The point of this document is to document and explain the features of AtB play via

MekHQ. ///first draft August,

13. 2016, last edit 19/8/2016

Table of contents
- 1 What is AtB?
- 2 Getting started
- 3 Detailed explanation of the campaign options
- 4 What to do if you think AtB should be a bit easier
- 5 What to do if you think AtB is not challenging enough
- 6 FAQ

1. What is AtB?

AtB stands for Against the Bot which is a set of rules designed to allow players to
experience a BattleTech campaign while playing against the computer (Bot) without
the input from other players. Most of these rules are implemented in MekHQ. The
focus of the system is to play as a mercenary company but as the player is also the
GM a wide variety of campaigns is possible. For more information about MegaMek,
MekHQ and MegaMekLab please visit megamek.org or the MegaMek games subforum on
bg.battletech.com.

2. Getting started

In order to play Against the Bot you only need MekHQ but I recommend to also
download a copy of the underlying rules which can be found at the MegaMek Games
part of the bg.battletech.com forum.
///link to latest mekhq release and latest rules thread here, maybe also Xotl RATs?
After downloading and unzipping the files the next step is to open the MekHQ.exe or
.jar and select "Start A New Campaign". MekHQ will ask you then to select a start
date.
With the start date selected MekHQ offers several option presets, select "Simple
Preset" ///or AtB in the future?///, now the campaign options dialogue opens and
allows for more adjustments.

In this chapter only the basic options are set, see chapter 3 for more details.
"General" Tab
Name: the name of your campaign, e.g. John's Heavy Cavalry.
Faction: the faction the player is working for, select "Mercenary" for AtB play.
enable "Use Unit Rating" and select "FM:Mercenaries (rev)"

"Repair and Acquisition" Tab

enable "Use Quirks"
set "Waiting period (in days) between acquisition rolls" to 1 day.
select "Administration" as "Acquisition Skill"
enable "Only support personnel can make acquisition checks"
set "Penalty for Clan Equipment" to 2
set "Penalty for Inner Sphere equipment" to 0
set "Maximum Acquisition Per Day" to 2
set "Delivery Time" to 2d6 + 0 days
set "Minimum Transit Time" to 1 day
set "Reduce Delivery time by" to 1 day per MoS

"Tech Limits" Tab

leave as is

"Personnel" Tab
enable "Use Tactics Skill"
enable "Use Individual initiative Bonus"
enable *Allow Special Abilities*

"Finances" Tab
deselect everything for the initial company creation, except "Limit loan parameters
by unit rating"

"Mercenary" Tab
click "Base contract payment on percentage of TO&E unit value (IntOps Beta)"
leave it at 5% and enable "Base on equipment sale value"
enable "Base battle loss compensation on equipment sale value"

"Experience" Tab
set 1 XP for each completed scenario
set 1 XP for every kill
set 1 XP for every 25 successful tasks
set 1 XP for every active month on a 2d6 roll of greater of equal to 10
set 2 XP for the selected negotiator for a new contract

"Personnel Market" Tab

select "Against the Bot" as market type

"Against the Bot" Tab

enable "Use Against the Bot campaign rules"
select desired Skill level
click the "Set AtB costs for skills" and "Set AtB costs for speical abilities"
buttons
enable "Do retirement/defection rolls at contract completion"
enable "Customize retirement rolls"
enable "Use leadership skill"
enable "Use vehicles"
enable "Display a report when contract market refreshes"
enable "Display a report when unit market refreshes"
enable "Merc Company size limits"
enable "Limit lance deployment by weight"
enable "Limit lance deployment by size"
enable "Use commander strategy"
set "Base number of lances" to 3
set "Per rank of strategy" to 1
finally make sure Chosen RATs cover the selected time period.

All other options are optional depending on desired difficulty and personal
preferences.

Now select your desired MegaMek options via File -> MegaMek options, keep in mind
that the Bot does not support all optional rules, see the Princess documentation
for further information.

