Hello!
Last entry, I noted the slow (read: nonexistent) progress of the German translation of this fan-made Technical Readout.
I have since begun to speak in $$$ and things are changing.
My translator, who does such work for a living, has agreed to a sum I can *almost* manage.
In return, we have a full translation by the end of January.
I am going to put up a PayPal button and see what sort of interest is out there for a good translation of this book into Deutsche
Donate if you want to see it happen. I have about a month to decide if there's going to be demand for it. If there is, I will commit. I need to gather at least US $850 - half the cost - before I can proceed.
Thank you!
Steve Satak
Wednesday, November 04, 2015
Saturday, September 26, 2015
An update on the various TRO:3063-related Projects....
Hello, everyone.
It's been nine months since my last post. My apologies for the silence.
- The German translation has bogged down, with the translator having other things to do in the Real World. I am not sure when he will be able to work on it again... we may never see a German translation of the book, but that's life. It was a great idea and started out very promising. But it's 350+ pages and there's only one guy doing the work. I will keep you updated if things change.
- The 3063 Upgrade had funding at one point, but prices have gone up and keeping my son in college takes priority. The folks who were to assist me in providing new machines had other projects in the works, and I was busy this summer with several non-BT projects of my own. I did get a lot of work done on weeding out bad ideas, 'improvements' that were not really worth the effort, and the like through various reviews of the TRO found online. The denizens of 4Chan seemed more concerned with factionalism, 'realism', flippancy and the like, so I have abandoned that venue as a source of input.
The Upgrade is NOT abandoned, but merely on the back burner for now; as soon as I clear the decks (November), I will begin working on the list of machines that will appear. I am currently entertaining about 12 Mechs and 20 Vees, all to be Inner Sphere technology and placed in the year 3069. I plan to have the writing and so forth finished by Spring of 2016, in time for the art to be laid down.
- The Infantry Primer remains on hiatus, as I wait for the shuffling over at CGL to die down. It has been nearly three years and with IO Beta, things appear to still be in flux. Jon Morford has, in the last year, greatly impressed me with the potential for Vees and infantry in combat. He has handed me my ass in at least two games - I doff my hat at these opportunities to improve my game!
There is a lot to be done with the 'squishies' on a BT battlefield, as they are far more effective now than they ever were in my mind. My only complaint has been, and remains, that the rules for bombing, running infantry and so on are scattered across several books. I want infantry and vees to be at least as easy to assess, assemble and play as Mechs. Combined arms deployment should not have such a steep learning curve! So in the next few months, I will confer with Jon and others and see if the scene has stabilized enough to get the ball rolling again.
- My son is going off to France for school in a few days. Wish him luck! He will be over there for four months and we will miss him terribly. This will be the first Christmas he has not been home in twenty years.
- Bad Syntax is hard at work on a new BT unit generator, and by that, I mean something that uses the new rules to create just about any unit you care to have. In his own words...
"This program will be an all-encompassing battletech support utility. But mostly it'll be a build-everything production, you can build everything in the game with it. This includes things never supported before like buildings, mobile structure, support vehicles, and infantry platoons. However, I'll have lots of other stuff implemented in there too like random tables, star maps, system generators, and whatever else I can think of.
It would be nice to get something stable like HMP that can be easily modified for new units in the coming years.
Thank you for stopping by.
Regards,
Steve
It's been nine months since my last post. My apologies for the silence.
- The German translation has bogged down, with the translator having other things to do in the Real World. I am not sure when he will be able to work on it again... we may never see a German translation of the book, but that's life. It was a great idea and started out very promising. But it's 350+ pages and there's only one guy doing the work. I will keep you updated if things change.
