Battletech is FASA's game of futuristic combat. In this world the weapon of choice is the battlemech, a huge, generally humanoid machine capable of ranged and hand to hand fighting. While the premise is a little strange (and consequently draws harassing fire from those that don't play) the game is a good one. The mechanics are fairly simple, the play fun, and the system lends itself easily to campaigns. I do, however, have some personal gripes with the system. One is that non battle armor infantry have artificial rules that make troops very uninfantry and almost useless. What follows are some suggestions that put the grunts back on the battlefield.

In Battletech, infantry platoons are of 21 or 28 men, They all have the same weapons (machine guns, short range missiles, or small lasers), and the platoon stays together in the same hex as a single unit. A hex is 30 meters in Battletech, which since a modern infantry SQUAD covers a frontage of about 100 meter wide, leads to the assumption that infantry in the future will fight in parade formations.

I personally can't accept this assumption, so instead allow platoons to break down into squads. Generally each squad is one-fourth the strength of the original platoon. This task is easy to do. Use the platoon record sheets which have one hit per soldier, and treat a squad as a platoon that has be reduced to one-fourth strength. The squad has as many hits and does damage as a platoon of that strength would. So where a full strength MG platoon of 28 men would do 10 points of damage and take 28 hits, a 7 man squad does 2 points of damage and takes 7 points of damage. Each squad may have a different weapon type. A platoon could. for example, have two squads with small lasers and a heavy weapons squad of SRMs. Again just use the appropriate strength on the infantry record sheet.

The ability of the infantry to negotiate ANY terrain is one of its great strengths. A single squad may walk one hex per turn, or run for two. A moving squad uses the walking and running modifiers on the weapons table (i.e. +1/+2). Infantry on roads get the road movement bonus. Infantry may scale hex with greater than 2 elevation changes by spending an additional turn per elevation over 2. Infantry should be able to cross water of any depth on the board, but this would require special equipment and/or time not within the depth of a single scenario.

A single squad can occupy a single hex, or may combine with other squads to reform the platoon in a single hex. When collocated squads fire they may combine their strength or fire separately. Except for machine guns, artillery, the LB-10X AC firing cluster ammo, pulse lasers and flamers, all weapons do half damage (rounded up) against infantry. Machines guns, artillery, pulse weapons and cluster ammo do normal damage, but it is applied equally to every squad in the hex. Flamers always do double damage to every squad in the hex. Note that we assume missiles are using armor piercing warheads while the artillery uses high explosive. Ignore the rule that says mounted machine guns do double damage.

Battletech was complicated by giving infantry a completely different set of rules and tables to determine hits by. This makes players reluctant to play with ground troops. Replace the current rules with the same rules for battlemechs. The table summarizes the weapons:

type	Short Base +0	Medium Base +2	Long Base +4
Rifle	0	1	2
MG	1	2	3
Laser	1	2	3
Flamer	1	2	3
IRM	1-2	3-4	5-6

If you feel mechs (and vehicles) should have and advantage for more stable weapons, increase each base by two. You may also be able to give infantry quality. Average troops are unchanged, experienced have a base one lower, green troops one higher. If you want to represent elite troops, like Liao's Death Commandos, Lower the base by two.

Infantry have SRMs, but they are made weaker and have shorter ranges than standard SRMs. If this was intended to portray light antitank weapons like the modern LAW or At-4, that's O.K., but lets distinguish them by calling them IRMs (Infantry Ranged Missiles).

Infantry may also have mortars. Each seven man mortar squad has one medium weight mortar. Medium mortars are treated like artillery in all respects. It has a range of two boards and does 2 points to the impact hex and I to the surrounding hexes due to splash.

Scenario

Finally to get an a feel for the new infantryman, try the following scenario: Place two standard Battletech map sheets together longways so that one has ifs pair of hills on the outside. The space between the hills is call "The Gap". The other map may be placed with hills to the inside or out.

The defender get 3 companies of Infantry and a lance of tracked vehicles from 160 to 240 tons. Each company consists of three infantry platoons and a heavy weapons platoon. Each platoon has three regular infantry squad (rifle, laser or machine gun) and one squad of IRMs. Each weapon platoon consists of four mortar squads. Units are deployed anywhere on the map but not closer than 6 hexes from the non "Gap" map edge.

The attacker gets 150 to 350 tons of mechs. Starting on the non "Gap" side of the board, the attacker must exit the opposite side of map. At least half the force (in tons) must exit through The Gap (the space between the two hills).

Battlechin: Part II