I tried out a website called screenr.com tonight which allows you to quickly create a screencast and post it online.  So here's a video of me doing a quick intro into BFB and how to use it.

Thanks to the work I did to setup games for Tacticon I have a number of new features that are going to be in the next build.

1. Mechwarrior Skills Tab - I added a new tab to the Unit dialog (double click a unit name) which contains a number of new features:
   
   
1. BV Sorted Skill Selection with Filter - This feature will list all possible skills from 0/0 to 7/7 from the highest BV first down to the lowest bv.  You can then filter this list by one of the following:
   
   
1. Max BV: Enter the maximum bv value and the list will filter out any skill that puts the BV of the unit over this value.
2. Max Skill Seperation: This is the maximum allowed difference between skills.  I generally set this to 3 as I allow a 2/5 seperation but if you want skills that are closer together set this lower.
3. Minimize: This allows you to select Neither (default), Gunnery, or Piloting.  By selecting Gunnery you are saying that you only want to include skill choices where the Gunnery is lower then or equal to the piloting (ie 2/3, 3/3, 0/3, etc).  Piloting does the same expect switched (ie. 3/3, 5/2, 3/0, etc).
   
   
2. Random Selection - This feature allows you to select either Random, Green, Regular, Veteran, or Elite depending on your scenario's needs and generate a random set of skills.  You can generate as many times as you like before applying the change.  This feature uses the Total Warfare set of tables for selecting the random values.
   
   
3. Mechwarrior List - This will list any Mechwarriors that have been entered or imported into the system using the Personnel Manager.  You can create your unit's mechwarriors and simply "assign" them to the mech by selecting them from this list.
   
   
2. 
   Auto-Balance - This is a new button above the Force List that allows you to automate selecting the best possible skills for each unit in the list based on a BV maximum.  After adding your forces simply click the Triangle icon and enter the Max BV and any other limits and each unit will be updated with the best matching skills.  I use this feature specifically for my Grinder game types where I balance all Light mechs to the same BV max.
   
   
3. 
   Personnel Management - This feature allows you to create or import a Mechwarrior or list of Mechwarriors and there skills but also includes other data like Status, Quirks, Rank, Faction, and Notes.  You can then use these pre-entered Mechwarriors to quickly assign them to a unit.
1. The ability to use multiple files is rough and does not work completely at the moment.  I will continue working on this as time goes on.
   
   
4. Fire Declaration Chit Sheet - I saw a discussion about using Fire Declaration Chits and remembered how much work it was to make them.  Now, when you print your Force List sheet it will include a sheet of chits that you can print, each unit in the list will get 3 chits, a Primary and two Secondaries.  For this build it is auto-printed with the List so if you don't want it you will need to choose to print page 1 only.  If you have more then 24 units in your list the Fire Declaration Chits will take 2 pages.
1. After this build I will be working on making it so that you can select whether or not you would like to print this sheet.
   
   
5. Manage Images Button 
   
   - The button is on the top button bar and the icon looks like a stack of images.  This will check to see if you have any units selected that do not have an image associated with it.  You will then get a list of the Units without images and can click on each one to open a dialog that allows you to select the image to go with it.  Once you select an image the SSW file will be auto-saved so that in the future the image will already be associated.  This coincides with the new ability to print the Mech Image on the Unit sheet from BFB.
   
   
6. 
   Print Preview - This button will show you a preview of what the Sheet and Fire Declaration Chits will look like when printed.  Based off my code in SSW it works in mostly the same way.

I expect to get this build out in the next day or two so keep an eye out for it here and on the Sourceforge project site.

I have a local convention coming up soon called Tacticon up in Denver, CO and I have submitted a set of five events to run.  Two Grinders and Three Jihad Turning Points games.  I provide everything in these games...sheets, miniatures, terrain etc.  So, to prepare for these games I needed some way to decide on what units I was going to use and so I turned to BFB.

Inner Sphere Grinder
The first game I will be running I needed to create a list of Light, Medium, Heavy, and Assault Mechs to use.  For this game I started out by taking out every Inner Sphere Light and Medium Mech miniature I own so that I could select my choices based on minis I already had available for use.  Then I went through and picked either the best looking miniatare, or the least commonly used for each weight class and using the Mech List dialog and filters I then selected the Mech and version to add to my list.  Once each weight class was added I then took the highest BV mech and adjusted all of the others skills until they were less then or equal to that amount.

