip, the first one you get will be guaranteed to be the Celebrimbor, your redoubtable Dictator-class.

Important system changes will include:
-Reduced "free" skill points during character creation
-All PCs are guaranteed to be 3/4 coming out of character creation and a significant slowdown in base G/P skill improvement
-Starting wingmen will suck less
-Major Injuries are easier to get so we actually use them in play
-Rearranging SPAs in XP categories based on proven game utility, not what CGL published
-Addition of OPFOR MVP XP awards
-Lance personnel caps (only so many Techs/Docs/Wingmen)
-Adjusted XP math to bring characters in line with MW3e's intent
-Lance stables will be reduced to 6 Mechs and 2 "salvage slots" used solely for picking up salvage
-Lance warehouses will include a maximum tonnage
-Support units will be significantly reduced
-Each lance may support its own paint scheme, which may not be "bare metal" or "primer grey".

[Hat]

Rob: if a transferred pilot is worse from a P/G perspective than a brand new starting Wingman, can the player either 1) turn down the transfer or 2) have them upgraded to the minimum P//G for their weight class?  3 years will have passed in game, so there's ample reason for it.

[Darrian Wolffe]

Rob: if a transferred pilot is worse from a P/G perspective than a brand new starting Wingman, can the player either 1) turn down the transfer or 2) have them upgraded to the minimum P//G for their weight class?  3 years will have passed in game, so there's ample reason for it.

No, the transfer is the transfer.  If you chose to take the transfer roll, then you live with the result.