Editing Starting Battletech (section)

==Basic Principles==

If you're on this website, you're probably familiar with other wargames. BattleTech behaves pretty differently from most of them. It's not a stretch to say it's a board game instead of a miniatures wargame.

*The biggest difference is factions. Most wargames require the player to choose a faction, such as the Orks in ''Warhammer 40,000'' or the Empire in ''Star Wars: Legion'', and those factions determine special rules and your access to units. BattleTech doesn't do this - any player can use any unit and there are no faction rules. There are varying factions in the fluff and story, but these generally aren't reflected in gameplay. Some 'Mechs are most used by specific factions, such as the [[Draconis Combine]] preferring the Panther, but captured units and battlefield salvage can justify any faction using any 'Mech.

*The next major difference is the level of detail. BattleTech is light on abstraction. Rather than units having rough 'hit points', you track the individual subsystems of the 'Mechs, such as their gyros and limb actuators, and you track individual shots worth of ammo. This level of detail requires less models on the field; a normal game will have four 'Mechs per side, and a huge game will have twelve.

*No "What You See Is What You Get." You don't actually need to use the right miniature to represent a 'Mech. You could use a different miniature, a paper cutout, et cetera. All it really needs is to have a defined front and fit into one of the hexes on the board.

*BattleTech has an evolving timeline. Every unit in the game has a year it was introduced, and individual pieces of equipment are the same. As a general rule, 3015 is the least advanced time period, and more advanced technologies are introduced as the timeline progresses, with the "current" of the timeline being set in 3151. Players generally agree on a time period or specific year when setting up a game. Generally, the majority of groups either play in the 3020s or 3050s, the [[Succession Wars]] or [[Clan Invasion]] eras.

*Every 'Mech has multiple variants. To match with the advancing technology and fit them into the various factions' preferences, every 'Mech has multiple variants with different equipment and weapons. These can be simple changes, like swapping a targeting computer for a laser, or radical rebuilds that essentially make the 'Mech a different machine entirely. What this means is that a given miniature can be many different units for you, changing to fit your tastes, your faction, and the time period you're playing in. There are also "[[OmniMech]]s", which can hot-swap between various configurations instead of being built as one.