- The 3063 Upgrade had funding at one point, but prices have gone up and keeping my son in college takes priority. The folks who were to assist me in providing new machines had other projects in the works, and I was busy this summer with several non-BT projects of my own. I did get a lot of work done on weeding out bad ideas, 'improvements' that were not really worth the effort, and the like through various reviews of the TRO found online. The denizens of 4Chan seemed more concerned with factionalism, 'realism', flippancy and the like, so I have abandoned that venue as a source of input.
The Upgrade is NOT abandoned, but merely on the back burner for now; as soon as I clear the decks (November), I will begin working on the list of machines that will appear. I am currently entertaining about 12 Mechs and 20 Vees, all to be Inner Sphere technology and placed in the year 3069. I plan to have the writing and so forth finished by Spring of 2016, in time for the art to be laid down.
- The Infantry Primer remains on hiatus, as I wait for the shuffling over at CGL to die down. It has been nearly three years and with IO Beta, things appear to still be in flux. Jon Morford has, in the last year, greatly impressed me with the potential for Vees and infantry in combat. He has handed me my ass in at least two games - I doff my hat at these opportunities to improve my game!
There is a lot to be done with the 'squishies' on a BT battlefield, as they are far more effective now than they ever were in my mind. My only complaint has been, and remains, that the rules for bombing, running infantry and so on are scattered across several books. I want infantry and vees to be at least as easy to assess, assemble and play as Mechs. Combined arms deployment should not have such a steep learning curve! So in the next few months, I will confer with Jon and others and see if the scene has stabilized enough to get the ball rolling again.
- My son is going off to France for school in a few days. Wish him luck! He will be over there for four months and we will miss him terribly. This will be the first Christmas he has not been home in twenty years.
- Bad Syntax is hard at work on a new BT unit generator, and by that, I mean something that uses the new rules to create just about any unit you care to have. In his own words...
"This program will be an all-encompassing battletech support utility. But mostly it'll be a build-everything production, you can build everything in the game with it. This includes things never supported before like buildings, mobile structure, support vehicles, and infantry platoons. However, I'll have lots of other stuff implemented in there too like random tables, star maps, system generators, and whatever else I can think of.
It would be nice to get something stable like HMP that can be easily modified for new units in the coming years.
Thank you for stopping by.
Regards,
Steve
Saturday, January 10, 2015
Some Proposed Upgrades for 3069...
Welcome back.
I have been waiting on the next installment of German translations. And Bad Syntax is busy with other things and cannot work on Alpha Strike cards for the 3063.
But there is my proposed Upgrades: 3063.
We always wanted those HPPCs and so on. And we always knew, despite the cries of 'MUNCHKIN! OVER-OPTIMIZED!', there were machines that were not all they could be. Much of this was due to a priority chain that was supposed to prevent min-maxing... the focus was on price and the minimum technology required to get what we wanted from a given design. So the machines were cheap, but yeah, a lot of them could be better. And let's face it.
We originally present a machine of payload 'X' that costs 'Y' C-bills and is worth 'Z' Battle Value. Then, later, we present an upgraded version that can carry '2X', costs nearly '3Y' but whose Battle Value is only '1.2Z'. Do you build your battleforce based on C-Bill cost? Or do you use BV2? Would you rather pay '2Z' to transport your troops, or '1.2Z'?
That's what *I* thought. Thus, Upgrades: 3063.
Better costs money. How good do you want to be?
Getting the Ball Rolling...
So I keep busy by going through reviews of the fan-TRO I found on 4Chan. I could only find a short review of vehicles - apparently a fellow with the screen name of Munnin did a more thorough review, but I cannot seem to find it.
Acting on the writer's comments, I have come up with a list of machines that can be improved. Mind you, this is just the start - I have the rest of the Vee review to go through, and it doesn't even touch on 'Mechs or Aerospace. I am already looking at the amount of machines that need 'upgrade' and am taken aback.
It appears that the Upgrade is going to be something huge, at least in the number of machines inside. This does not even take into account the new machines I wished to include - such as a variant on the Grand Dragon. It looks like I am going to have to keep the writeups brief, maybe 350 words at most.
