Interest Check: Mechwarrior, Exalted style.

On classes: Mechwarrior had 4 general chassis classifications, didn't it? Light, medium, heavy, assault? Why don't we just jack that, and have the serious artillery weapons be like 30 tons apiece so the Pumas and their 35 tons can either... be a god-tier one-trick-pony invisible sniper, or... be useful for everything else? That would keep up the general idea that Grey suggested, which I love, without being too class-ish. Assault-class 'mechs of 90+ tons can carry a couple artillery weapons and use them with ease, whereas lighter chassis generally do better with lighter weapons - but on the flip side, like I mentioned earlier, a stealthed Gauss Rifle Puma can do bullshit-level damage with a bit of luck and balls the size of mountains if he sneaks around the battle and lays into the opposing team from THEIR side of the battlefield.


...I'd be tempted to go for another 16 flamethrower Puma, personally. It was fun watching Annihilators die instantly.


edut: yeah, bullet spam is necessary for AC20s and machine guns. Might be simple if we just set them as tick-long firing sequences, and assumed that one second of AC20 fire is approximately equivalent to 1 gauss rifle shot, etc. That way, a 'shot' of AC20 would actually be a fusilade of shots from an IC perspective, but from a mechanics perspective (aka heat generation) it would basically just count as 1 shot of the overall power. That said, I do think that most weapons should be fairly heat-light, with heat only coming into play if you really weapons-spam or have a very energy-heavy layout, a la 4 ER PPCs on a Supernova chassis or something.
 
Poll's here:


viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1678


Tell me if I have to add other options.


For mecha design, I'd stick with the standard tabletop-MW method of tonnage.


The rules for custom mechas are there already, so why get mad?


Maybe add some different mount points (MW4 system is great), and the rest is just parts scavenging and good Craft rolls.
 
xarvh said:
@Grey: I don't think constraining us to 3 classes is a good idea.


A big part of the MW fun is custom designs.


There's not point in discussing rules if we don't decide what we want.


I'm setting up a named poll for deciding what we want.


Up to the ST decide what use to make of the poll.


Once we agree, we're all nerd enough to make rules that fit well. =P
Click to expand...
Oh, I didn't mean strict constraints. I just meant, in general, this was a logical combat pattern for standard long-ra-GODDAMNIT YOU PEOPLE NOW MY MILITARY BEARING IS SHOWING.


Anyway, custom designs are still viable in that format, if you ask me. Likewise bulletspam with heavy machine-guns is perfectly sensible. But you don't want some bugger firing a railgun everytime he has the Essence to do so.


Oh, and good thinking on the shock absorbers, Tabby.


...


Damn. ><


Pictured Tau Crisis Suits.


I am now envisioning an Exalted/40k crossover.


Breathe, Grey, breathe...
 
I'm not sure about using Attribute/Abilities for the mecha, it'd become complicated to fit it with the piolt's... unless you want to go straight using the Mass Combat rules, where the mecha is the military unit of Magnitude comparable to its tonnage...
 
Fuck Tau, I want Gargants all up in this bitch.


"BOSS! DERE BE SOME HUMIES SHOOTINS AT US!"


"FIRE DA GUT-BUSTAH!"


"BOSS! DEY HIT OUR CHEST ARMOR! WE'SE GOIN' TO EXPLODE!"


"DAMN THOSE 'UMIE GITS, FULL SPEED AHEAD!"
 
"DEZE INFERNAL BOYZ IS PRETTY ORKY, BOSS"


"DEYZ NOT EVEN GREEN, YA GROT!"


"THAT WUN IS! 'ERE, WHAT'S THAT LIGH-"


Ligier was here,


Orkz is pretty flammable.


Xarvh, the mech is effectively an extension of the pilot in this setting. I'd argue that all you really need is Piloting, Archery, and Awareness, otherwise.


I don't see it becoming overcomplicated, but then I like plenty of variables to work with for individuality.


Afterall, nobody wants to pour points into a limited selection of skills and find themselves useless outside the mech - I imagine some foot scenes will transpire.


On top of that - we can always require specialities in certain aspects of mechanized combat, represented by dots in a skill.


EDIT: Oh, and just set mech attributes to a static boost to the pilot's attributues based on Chassis, Servos, Armour, and Intel. Chassis for Dex, Servos for Strength, Armour for Stamina, and Intel for Perception.
 
