High Guard Update 2022 - Coming July 29th!

[adzling]

IMO when it comes to collecting and publishing game errata, Catalyst Game Labs and Battletech are the gold standard benchmark.

Players on those forums regularly identify incorrect information and post on a rules question sub-forum. Mods answer those questions or decide errata is warranted. All errata is posted in the specific product errata sub-forum, and then routinely collected, compiled, and published for the player base. When CGL decides to do a new physical printing, they incorporate the latest errata for the new printing.

For example, I purchased the physical + PDF combo of Battletech Alpha Strike Commander's Edition, which at the time was the corrected second printing. Since that purchase back in 2019, I've automatically received the PDFs for ASCE's third and latest corrected fourth printing.

I'm sure there may be more details that I'm not aware of, but as a game consumer the end result is impressive.

Edit: In all fairness this is a bit like compairing apples to oranges, as Traveller and BT are two different types of tabletop gaming experiences with unique histories. But the point I'm attempting to make how errata can be collected and released.

Haha you should see how horrific Catalyst is with their Shadowrun IP.
It's like chalk and cheese compared to their management of the Battletech IP.
Couldn't be more different from a quality perspective.
It has been so bad for so long with Shadowrun that it's now just a running joke about how incompetent Cataylst is, many have left the game entirely because of their serial shittiness with the IP.

 

[Tupper]

I had a look at the spinal mount rules last night. There is something a wee bit odd there, possibly some old wording that needs to be excised, but I'm not sure.

p35-36 [MAJOR] both particle accelerator and railgun spinal mounts have a description of how armour affects their damage (3% reduction per level for particle accelerator, and 2% for railgun). However, mass driver spinal mounts have no such description. The table on page 35 lists an AP value for both mass drivers and railguns.

The "Damage Multiples" box on page 29 describes a straightforward calculation for damage for spinal mounts:

(Rolled_damage - [Armour-AP])*1000,

whereas the description for particle accelerator seems to be suggesting:

Rolled_damage * (1 - Armour*0.03) * 1000,

and the railgun description sounds like

Rolled_damage *(1 - [Armour-AP]*0.02) * 1000.

If it's supposed to be the multiplicative case, then I think the spinal mass driver needs a percentage reduction in its blurb. Alternatively, if it's supposed to be the page 29 version, I suggest that the sentences about percentage reductions in damage be removed from the railgun/PA descriptions.

p238- It would be nice to follow the convention suggested in the spinal mount section and note the multiplier for the spinal mounts. Because different TLs have different sizes (and Particle accelerators are different sizes to Meson guns), it's not always the case that dividing tonnage by 6,000 gives the right answer.

 

[paltrysum]

I think this is a very good update to High Guard; however, I concur with people who would like to see typos hunted out before it goes to print. Here are a few gotchas from the fleet combat chapters. I've categorised them as [MAJOR] if they need to be fixed for the rules to make sense. The others are more typographical in nature.

Great stuff, Tupper. Thank you for posting your comments. For the most part, I've incorporated them into a list of updates. Here are a few comments for clarification where needed.

p118 [MAJOR], since armour and damage for weapons are both scaled down by 3.5, I would expect the attack effectiveness damage multiples to be much higher. 100% accuracy would (IMHO) give a damage multiple of 3.5, so the best this table can produce is less than half of weapons hitting (1.5 damage multiple). Maybe I'm missing something, but these numbers feel very off.

The problem is the Hull Points, which also need to be divided by 3.5 to get everything on the same scale. I had it written this way in the Hull Points section on p. 111 and inexplicably removed the rule. I have added it back in, which I believe fixes the scale here and also fixes the problem with spinal mount damage that you identified.

p121 [MAJOR] why does radiation reduce turrets, point defence, and EW? That doesn't happen at all in ship combat.