I had planned on new art for at least 50% for these Upgrade entries. We'll have to see; after the dust settles, I will check the budget and see what we can afford.
Meanwhile, we have to start walking before we can run!
I have been waiting on the next installment of German translations. And Bad Syntax is busy with other things and cannot work on Alpha Strike cards for the 3063.
But there is my proposed Upgrades: 3063.
We always wanted those HPPCs and so on. And we always knew, despite the cries of 'MUNCHKIN! OVER-OPTIMIZED!', there were machines that were not all they could be. Much of this was due to a priority chain that was supposed to prevent min-maxing... the focus was on price and the minimum technology required to get what we wanted from a given design. So the machines were cheap, but yeah, a lot of them could be better. And let's face it.
We originally present a machine of payload 'X' that costs 'Y' C-bills and is worth 'Z' Battle Value. Then, later, we present an upgraded version that can carry '2X', costs nearly '3Y' but whose Battle Value is only '1.2Z'. Do you build your battleforce based on C-Bill cost? Or do you use BV2? Would you rather pay '2Z' to transport your troops, or '1.2Z'?
That's what *I* thought. Thus, Upgrades: 3063.
Better costs money. How good do you want to be?
Getting the Ball Rolling...
So I keep busy by going through reviews of the fan-TRO I found on 4Chan. I could only find a short review of vehicles - apparently a fellow with the screen name of Munnin did a more thorough review, but I cannot seem to find it.
Acting on the writer's comments, I have come up with a list of machines that can be improved. Mind you, this is just the start - I have the rest of the Vee review to go through, and it doesn't even touch on 'Mechs or Aerospace. I am already looking at the amount of machines that need 'upgrade' and am taken aback.
It appears that the Upgrade is going to be something huge, at least in the number of machines inside. This does not even take into account the new machines I wished to include - such as a variant on the Grand Dragon. It looks like I am going to have to keep the writeups brief, maybe 350 words at most.
I had planned on new art for at least 50% for these Upgrade entries. We'll have to see; after the dust settles, I will check the budget and see what we can afford.
Meanwhile, we have to start walking before we can run!
Proposed Vehicle Upgrades
I have also put out an appeal on 4Chan to submit reviews of the 3063 contents. However, that place is more transitory than I expected. I may have to address individuals rather than what appears to be a very nebulous group to get the results I need.
That's all for now. Thanks for stopping by.
Regards,
Steve
Thursday, January 01, 2015
Übersetzung hat begonnen! [Translation has Begun!]
Hey! Welcome back!
Glad to see you here. The holidays being what they were, we got only about four or five pages done. Andre has his life and a job performing (what else?) translations of entire books, so we're kind of feeling our way along here.
Our editing team of Thomas Lagemann and Nadja from Germany have been busy too, but they took a look at what I produced and offered only minor changes.
Most of my trouble comes from having forgotten how to make InDesign 3.0 do the wonderful things it did for me back in late 2012. I have to relearn it, with my Dummies book in one hand.
Here is a sample of one of the early pages...
Looks like the Draconis Combine will be ready to install around mid-January, as we all recover from the holidays and welcome the New Year! Happy 2015, everyone!
Thank you for stopping by.
Steve
Glad to see you here. The holidays being what they were, we got only about four or five pages done. Andre has his life and a job performing (what else?) translations of entire books, so we're kind of feeling our way along here.
Our editing team of Thomas Lagemann and Nadja from Germany have been busy too, but they took a look at what I produced and offered only minor changes.
Most of my trouble comes from having forgotten how to make InDesign 3.0 do the wonderful things it did for me back in late 2012. I have to relearn it, with my Dummies book in one hand.
Here is a sample of one of the early pages...
Looks like the Draconis Combine will be ready to install around mid-January, as we all recover from the holidays and welcome the New Year! Happy 2015, everyone!
Thank you for stopping by.
Steve
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