Here is the clipboard output from the program (clipboard icon)

Lights (1100)
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Unit                              Tons    BV    Mechwarrior                       Lance/Star              G/P    Adj BV
Mercury MCY-99                    20    586                                                              2/3    1,067
Red Shift RDS-2B                  20    555                                                              2/2    1,088
Nexus NXS1-B                      25    715                                                              2/5    1,001
Raptor D                          25    490                                                              2/0    1,098
Firefly FFL-4C                    30    806                                                              4/3    1,048
Razorback RZK-9S                  30    855                                                              3/5    1,026
Gurkha GUR-4G                     35    908                                                              4/4    1,044
Stiletto STO-4A                   35    859                                                              3/5    1,031

Mediums (1600)
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Unit                              Tons    BV    Mechwarrior                       Lance/Star              G/P    Adj BV
Daimyo DMO-4K                     40    1,150                                                              3/4    1,587
Strider Alternate D               40    873                                                                2/3    1,589
Bloodhound B2-HND                 45    1,363                                                              4/4    1,567
Phoenix Hawk PXH-7S               45    1,496                                                              4/5    1,496
Legionnaire LGN-2D                50    1,386                                                              4/4    1,594
Nightsky NGS-5T                   50    1,356                                                              4/4    1,559
Grim Reaper GRM-R-PR30            55    1,673                                                              4/6    1,589
Men Shen D                        55    1,581                                                              4/5    1,581

Heavies (2000)
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Unit                              Tons    BV    Mechwarrior                       Lance/Star              G/P    Adj BV
Dragon DRG-5N                     60    1,223                                                              2/4    1,969
Rifleman RFL-6X                   60    1,464                                                              3/5    1,757
Yeoman YMN-6Y                     60    1,344                                                              3/4    1,855
Crusader CRD-8S                   65    1,698                                                              4/4    1,953
Thunderbolt TDR-9SE               65    1,439                                                              3/4    1,986
Barghest BGS-2T                   70    1,637                                                              4/4    1,883
Lao Hu LHU-3C                     75    1,887                                                              4/5    1,887
Marauder MAD-9S                   75    1,786                                                              4/5    1,786

Assaults (2800)
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Unit                              Tons    BV    Mechwarrior                       Lance/Star              G/P    Adj BV
Legacy LGC-01                     80    1,967                                                              3/4    2,714
Shogun SHG-2E                     85    1,823                                                              3/4    2,516
Akuma AKU-1X                      90    2,067                                                              3/5    2,480
Mauler MAL-3R                     90    1,877                                                              3/4    2,590
Yu Huang Y-H10G                   90    2,441                                                              4/5    2,441
Fafnir FNR-5                      100    2,636                                                             4/5    2,636
Pillager PLG-3Z                   100    2,697                                                             4/5    2,697
Vanquisher VQR-2A                 100    2,234                                                             4/4    2,569

I then was able to use the program to quickly print a Force List Sheet and ALL Mech Sheets with the click of one button.  I print all of my sheets to PDF so that I can keep them on a thumb drive and re-print as necessary.  So now I have 5 files in my IS Grinder directory:

IS Grinder L-M.bfb - Battletech Force Balancer XML file to save the unit lists and information
IS Grinder H-A.bfb

IS Grinder Lights and Mediums.pdf - PDF output of my force list sheet
IS Grinder Heavies and Assaults.pdf

Lights.pdf    - These are pdf's of the actual mech sheets
Mediums.pdf
Heavies.pdf
Assaults.pdf

Next I have two different Jihad Turning Points to setup (John Tiffany is setting up the third himself).

Jihad Turning Points Tharkad
For this game I am using the JTP Tharkad pdf file and choosing a scenario or two as the basis for the game.  I chose Sifting Through the Rubble as my foundation and from that found that my two forces would consist of the Word of Blake Thirty-seventh Division against the Royal Guards and Twenty-fourth Lyran Guards RCT.  One of the wonderful things about the JTP's is that they provide you with information about those units and what Random Assignment Tables (RAT) to work from.