At this stage it is helpful to save the campaign via File -> Save Campaign as a
fall-back and template for the future.

With the options done it is time to actually create the mechs and personnel you are
going to use at the start of the campaign. The rules for this process are explained
in detail in the above mentioned rules file in the section "Company_Creation".
First of all enable "GM Mode".
For a quick-start hire 12 mechwarriors, 10 techs, 1 doctor and 1 admin via
Marketplace -> Hire or Marketplace -> Hire Personnel in Bulk.
The first hired mechwarrior is the force commanding officer and gets a +1 bonus to
gunnery and piloting skills as well as two random points in Tactics, Strategy or
Leadership. Use GM Edit to adjust values by going to the Personnel Tab and right-
click -> GM Mode -> Edit on the person to be adjusted. The second to fourth
mechwarriors hired are your officers and receive a +1 bonus to gunnery or piloting
as well as one random point in Tactics, Strategy or Leadership. All veteran skilled
pilots get a single random SPA, all elite pilots get two per the AtB rules.
Mechs can be generated in several ways (or not at all) although I recommend to use
the system detailed in the rules file under Company_Creation for the first time. If
this file is not available a roll on the Chosen Rat can be an alternative. To add a
mech Marketplace -> Purchase Unit, select Unit Type "Mech" and the desired weight
class finish by using the "Add (GM)" button.

Before accepting a contract it is necessary to fill out the TO&E, in order to do so

mechwarriors need to be assigned to their rides, in the Personnel tab right-click
on the pilot -> assign to unit -> select desired unit. As soon as all available
mechs are assigned to a pilot you must sort them into lances in the TO&E tab. By
right-clicking on the "My Campaign" force icon new forces can be added. A 12 mech
company usually consists of three lances with four mechs each, every lance must be
commanded by an officer. There are certain size and weight limits to lances see the
rules file for more information.
The unit is now established yet there is more preparation to be done. I recommend
to use "Add Funds (GM)" under the Finance tab to add some starting capital, 5%-20%
of your starting net worth is reasonable. Before the cash can be spend the options
turned off during creation must be turned on again.

File -> Campaign Options

"Finance" Tab
enable everything except "Use percentage based maintenance costs (Unofficial" and
"Infantry Don't Count for Contract Pay".

The last step before going on a mission is to buy a cache of ammunition and spare
parts, Marketplace -> Purchase Parts, with the starting capital. I suggest some
weapons, actuators and lots of ammunition and armour. If you run out of money at
any time new funds can be made available by taking out a loan. The principal is
restricted by your assets and rating in the AtB rules. Go to the Finance tab and
use the "Get Loan" button to take out a loan.

Finally it is time to select the first contract, Marketplace -> Contract Market
will bring up the contract market window which displays a few current offers at the
start of the campaign. The offers are refreshed every month at the first of the
month. For the first contract I strongly recommend a mission type of Cadre Duty,
Garrison or Pirate Hunt; Guerilla Warfare or Planetary Invasion are almost certain
to end very baldy. If no reasonable contract is available it is possible to
generate new ones until an acceptable offer is made by using the "Generate (GM)"
button in the contract window.
The most important details of a contract are the location, enemy, monthly payout
and salvage percentage. Too strong an enemy will put the survival of the company in
jeopardy while insufficient payment and salvage percentages will collapse it
financially. The location should be within a reasonable distance from your starting
location, check the "Days (Jumps) to Location" entry on the contract offer to be
certain.
When a contract is a accepted it will show up in Briefing Room tab. Before MekHQ
generates any scenarios it is necessary to transport to the contract location. Go
to Interstellar Map and type your location into the "Find Planet" box, press enter
and MekHQ will focus the space map on the planet. Now use the "Calculate Jump Path"
button to plot a course to your target. Take a quick look at the summary on the
right hand side of the Interstellar Map tab after plotting the course then press
"Begin Transit" to lift off. You do not need to own any DropShips or Jumpships, the
transport costs represent buying passage to your destination. The transit is likely
to take several weeks or even months use the Manage Campaign -> Advance Multiple
Days feature to speed it up.
Once you are at the contract location your lances must be assigned to their duties.
Go to the Briefing Room tab and take a look at the "Deployment Requirements" for
your mission. Below in "Current Assignments" every lance can be assigned a duty
which will influence the type of battle and opposition it will face. Make sure to
at least assign your contract requirements and advance the time until a battle is
generated. At the date of battle select the battle in the Briefing Room tab and
press the "Start Game" button. MekHQ will now transfer the required data to MegaMek
and you can begin your first fight against the bot.