It doesn't, but there is a precedent: see Radiation Damage on p. 13 of the original High Guard and p. 14 of this book. Some abstraction is needed to keep fleet combat from slowing to a crawl every time a radiation event occurs.

p121 [MAJOR] "Each round, a ship's crew can repair a number of systems affected by Critical Hits equal to its Crew Skill score multiplied by five, subtracting the severity number of the Critical Hit". It's unclear what this means. I think it should mean that each critical hit repaired requires a number of 'points' equal to its severity level, and the ship has a number of 'points' equal to crew skill * 5.

Well, I knew what I meant when I wrote that, but it is horribly confusing, isn't it? I've fixed it up for the revision, more or less as you've described.

 

[Tupper]

Thanks for the clarifications @paltrysum !

One other thing I was curious about was the critical table for fleet combat. I saw you made Hull criticals do percentages of damage there. That’s not mentioned on p27 (critical hits for large ships). Personally, I think it’s a great idea for large ships, so I’m surprised you didn’t add it on p27.

 

[Weiland]

Thank you Mongoose for a great book!

I have started reading it and found some small things related to Task Chains:

p 57 "The use of Forced Linkage requires a task chain. [...] After the pilot of the attacking ship has won an opposed check, a gunner fires the grappling device: Average (8+) Gunner (turret) check (DEX), adding the Effect of the opposed pilot check." In the Core Rulebook Update 2022 p 63 Task Chains are explained and the dice modifier of the second roll in a task chain is not the Effect directly but the DM that comes from the Task Chain table. Or is this an exception?

p 87 Same thing basically. "Convince port authority agents that the illegal goods the ship is carrying are legal and there is no need to examine them further: Very Difficult (12+) Admin or Advocate check (1D minutes, SOC). [...] This task can be proceeded by a Difficult (10+) Advocate check (2D hours, EDU) in a task chain in order to cite or fabricate legal precedents that might reduce fines or jail sentences. Apply the Effect to the Admin check." First it is not the Effect but the DM as per above. Also, I guess this could be a task chain with Advocate to fabricate legal precedents and then Advocate (or Admin) to convince the port authority agents.

p 122 Same thing again. "Dispersing and Reassembling a Fleet [...] Dispersing the fleet is a complex action that requires multiple ships to break formation and reform into smaller tactical groups. Doing so requires a task chain. First make an Average (8+) Leadership check and then a subsequent Difficult (10+) Tactics (naval) check, adding the Effect of the Leadership check." The dice modifier from the Task Chain table should be used.

Personally I think Task Chains would have been easier to use if the Effect of the first roll was just used as in the three examples above and maybe I will house rule that but in the book it should probably reflect the official rules.

Opposed checks also have some minor inconsistency. For all but one no difficulty is mentioned:

p 34, 57, 128 (twice) no difficulty mentioned for the opposed checks
p 87 "Make sure the speculative cargo goods the purser bought are of the expected quality. Opposed: Difficult (10+) Admin or Broker check (INT) versus a Difficult (10+) Deception check (INT)." I would remove the difficulty of this one for consistency.

 

[kevinknight]

P. 36 Missile Price
The chart says Cost Per Missile, but the wording in the paragraph above says cost listed is per 12 missiles.
I'm assuming that it is cost per 12, otherwise a fully loaded missile turret would have 3MCr worth of standard missiles in it...

P. 39 Torpedo Price
The chart also says Cost Per Torpedo without any confusion in the text. However, if that is the case (and not per 3 torpedoes), that makes the cost of torpedoes exorbitant.

 

[Condottiere]

Theoretically, it's supposed to be by default tonne (of munitions).

 

[paltrysum]

I will be sending a final collection of feedback to Mongoose on Wednesday (12pm Pacific time). Thank you for all you've given us so far.

 

[Surge]

Final collection?

That's really not long enough, and in my opinion does not equate to "plenty of time" to catch the huge number of errors people are finding. Why the rush?

 

[Sigtrygg]

Agreed, take more time before printing another error filled £100 book.

