Officers
The Battletech rules discuss and allow for ‘officers’ of various types. These include officers such as Personnel, Administrative, Supply and the like. Combining some ideas our gaming group has had with Battletech, using these officers provides much of the ‘campaign’ flavor to the Fringe War campaign system. Every turn (barring travel turns), each officer can perform a task in his core function to assist the unit. For example, the Supply officer can requisition armor and spare weapons in advance of an assault mission, or the Personnel Officer can attempt to hire a mechwarrior, another officer, or a squad of infantry. High margins of success (MoS) will give bonuses to future rolls or reduce the cost of acquired goods.
For example, the Personnel Officer action consists of:
1) Start Task
2) Pay costs – some of the tasks officers can perform require a payment in credits. For example, to recruit a mechwarrior without a personal mech costs 30,000 credits to cover the expenses of HPG transmissions, advertising, interviews, etc.
3) Determine Target Roll – More challenging tasks require higher rolls.
4) Roll and determine result.
5) On a success, roll on the quality table to determine the rank of the hire.
6) On a success, add one experience point to the Officer. On a natural 12, add 2 experience points and at the GM’s discretion, another bonus is applied (such as an additional recruit available).
7) Promote if enough experience. Officers gain a rank (Green, Regular, Veteran, Elite) and decrease their target rolls similar to technicians.
An example: Silver Spear, a light mechwarrior company is looking to hire an additional pilot for a Jenner it took as salvage in the last mission. They have a Veteran recruitment officer (Target roll of 5), mostly due to the high number of replacement pilots they go through. They are offering a 100,000 credit signing bonus (-1), they have an empty mech for the pilot to use (-1), and their Dragoon rating is C. (0 effect) However, the unit is on the Periphery (+1), and they are doing Garrison duty on an essentially uninhabited mining planet (population under 100,000), which is another +1. Their total roll would need to be a 5 or greater to succeed in locating an appropriate mechwarrior for hire.
Once a candidate is found, a roll is made on the quality table to determine the rank of the unit. The Silver Spear Personnel Officer rolls a 9. With his bonus to Quality roll of +2, he has found a Regular rank mechwarrior.
Each officer has a particular set of modifiers to their rolls, though they all have the same target numbers based on the rank of the officer. Recruiters may also spend 1 experience to add a +1 modifier to any roll, up to a maximum of +5.
Green – 6
Regular – 5
Veteran – 4
Elite – 3
Questions, comments and suggestions welcome. Future posts will cover each officers’ potential actions and modifiers.