Enjoy and good luck.

///chapters below only a rough draft

3. Campaign Options in detail

This chapter will deal in detail with campaign options insofar as they concern AtB
play.

"General" Tab
The General tab is pretty straight forward and already explained in chapter 2. If
you click on the "Camo" image it is possible to select a different camouflage
pattern either from the stock images bundled with MekHQ or a custom image. Remember
to transfer any custom images to the new version when migrating your campaign to a
later build.

"Repair and Acquisition" Tab

While acquisition and delivery options are set in the rules the maintenance part is
entirely optional. Turning maintenance on will force a parts based maintenance
check on all your units. "Maintenance cycle length in days" sets the frequency
while the "Maintenance modifier" is a simple modifier for each roll. The TN for a
maintenance roll is also influenced by the repair location of the unit and the
skill level of the assigned tech.
The AtB rules recommend the following options when using the optional maintenance
rules:
disable "Use Era mods for repair rolls"
enable "Make maintenance checks"
set "Maintenance cycle length in days" to 30
set "Maintenance modifier" to 0
disable "Use quality modifiers in maintenance checks"
enable "Only damage parts that are already at worst quality"
If you find that these options produce unreasonable results the maintenance
modifier is the best tool for adjustments.

"Tech Limits" Tab

In this tab it is possible to limit or expand the scope of the campaign.
"Limit Units and Parts by Year" and "Disallow extinct units and parts" make sure
that only equipment is available that should be there based on BattleTech lore.
Every campaign is different and if you want to use Star League Era equipment during
the 30th century disabling these options would allow you to do so.
"Only allow canon units for purchase" is a good way to make sure that custom units
or fan made variants included in MekHQ will not be present in the unit market
during your campaign.

"Personnel" Tab
The options in this tab are mainly used to enable a wider range of individualism or
role play. Toughness and Pilot Edge are good ways to keep important people alive
while the advanced medical rules will make injuries more interesting, see the
advanced_medical file for details.
"Capture Prisoners in Scenarios" is part of the AtB rules but if you are content
with your personnel and in a good situation financially turning prisoners off can
save some time. Remember to switch to "Bondsman" and observe the specific rules
detailed in the rules file when facing the Clans.
The procreation and children options are useful if you intend to play for a long
time and create a family force like the Kell Hounds instead of simply hiring pilots
as necessary.
Salary should be only a small part of your costs but adjusting the modifiers or
base salaries in this part allows you to customise greatly. Keep in mind that
personnel with dual functions will be paid for both, a primary mechwarrior,
secondary tech will get paid a salary for his mechwarrior duties with related
modifiers and another compensation for his duties as tech with related modifiers.

"Finance" Tab
The life of a mercenary is about money so you should leave all options that have
been set during chapter 2 enabled here. Adjusting the "Clan tech price modifier"
can help you better represent the realities of your campaign. For example a
campaign set in 3050 could have some rare equipment from the Clan Invasion
available but it would be very costly indeed, a modifier of 2 or even 4 might be
justified.
If you play with maintenance enabled "Use percentage based maintenance costs" can
make a huge difference. With this option enabled DropShips and JumpShips are so
expensive to maintain that any time spend outside of a contract or in transport is
a significant financial commitment and requires a stash of cash to survive.