@attributes: all warstriders already have attributes, most AIs already have abilities, sometimes even charms. Besides, how else are we going to differentiate mechs from the bottom up? Assault mechs have massive stamina (natural heatsink) and great strength (shock absorbing), but meh dexterity (slow as dicks). Light mechs have bullshit-grade dex, but fairly low stam/strength, etc etc.


-IF- we did that, though, I would honestly like to see Dexterity nerfed a bit. It's immensely powerful as it, affecting accuracy and dodge equally massively. Maybe we could come up with a way to nerf it into line with the others, like... having weapon accuracy&damage be based mostly off of the respective skill (beam, projectile, missile) rather than dex, and leaving dex mostly for dodging. That way, Assault-class mechs don't get horrendously fucked just because they're slow (low dex); if we don't do anything to dex, assault-class mechs will suck ass and anything with a good dex score will just rape mostly regardless of loadout.


Speaking of new skills, idea: have each of the holy trinity of weapons have a 'base' skill for accuracy and core ability with the weapon, and 2-3 supplementary abilities that require the core; beam weapons could have a bonus heat-dissipation ability (that only affects beam weapons), an additional accuracy bonus (lol try dodging something going 186,000 miles per second), and maybe a skill that adds a (fairly small, but noticeable) bonus to 'called' shots (aka sniping). Projectiles could have their base ability, an armor piercing ability to lower soak, a raw damage boost ability, and maybe a speed-lowering ability. Missiles could have a set of homing-enhancing (aka accuracy) ability, a passive that lowers enemy DDV automatically (again, try dodging homing missiles), and maybe an ability that allows you to make one extra attack on a round with one missile weapon at no/very low penalty (LOL MISSILE SPAM)


(put this idea in a new post -_- )
 
Ordinance abilities is a great idea.


Possibly the nature of the ability should vary with ammo type, though?


Beam Weapons should universally have their accuracy boost you mentioned.


Ballistics should vary between armour piercing, raw damage, or something similar.


Missiles have huge versatility - exploding warheads, essence-warheads, burrowing ordinance [LOLEXPLODINGDRILLDO].


Oh, and as for Dex...


Dex should only apply to accuracy for ballistics, I reckon.


Some perception related stat would make FAR more sense for Beam weapons.


I think missiles should be goverened by intelligence - since they're not manually aimed unless you're using rockets.
 
One could also make the argument that manual dexterity does little for ballistic accuracy since the weapon is already firmly embedded in the 'mech's chassis, but that Wits - the ability to react quickly and effectively to keep them in your sights - might do more.


Actually, that might be kinda cool overall. Just using the Mental stats for accuracy, one for each of the holy trinity.


As for the Abilities... excellent points. Here's a sample writeup of the 'trees,' though they could get more/less complicated depending on how things work out. I tried to more-or-less balance them, but honestly, I kinda feel like there are almost too few abilities; it might be nice to add one or two more. Additionally, ESPECIALLY if we add more, I would say that we should limit pilots to a max of two sub-skills per tree, just so there's still some individuality; I might go with Refined Homing and Armor-Piercing for a Gauss Rifle-toting Puma so my initial salvo will do the maximum amount of damage, whereas a Medium mech with a couple machineguns might take High Explosive and Danmaku, and stunt with High Explosive to give them even more dice for 'parry' attempts, aka doing their best to bullet spam missiles out of the sky.

  • Beam Weaponry (basic accuracy boost, stacks with Perception)
    Impeccable Aim (yeah, ANOTHER accuracy boost, stacking)
  • Rapid Discharge (+1 heat dissipation per rank)
  • Peerless Marksman (each rank adds +1 die to 'called' shots)



  • Missile Weaponry (basic accuracy boost)
    Refined Homing Capabilities (lowers opponent's base DDV by (RH /2))
  • Armor-Piercing (ignore 1 soak per rank)
  • Essence Disrupting Warheads (burn up ~1-2 motes of target's essence per hit)



  • Projectile Weaponry (-1 speed to projectile attacks at rank 3, -2 speed at rank 5)
    Armor-Percing Rounds (ignore 2 soak per rank)
  • High Explosive (+1 raw damage per rank)
  • DANMAKU (+1 die to attempts to shoot down incoming missiles per rank)
 
Hmm, that's a much better idea.