Well this called for the Random Selections tab in BFB's Add dialog.  First off I opened the Total Warfare directory and chose Random Lance Type and had it select 2-3 options (I threw out any BA or Aerospace as I am not running any of these).  Now that I know the basic types I then used Light Lance Weight Composition or whichever was called for to determine a random set of unit weight (for Word of Blake I just added 2 more units randomly).  Now that I know how many of each weight class I need I then changed to the Word of Blake directory and selected the 3062 tables and randomly generated units until I had a mix of mechs that matched with miniatures I had available.  I then switched back to the Unit Selection tab and highlighted each of my random selected units to filter the list and double-clicked the matching unit and variant to add to my Selected Units list.  Once I had them all I hit the Add Units button to put them all into my Unit screen.

After doing this for each side I ended up with the below:

Word of Blake Thirty Seventh Division
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Alpha                              Tons    BV    Mechwarrior                       Lance/Star              G/P    Adj BV
Initiate INI-02                   40    1,054    Adept Livingston                  Alpha                   4/6    1,001
Assassin ASN-21                   40    791      Adept Bengtson                    Alpha                   4/5    791
Phoenix Hawk PXH-1                45    1,041    Adelpt Miller                     Alpha                   4/6    989
Crab CRB-27                       50    1,198    Adept Bills                       Alpha                   3/4    1,653
Flashman FLS-8K                   75    1,779    Demi Precentor Robertson          Alpha                   2/3    3,238
Toyama TYM-1A                     75    1,750    Adept Day-Jones                   Alpha                   4/6    1,663

Omega                              Tons    BV    Mechwarrior                       Lance/Star              G/P    Adj BV
Trebuchet TBT-7M                  50    1,348    Adept Carl                        Omega                   4/4    1,550
Grim Reaper GRM-R-PR29            55    1,469    Adept Dolega                      Omega                   4/5    1,469
Archer ARC-4M                     70    1,705    Adept Maestas                     Omega                   4/4    1,961
Black Knight BL-9-KNT             75    1,678    * Precentor Coleman               Omega                   2/3    3,054
Highlander HGN-732                90    2,227    Demi-Precentor Arrastia           Omega                   3/4    3,073
Cerberus MR-V2                    95    2,018    Adept Kerber                      Omega                   4/4    2,321


Lyran Royal Guards and Twenty Fourth Guards
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Command Lance                     Tons    BV    Mechwarrior                       Lance/Star              G/P    Adj BV
Hollander II BZK-F5               45    1,243    Mechwarrior Churik                Command Lance           3/2    2,088
Nightsky NGS-5S                   50    1,045    Mechwarrior Chase                 Command Lance           3/3    1,630
Blitzkreig BTZ-3F                 50    1,273    Captain Davidson                  Command Lance           3/3    1,986
Penetrator PTR-6S                 75    1,689    * Major Blouin                    Command Lance           2/3    3,074

Recon Lance                       Tons    BV    Mechwarrior                       Lance/Star              G/P    Adj BV
Scarabus SCB-9T                   30    926      Mechwarrior Miller                Recon Lance             3/3    1,445
Vulcan VT-5S                      40    883      Mechwarrior Schwenzer             Recon Lance             4/6    839
Hatchetman HCT-5S                 45    1,039    Sergeant Reed                     Recon Lance             4/5    1,039
Bushwacker BSW-X1                 55    1,223    Lieutenant Beas                   Recon Lance             3/4    1,688

Fire Lance                        Tons    BV    Mechwarrior                       Lance/Star              G/P    Adj BV
Firestarter FS9-P                 35    940      Mechwarrior Swift                 Fire Lance              3/4    1,297
Cobra CBR-02                      45    1,206    Mechwarrior Topa                  Fire Lance              3/4    1,664
Griffin GRF-3M                    55    1,521    Sergeant Gilling                  Fire Lance              3/3    2,373
Gallowglas GAL-1GLS               70    1,695    Lieutenant Kaempas                Fire Lance              2/3    3,085


Now all I had to do was do some random skill rolls (also in the Random Selections area) and then do some work to balance out the two forces.  Done!

Now I have all of my forces created, Mech sheets printed, Force lists printed, and even have all of my miniatures seperated into units and stacked with a cut off sheet of the force list so that I can easily find them when it comes time to run the games.

My hope is that this gives you an idea of what BFB can do to help you with your games!

8-23-09
- Rewrote code to handle grouping that I had not checked in
- Fixed issue with Top Force not updating the BV Totals accurately
- Added Print Preview
- Added sorting before print to verify that groups are kept together accurately
- Began work on scenario information but does not store or print yet.

 I just created this new site as a way to get some information out about the Force Balancer I've been working on for my own games.  I am hoping that others will find as much use for it as I have.