"Mercenary" Tab
The main thing in this tab is to decide where the income of your mercenary company
is supposed to come from. The higher the contract payment percentage, the higher
the importance of actual payment compared to salvage and vice versa. This is an
easy to adjust value to increase or decrease the financial difficulty of your
campaign.

"Experience" Tab
The parameters set during chapter 2 are the basics from the AtB options but this is
your campaign and awarding experience can be done in many ways. You should try to
keep a balance between combat and support personnel to avoid absurd min-max
situations, for example setting "XP awarded to each administrator every Monday for
the work of previous weeks" to 5 XP per week will obviously allow your admins to
advance a lot faster than your pilots eventually allowing them to be a better
mechwarrior themselves by spending XP.
As soon as you have played AtB for some time I recommend a trial and error approach
to find a system that works for you.

"Skills" and "Special Abilities" Tab

Everything here is set by MekHQ via the buttons in the "Against the Button" tab. It
sets the XP cost for every skill and SPA and there is no need to mess with it.

"Skill Randomization" Tab

This tab helps you to adjust generated personnel to your liking, perhaps to get
recruits which better represent what you are looking for. "Personnel type
Recruitment Bonus" put emphasis on what type of personnel you want while the other
parts of the tab allow you to increase or decrease the probability of Artillery,
Secondary, Tactics, SPAs and Small Arms skills. Since the AtB rules already give
veteran and elite pilots SPAs increasing the likelihood of SPAs for veteran and
elite here is a good idea.

"Rank System" Tab

The rank system of all major powers are available to choose from. As a mercenary it
is appropriate to use the general Star League system or if you have a distinct
origin choose the corresponding system. The custom option allows you to create any
system you like.

"Name and Portrait Generation" Tab

To give your campaign a more regional feel turn "Use chosen faction for assigned
names" off and pick your desired faction to choose from. Keep in mind that even
within the faction specific pools a significant amount of variation occurs.
Portrait Generation is a good way to differentiate your important people from the
grunts and identify with your pilots. As with Camo images, any portraits you add
must be transferred to every new MekHQ version.

"Personnel Market" Tab

The important thing is to make sure that it says "Market Type Against the Bot" at
all times similar to skills and SPAs no further adjustments are warranted.

"Against the Bot" Tab

This is the most important and most obvious place to change something in your AtB
campaign.
"Skill level" as an influence on the amount of forces you will have to face, the
difference between Ultra-Green and Elite can be significant and make every fight a
lot more dangerous.
How shares work is detailed in the campaign rules, the most important part is that
they can give you a bonus to retirement rolls and keep your company together. Even
if you play with shares you might not want everyone to have a stake in your
operation and thus keep "All personnel have shares" off, for example a group of
mechjockeys starts a company on a shares system but hires their techs. Even with
shares salaries have to be paid to everyone.
"Do retirement/defection rolls at contract completion" should always be enabled
because it is an important part of the rules and mercenary life to keep everyone
together. "Customize retirement rolls" can help make a bad situation easier to deal
with. It allows you to set a general modifier for all your personnel and an
individual modifier for each person. It can be used to simulate a lot of situations
like an injured pilot thinking about retirement, a soldier with newborn children to
take care off or a friend certain to stay in your company no matter what.
"Track unit fatigue" corresponds to the optional contract fatigue rules and gives
all your personnel a fatigue modifier on retirement rolls. If you want more realism
this is one possible option since it forces you to make a decision between
lucrative contracts with a risky retirement roll at the end or a steady but
potentially unprofitable garrison duty. In the worst case you might have to stay
out of contract somewhere for several months to reduce fatigue.
"Track original unit" helps with bookkeeping if you want to remember who owns what
even after several reshuffles. This is especially useful to give retiring pilots
the correct unit.
If you enable aerospace units keep in mind that the bot cannot use them and any
aero units will give you a significant advantage over the bot. Fighters can also
add to the required number of lances you must deploy to meet your contractual
obligations and should probably not be added to simply expand your TO&E. In
contrast vehicles work fine.
The contract and unit markets refresh on every first of the month, the personnel
market on every Monday.

