Tips and Tutorials: How to Use Random Stuff

In this tutorial, I am going to demonstrate how to use the various randomizers (unit, name, and skills) to quickly set up an OpFor for a skirmish game. I am going to do a lance-on-lance game using a lance of my Flaming Devil Monkeys mercenary unit. I think I will make my OpFor ... Kuritans. 

The first thing that I need to do after starting up MegaMek is set up my own units. Luckily for me, I keep all the information for my campaign units in MUL files so that I can quickly load them. You can create MUL files by using the "Save Unit List" button in MegaMek. I also keep a folder full of my custom data (custom units, images, portraits, etc.) and a script that copies that data over to a new MegaMek install so that when I load up my units, they will get the right custom units, portraits, and images. 

To load my MUL files, I click the "Load Unit List" button which brings up a File chooser dialog. I navigate to where I keep my MUL files and I have a choice:

I keep each of my lances in a separate MUL file. I think I will choose my "Silverback" lance. Opening the MUL loads the units into MegaMek. The only thing left for my units is to set up their Camo. So I click the camo button to bring up the Select Camo dialog like so:

These camos are from the All-Camos pack available on the sourceforge files page. Now that I have my camo selected, my units are ready to go:

Its really nice to have the unit images and pilot portraits visible, but I am going to be adding some other units and I want to be able to see everything easily, so I click the "Compact Display" button in the upper-right hand corner to get:

Now, I can start adding my OpFor. First, I need to create a Bot opponent. I use the "Add Bot" button to create an opponent called "Kuritans." Then I will use the "Create Random Army" button to get some random units. The dialog here has several options for generating random forces:

I have chosen my tech level as "IS TW" which gives me Inner Sphere units with a standard tech level. I have also set the BV and the number of units that I want. Most importantly, I have set the player to "Kuritans" so that these units will be added to the correct side. The currently generated units are shown on the right. I can re-generate new ones with the "Roll" button. Once I like what I see, I can add them to the game with the "Okay" button.

Note that I have the canon button checked. Currently, a lot of units that are canon are not correctly marked as canon. We are working our way through the list, but be aware that if you check this button, you will eliminate certain canon units from selection. 

In the future, I would like to expand this dialog to incorporate user-created lists of random units. This would allow users to incorporate the official RATs. But right now, this is what we have.

So I have hit "Okay" to this list and now here is what I have:

 Notice that MegaMek automatically assigns random names to new pilots (as of version 0.35.20). You can disable this feature in client settings if you prefer all your pilots to be called "Unnamed." By default, MegaMek will select pilot names from a "General" list but you can also use some more specific faction lists as well. To do that, we need to click "Random Names" and change the settings:

I have set the faction to "DC" and I have moved the percent female down to 25% (we are talking about Dracs here, after all). Here we run into a problem. There is no player drop-down, so if I hit the randomize button, the names of my own pilots will be randomized instead of the Bot's pilots. This was an oversight on my part when I wrote up this dialog, and will be fixed in future versions. Until then, however, there is a simple workaround. I just clock "Save Settings". Then on the main unit list, I select all of my Kurita units by holding down the shift button while selecting. If I then right-click, I will get a context menu. If I go to Randomize>Names, all of the names of the pilots will be re-generated using the settings that I just saved. I can keep doing this until I get names I like. After a few attempts, I get:

These names seem pretty good. I don't like the first name however. I could just select that unit by itself and use the right-click menu to continue randomizing it, but there is another technique as well. I double-click that unit which brings up my custom configuration dialog:

Notice the "Random Name" button. I can just keep clicking that button until I get a name I like. I finally get the nice Japanese-sounding name of "Chitaki Usami" so I hit OK. 

The final step is to adjust the skill levels of these pilots so they can be more competitive with my units. First I bring up the random skills dialog by clicking on "Random Skills"

First, I change the player to "Kuritans" so that I don't accidently randomize the skills for my own units. By default, the method used here is to assign constant values based on the values listed in Total Warfare, which means that if you just start hitting "Randomize" you won't see any changes at all. I am switching the method used to the "Taharqa" method. What a coincidence! The "Taharqa" method uses a method similar to the one described in Field Manual: Mercenaries and will generally produce more skill variability at a given overall experience level than will the Total Warfare method. I also have set my experience level to "Veteran" so that these guys can be more of a challenge for my Monkeys. Then I just click the randomize button. If I don't like the results, I can always come back here and hit "randomize" again until I get something I like.

NOTE: There appears to be a bug that causes the settings to not be saved for the bot, so you cannot use the right-click menu to randomize skills. That will be fixed in the future.

So, here is my penultimate unit list:

I want to make one last change. I want the Catapult to be my leader's mech, and I would like the (2/3) pilot to be the leader. I could go change this manually, but I can also right-click on the Catapult and use the "Swap pilots" menu item to swap my Thunderbolt and Catapult pilots.

The last step is to give these guys a nice camo. First I need to highlight the Kuritans player on the player list and then click the camo button. Lets make these guys Prosperina Hussars:

So here is the final unit list (using the expanded display):

Now I just need to assign some maps and starting positions and I am good to go. Lets go get some Snakes!