Post by garyp on Oct 18, 2020 12:27:21 GMT -4
Another "Gary has been thinking about how an obscure aspect of the Battletech rules works in the campaign and wants to double check something is OK before he does it" question.
The units being constructed by our factories are produced with a quality rating of C, so their initial condition is rather average. The repair rules being used in MekHq provide the option to perform refurbishment of units in an attempt to improve their quality. For those unfamiliar with the rule essentially this costs 10% of the units base value, takes a week of work for vehicles or two weeks for 'mechs, can only be performed at an appropriate factory and requires a skill check to be successful. The full details are on page 189 of Strategic Operations for those wanting to know more. Of course this has the potential to be expensive when the cost of materials, the time units are unusable during the overhaul and the techs unable to do other tasks while they are conducting the refurbishment. But there are some difficult to maintain units where the costs could be worthwhile and in a few months when we start making maintenance checks for our units some players are likely to end up with a few units in degraded conditions.
I was going to attempt refurbishments for some of my units, but I thought I should check first that our production facilities in the campaign are capable of doing the work. A refurbishment is treated as if it was Class E refit task, which requires a factory. However since our various facilities are considered to be maintenance facilities for tech skill checks this would normally limit them only performing Class D or simpler refit work.
Would I be right in assuming the lower level maintenance modifier is because our factories are rather basic and of lower than normal quality (which definitely makes sense from a campaign balance perspective, since if we were doing common repairs tasks at our deployment facilities using a factory level bonus there would be little risk to repairs)? In which case they are still capable of doing factory level tasks but with a more difficult skill check being required due to the worse modifier? It occurs to me this rather shoddy nature of our factories would also explain why any brand new units being manufactured are coming out of those production facilities with only a quality rating of C.
I guess this would also apply for refits as well, since under the refit rules being used in MekHq a number of the common canon refits for upgrading the 3025 era designs involve tasks such as upgrading from standard structure to endo-steel, installing an XL engine in place of a standard engine or installing CASE. Those types of tasks are all class E or F refits and would otherwise not be able to be performed by players.
(For those wondering, yes MekHq will allow refits and refurbishments to be performed with the unit's location set to lower level than would normally be required. It brings up a warning to check if you really want to proceed with the refit while at lower level facility and allow you to click OK to proceed.)