"Contract search radius" can increase or decrease the allowed distance to your
contract location. Use this option if you get no contracts at all or a lot of
contracts which are very far away.
The next four options deal with restriction the rules dictate for your company
size, each individual lance and the spare parts you are able to buy during
contracts. All of them are explained in the AtB rules and you should try to work
within them because they transmit part of the feeling of AtB and BattleTech lore in
general. However if anything prevents you from enjoying yourself turn it off it is
only a framework after all.
"Intensity" is an important option because it can drastically change the feeling of
your campaign. The standard setting of "1" produces a lot of battles in most cases
and can be overwhelming. If you want to focus more on swift progress instead of
fighting reduce it by 0.1 steps until you find your sweet spot.

"Double enemy vehicles" and "OpFor lance type ratios" adjust the composition of
your enemy. At the beginning a large number of vehicles can be a challenge or you
might look for a cleaner mech versus mech game style both can be achieved here.
VTOLs are an important part of BattleTech but the bot does not yet fully support
them and it might be better to not use them. Unlike with ASFs the bot can already
do some things with VTOLs which makes them an option.
"Use DropShips" can generate a few battle with DropShips but should be used with
care. Loosing a DropShip has severe consequences for your contract and your
financial situation. As stated above the bot does not support aero thus you will
still face only ground opposition.
Weather, light and planetary conditions are purely optional and personal
preference. They can alter scenarios drastically and present new tactical questions
but it is also possible to make a battle very annoying to play. The best way to
find out which setting works for you is trial and error.
The "Delay Timer" is useful if you have problems with the transfer from MekHQ to
MegaMek which happens mostly on slower computers.

4. What to do if you think AtB should be a bit easier.

While playing AtB it is always important to remember that the rules are only a
framework for you to enjoy yourself and that they can always be adapted as you like
best.
Broadly speaking there are two levels of play in AtB, strategic and tactical. The
strategic level is about what forces you have, in what condition at which location
at any given time. The tactical side is the actual combat played out in MegaMek.
Both levels feed each other, weak forces will have a harder time in combat, poor
performance in combat makes it harder to built a strong force.

There are several options which make to strategic game a bit easier.
"Against the Bot" Tab:
enabling "Use share system" will make retirement rolls slightly easier, should be
done at the start of a campaign
enabling "Customize retirement rolls" will allow you to set modifiers on retirement
rolls and keep your forces together
disabling "Track unit fatigue" will remove a negative modifier on retirement rolls
disabling "Restrict parts by mission" allow you to buy more parts during contracts
and solves logistical headaches that way
reducing "Intensity" decrease the number of battles thus allowing more time to
repair and heal

Besides adjusting options it is also important to remember the campaign rules and
abide by their restrictions. Against the Bot creates the OpFor based on your
lances' weight split in the four weight classes (0-130t light, 131-200t medium,
201-280t heavy, 280 -380t assault). I recommend medium and heavy lances as close to
the tonnage limit as possible. Light and assault lances tend to generate more
extreme odds scenarios.
...

tactical
skill level
reduce OpFor in lobby
deploy reinforcement beyond the provisions in the rules
5. What to do if you think AtB is not challenging enough.

As written above AtB is played on two levels.

To increase the strategic difficulty maintenance and a reduction in payment are
good options.

Tactical difficulty can be increased by adjusting the skill level in the AtB
options and turning double enemy vehicles on. Light, weather and planetary
conditions can make the game harder for players as long as they do not optimise
their forces to take advantage.

6. FAQ
Question: Is it possible to acquire DropShips and JumpShips?
Answer: Yes. When out of contract go to Marketplace -> Personnel Market and select
the "search for a ship next week" marker. The drop down menu lets you choose
between JumpShips and DropShips. If your roll is successful the next time the
market refreshes an individual will show up and have a ship as his vehicle. By
hiring him you pay the full price for the ship and hire all needed crew at the same
time.