A Few Notes Along the Way...

I was discussing something with the AI while working on Mission Profiles; namely, my absolute shame over having used artillery in a game of Batteltech between friends some 20 years ago.  I am still ashamed of this, and Chris Snider, wherever you are, please forgive me.

We won.  We send out Savannah Masters equipped with turret-mounted TAG and started dropping rounds on their heads.  It was overwhelming, they didn't stand a chance.  They weren't happy and we never played like that again.

Today I mentioned that event while trying to figure out why I don't play certain cards in Magic: the Gathering.  It's not just power level or cost - it's something to do with what the card does.

I wrote:

'To quote you, "the win condition isn’t just on the board, it’s in the willingness of others to play again." It seems to me that is 180 degrees out of phase from real war, where the goal is to decide the issue so completely that neither side has to go to war again. But the game gives you the ability, in the game, of playing at war with tools that, if used correctly, will end the game as an enjoyable pastime. So while artillery IS provided in BT, it runs counter to anything but a one-off game.

The AI responded:

That’s a clean articulation of the divide. War’s objective is finality. The “best” outcome is  so decisive that the conflict doesn’t recur. Tools like artillery, saturation bombardment, or scorched‑earth tactics are valid because they serve that end.

• Games’ objective is continuity. They’re designed to be repeatable, to invite the same people back to the table. The “best” outcome isn’t just victory, it’s victory within a framework that survives to be played again.

That’s why artillery in BattleTech feels like a doctrinal mismatch. It’s there in the rules because the designers wanted to reflect the full spectrum of warfare, but in practice it’s a simulation breaker:

• It collapses maneuver into inevitability.

• It strips agency from the other side.

• It transforms a repeatable pastime into a one‑off demonstration.

Your stance is consistent: you’re not rejecting artillery because it’s “unfair” in a military sense—you’re rejecting it because it undermines the game as a social construct. It’s the same logic that keeps you from running hard locks in Commander. The tools exist, but using them indiscriminately collapses the illusion of fair play.

In short: war seeks to end itself, games seek to sustain themselves. That’s why the same tool—artillery or Contamination - can be doctrinally correct in one context and corrosive in the other.

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So after 20 years, I am able to put into words my revulsion at ever using artillery in BT again.  And my desire to avoid cards in the game of Magic that prevent my opponents from doing anything.  If only I had figured this out 20 years ago....

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve

 More Progress on the Update: 3068!!

It's been a couple of months since the last post here, so here's what we have been doing.

We have six new pieces of art.

We have finished all 41 of the Update entries.

We have assembled a master organizational page outlining the page count, to include all art, chapters, entries and the headers, including the Table of Contents and the Index.  There are the Front and Back covers, as well as two new things I am adding to this Update, which I think will bring added value to the book overall.

                                                                       Champion IIa

These new things?  Mission Profiles for each entry.  These will give a brief outline of the machine, a list of its strengths and weaknesses and ideal applications for its use on the battlefield.  In case anyone is confused by terms like 'defilade', there will be a Definitions section at the end of the book.

                                                                    Mercenary Dragon

And finally, a shocking announcement.  

 I am 65 and am still willing to try new things.  Since May, I have been working with an AI to perform certain writing chores.  It is definitely an education.  Far from just typing in a few words and letting some machine create the rest, I have been submitting our own rough drafts and polishing them with the help of the AI.  If I want to accentuate the active voice, or any number of other things I find lacking in my writing, I carefully prep the AI with parameters and it does in a twinkling what would take me hours to perform.

It's not all smooth sailing.  The AI is subject to a lot of things; hallucination (where it makes things up), drift (where it strays from technical writing and into narrative) and any number of little niggling errors. It doesn't actually know the rules of the game!   I have to maintain strict editorial control, reading everything it produces and checking for balance, word use and tone.  So the parts that take me a long time to do, get done faster, but the parts I am good at, well... I still do them.  

The art is still exclusively done by people, though.  AI is good for spitballing, coming up with different looks, but you cannot correct or adjust the images they produce.  

I think of AI as I would a good word processor back in the 1980s.  Good for a lot of things, but you still have to work at it.  

Thanks for stopping by!

Steve