Possibly we could add six more branches to those trees?


As in, each of the three cores there has a second-tier ability, AND and second-tier ability that has one of the others cores as a pre-req.


So, there's a dead-end branch off Impeccable Aim, AND a branch that combines the effects of Impeccable Aim + Rapid Discharge.


Just a thought.


Also; Your sig. I wrote that.


wat.
 
Cool idea Mental for the Trinity:


Intelligence: Missile Weapons


Perception: Beam Weapons


Wits: Ballistic Weapons


But probably having three abilities with relative specialties makes more sense.


I wouldn't splurge too much on the abilities: one for navigation, one for handling the subsystems, Athletics, Awareness and 3 abilities for the Trinity.
 
Grey said:
Hmm, that's a much better idea.
Possibly we could add six more branches to those trees?


As in, each of the three cores there has a second-tier ability, AND and second-tier ability that has one of the others cores as a pre-req.


So, there's a dead-end branch off Impeccable Aim, AND a branch that combines the effects of Impeccable Aim + Rapid Discharge.


Just a thought.


Also; Your sig. I wrote that.


wat.
Click to expand...
I read it in Professor Farnsworth's voice, giggled uncontrollably like a schoolgirl faced with an entire sentient dimension made out of tentacles, and insta-sig'd it.


As for the T2 and T2-combo abilities; might that be getting too complicated? I don't know, I'm braindead this late and about to turn in so I've outlived my usefulness tonight as a random idea breeding ground. I agree that it could maybe use a few more, but beyond that and people won't even be able to have non-mech skills. Even just the stuff I suggested in the last post adds almost 50% more abilities to the grand total, and half the time people just go with 1 combat ability - forcing them to take 3+ just to be good at one single facet of combat is already pushing it a bit, while adding another half dozen abilities to each tree might make things too bloated.


/sense, THIS POST MAKES NONE
 
Just replace Archery with Gunnery, allow specialties to beam/ball/missile and let's call it a day.
 
This is indeed growing head-bendingly complex.


Let's wait for the ST to come back and be horrified by the WALLOFTEXT.


And then someone can try to codify what we've got into a legible ruleset for easier analysis.


I have games to write. SO MANY GAMES.


I second Xarvh's solution.


tl;dr WHARRGARBL
 
At this rate, why not use the actual Battlemech rules, BESM or... Palladium's Robotech rules? It'd be easier to mod those to reflect exalted-ness than to keep adding clutter to Exalt's system. Remember, less die-rolling and streamlined design is generally a good thing for pbp games.
 
One alternate way to get around the targeting/dex issues for different chassis would be the opposite of your above suggestions. Leave dex as is for targeting, but remove it from movement. Give each mech something like an independent weapon speed. Maybe it can be enhanced by the users relevant pilot skill and mechanical upgrades?


I think I like the complex system more in theory, but it is somewhat complicated. Also, this whole different chassis discussion makes me think if Tribes on a larger scale... Hrm, mechs doing the tribes ski thing tehehehe >.> <.<
 
One thing hasn't been proposed yet: to give the mech full stats as a characters.


I mean, they're going to have AI, Soak and HL, they're not just super power armor IMHO.


So they should have some of the basic stats adding bonus dice to their riders (targetting software, batteries of sensors etc...)


Also, in the exalted system, the warstriders have no HLs.


Here's what I would suggest: mech have HL and soak (depending on their category)... whenever taking L or B damage, apply the damage to the mech and 1/3 of the post soak dmg as bashing damage to the pilot (this way you take care of the longevity problem).


If the damage is piercing however, add 1/2 to the pilot and the type of damage won't change L for L B for B.


Otherwise use Ride as a complementary ability for piloting the mech as it is used in mounted combat: your ride skill limit all the others.


And here are a few suggestions:


- prepare enhancement modules as "charms" for the autochtonians and some of them can be taken from power armors.


- do not focus solely on ranged combat, since if you do you're going to have to create a whole lot of penalties (target static, target moving, target high speed etc) which are not included in the exalted system.
 
We're going with more subservient systems here, I think, Cyl.


Also, I know I saw it mentioned that the mechs have static bonuses applied to the attributes of the pilot to reflect targetting systems and so on.