 

[kevinknight]

Military Countermeasures

Noticed that the wording on this has changed from:
The military countermeasures suite grants DM+6 to all attempts at jamming and electronic warfare, regardless of the usual DM the sensor suite it is attached to.

to:
The military countermeasures suite grants DM+6 for all jamming and electronic warfare attempts, in addition to the DM of the sensor suite.

Since regular countermeasures retained the original wording (+4 regardless) this would actually make regular countermeasures better than military countermeasures when coupled with Basic sensors (net +2 with military as opposed to the flat +4 from regular).

just wanted to verify this. Thanks.

 

[Arkathan]

Why would you buy a military countermeasure and not spring for a military sensor suite?
And why would you expect an emergency backup basic suite to perform as well as the original?
For my money, the military countermeasures are worded correctly, and the regular countermeasures should be reworded to conform with the new wording.

 

[Arkathan]

I will be sending a final collection of feedback to Mongoose on Wednesday (12pm Pacific time). Thank you for all you've given us so far.

I didn't see this anywhere else...
pg 196
Type P Corsair
10 standard staterooms stuffed into 16 dTons of volume... what a bargain.

 

[Condottiere]

As if High Passage passengers weren't getting robbed enough.

 

[Tupper]

P239, Valiant Hull points should be 16500, by my arithmetic (not 528).

 

[kevinknight]

Why would you buy a military countermeasure and not spring for a military sensor suite?
And why would you expect an emergency backup basic suite to perform as well as the original?
For my money, the military countermeasures are worded correctly, and the regular countermeasures should be reworded to conform with the new wording.

Not saying you would, unless you were a particularly brain dead ship designer.

Because if you have regular countermeasures, it would, which is my point.

They definitely should be consistent, which is why I asked for clarification.

 

[Arkathan]

Not saying you would, unless you were a particularly brain dead ship designer.

Because if you have regular countermeasures, it would, which is my point.

They definitely should be consistent, which is why I asked for clarification.

No doubt. Just interjecting my opinion about the direction logic would take the correction.

 

[Weiland]

p. 117 Showing cumulative thrust and cumulative reverse thrust. In the diagram we have 3 rounds of forward thrust cancelled by 4 rounds of reverse thrust. To come to a full stop you would only have to apply reverse thrust for the same number of rounds as you applied forward thrust in order to come to a full stop. That is just basic physics.

A more realistic diagram would be:
Round 1, forward thrust 6, movement 3 (average of start movement 0 and end movement 6)
Round 2, forward thrust 6, movement 9 (average of start movement 6 and end movement 12)
Round 3, forward thrust 6, movement 15 (average of start movement 12 and end movement 18)
Round 4, reverse thrust 6, movement 15 (average of start movement 18 and end movement 12)
Round 5, reverse thrust 6, movement 9 (average of start movement 12 and end movement 6)
Round 6, reverse thrust 6, movement 3 (average of start movement 6 and end movement 0)
Assuming a maneuver drive creates linear acceleration.

If we want to make it even easier for gaming reasons, so that a thrust 6 round leads to 6 movement in the same round, I would suggest this diagram instead:
Round 1, forward thrust 6, movement 6
Round 2, forward thrust 6, movement 12
Round 3, forward thrust 6, movement 18
Round 4, reverse thrust 6, movement 18
Round 5, reverse thrust 6, movement 12
Round 6, reverse thrust 6, movement 6 (at the end of round 6 the forward and reverse thrust have cancelled out and the ship is free to move in any new direction)
Not completely logical but a fair bit closer than the one in the book in my opinion.

 

[Arkathan]

I will be sending a final collection of feedback to Mongoose on Wednesday (12pm Pacific time). Thank you for all you've given us so far.

Sorry to be late. Found another.
p 82
Small Bay: Plasm-pulse Cannon - Cost: MCr 15
Medium Bay: Plasma-pulse Cannon - Cost: MCr 15 (Old HG was MCr 30)

 

[Sigtrygg]

Hold the presses for goodness sake...