That damage system isn't a bad idea, but I think we're going with locational hardpoints, so it'd apply to hits on the cockpit or heavy ordinance, I expect.


Good use of Ride, I was thinking of just making it necessary for more complex manouevres.


Where do Autchothonians come into it?


..DID THE BOOK COME OUT!?


*gleeeeeeeeeeeeeeee*
 
We're in a pbp game, the simple solution is always the best. Localization of the hits isn't really what I would call simple.


You can easily transpose the penalties for wound and maimed characters to the mech and used called shots / disarming maneuvers / special weapons to neutralize an opponent.


1e Autochtonians put in place charms as "external modules" added to the character's morphology... a bit like a rocket launcher could be put to a shoulder mount of a mech.


IMHO, mech should also have their own abilities / powers / charms, like power armors: mixing celestial battle armors and spirit AI charms for warstriders in WotLA (camouflage, enhanced healing module, stride, essence sight, essence tracking etc etc).


There are 5 sets of warstriders, from common to royal.
 
OK, first off, a note that that post was initial musings and is far from complete, as I've not included armor or anything like that.


Second, damn, that's a good deal of feedback....hm...


I guess the easiest way to address each one is by each post made up until now.


OK.


First off...I'm thinking of severely reducing the costs of attunement for warstriders, probably by about half. As for martial arts...well, possible, but I was referring to it being a bad idea if you say smashed up your fist which also contains your Extended Range Essence Projection Cannon's firing port in an attempt to simply punch through your enemy's armor. And lastly: Craft would be unimportant, because as members of a mercenary company, the players would be supported with the bells and whistles of a highly competent repair team to patch things up between battles. During battles, repairs would be likely to be impossible without specialized equipment, or craft charms and the like which enemies are unlikely to give you time to use. Integrity shouldn't be ignored, but I'm uncertain how many of your enemies will have access to shaping effects....though sorcery will likely be present.


Next...I'm trying to mix the combat styles together, if such a thing is possible. I want it to be possible for heavy mechs to be able to alpha-strike a lighter mech, as well as focus-fire at range to be able to down a mech quickly, assuming all fire is accurate, but DVs are still going to be present. And an advantage of having a melee weapon available is that it enables your Parry DV, which for heavier mechs is going to be a significant bit of defense that can't be ignored. Plus, depending on your armor type and how much tonnage you apply to it, 2x EREPC might do jack to a mech's legs, plus with Stealth equipment and the like, could give a surprise factor. In short, I want melee builds to be viable, but damn risky.


I'm also a bit troubled with Archery's "Catch All" stance to ranged weapons. I was possibly considering putting Beams and the like under Occult, where you're manipulating raw Essence, and leaving Archery to the ballistic stuff where you're actually hurling a physical object towards the target. Awareness being used for guided weapons's actually a pretty good idea...I might just take that.


As for strength affecting the maximum tonnage of the mechs...I'm a bit against that, as the tonnage limits're more for what the mech can safely withstand without compromising its structural integrity than an actual physical carry limit.


Heat: Yes. Very yes. That's probably gonna be the main barrier to LOLBEAMSPAM. Ballistic stuff however's not gonna have quite as much of an issue, but I plan on making them a bitch to fit out, tonnage wise, plus you have to worry about ammo. Missile stuff, some heat, still limited ammo, less of a bitch to fit.


And that's as far as I get before I gotta head to work. Will continue when I get back. Continue chewing things up for meh. ^_^
 
You might want to take a look at the solar stealth charms. They work against MDV, which is... integrity.


Also... this is exalted where people can parry mountains, lightning bolts as well as other exotic attacks. Range is not the catch all, like it is in Mechwarrior. It just allows a 'first strike'.


If you stick with the ranges listed for the energy weapons in Wonders of Lost Age, melee and martial arts are not something easily discarded as exalts (in or outside of warstriders) can close in on their opponents -fast- while parrying away attacks.
 
...I have to say I'm kind of lost with all this Mechwarrior talk. The last I played of it was one of the older games in the series, back when the only limit to how many weapons a mech could have was how much weight it could carry.


Speaking of that, I just have one question: Will our system make overloading a mech with machine guns a viable strategy? That was fun. Ridiculously overpowered, but fun.
 
I think it says a lot about how much I know of Mechwarrior that I always think of it in terms of the computer games, rather than... whatever else there is.
 
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