Battles of the Star Angels and Space Devils

[the_taken]

(If someone can come up with a better idea for a name, I'm open to suggestions. I suck with names.)

1192113695[/unixtime]]From the stand point of including the horrible, I suggest toning down the apocalyptic elements of the villains. After all, if they are seriously annihilating the entire population there is little incentive to not sacrifice yourself in order to stop them. All consuming evil makes for simple moral calculus and turns extreme action into a no brainer.

I would suggest going for something more along the lines of a villain group who are making human concentration camps in order to create willing sacrifices to power their technology. They have powerful mind affecting powers as well as just really good psychology. They capture humans, put them in very nice seeming prisons and use the Stockholm Effect to coerce feelings of love out of their victims. Only then do they throw humans to the Moloch Machines. That gives people something to fight against, but also makes the enemy understandable and even in a way sympathetic. Also, you get to have traitor humans. You could even have the governments of Earth be already in cahoots with the enemy, which is good times.

"You oppose us because you are selfish and are not good at risk assessment. We devour pigs, and in order to do so we create worlds for them, we shelter them, we treat their illness. The swine under our sway never reach an acient age, but their lives are much nicer than those of their forest kin. Indeed, the average life expectency for the domesticated animals far exceeds what was possible for the wild boar. Truly, being a staple food of humanity is the best thing that has ever happened to the race of pigs.
You think that in the wild it is you who will be the lucky pig who becomes an ancient boar in the forest, whle the rest of us are slain one by one by wild beasts and the fickle scythe of disease. And so you fight for freedom from the masters - freedom to watch your fellow man scrabble for existence upon barren rock and die in any of a myriad ways while you struggle on to gloat over the fallen. But I know better. I know that no matter how good you think you are the laws of probability are harsh and unfair. Maybe you'd be the ancient boar, maybe I would. But most likely both of us would be amongst the culled; unmourned in the trees. I won't take my chances. The best path, the sure path, is to fight for the world the Masters have given us."

--snip--

-Username17

Flavor change implemented. Stockholm Syndrome pulls the creepy unease of the whole setting together like an evil mix of darkslime and wood glue. Sacrifice your mom to power the giant cyborg, or live the life of spirit cattle. Decisions, decisions...

1192078748[/unixtime]]Step 1: Name the PCs
Command Force? Strike Force? Power Force? Meh. Just "Force". The PCs' Force vs. the Mindless Slaughtering Aliens' Forces.

The premise is as dark and sickening as you might expect from a spin-off of Evangelion. The futuristic, space travel capable humans run into a previously unkown alien race. Although the race appears to be sentient and have compatible communication abilities, it is wholly evil and just starts rampaging across the human colonies. They get a huge edge strait off, since they have some sort of bio-mech with an evil force field that melts humans in their ships and slices thru metal with radioactive tentacles of evilness. While incredibly more powerful than the humans, the alien weapons are not invincible, and a daring group capture key tech and develop a human compatible version of the bio-mechs and defences against the evil force fields.
Unfortunately, the bio-mechs require the infusion of a human soul that acts as the bridge between the pilot and psychic powers that move the gigantic cybernetic construct. And it has to be a willing soul, and the pilot must be known to and loved by the sacrificed. Also, the force fields on the more conventional space ships are powered by a group of psychics with cybernetic implants similar to the technology in the mechs.

Step 2: Write up a Six Person Party
Flag Ship Admiral - The character who controls the biggest ship. The ship is very tough, due to it's force fields and constant repair mechanisms. Has limited ability to repair others in combat, mostly mechs. The character mostly contributes to a fight by redirecting the cruisers and giving firing support.
Superiority Pilot - The character with the most balanced combat mech. Diversely powerful with melee and close-range combat. This guy leads assaults, but cannot retaliate to long-range attacks.
Front Cruiser Captain - The character that controls the ship ahead of the fight. Has strong sensors and counter-measures, as well as reliable weapons. Especially useful when an ambush is suspected.
Heavy Guns Pilot - The character with a larger mech loaded with big guns and special weapons. Best at long-range combat, and competent at close-range combat, but tough enough to handle a beating in melee.
Swarm Fighters Director - The character in the small mech that directs the tiny zeppelin sized war machines. Makes great annoyance attacks and has great stealth capabilities. Not a tough mech.
Star Side Repair Unit - The character piloting the mech that has gizmos and gear to repair the others. As tough as the superiority mech but only as effective in close-range and melee fighting as the heavy guns mech is at melee fighting, which is not too impressive.

Step 3: Write up a Three Person Party
Team 1 - The Fleet
Flag Ship Admiral - Tough piece in play. Supports with barrages of lasers and missiles.
Front Cruiser Captain - Sensors detects ambushes and hiding units, and the combined fire power of this one and the Flag Ship deal enough damage to cripple many enemy mechs.
Swarm Fighters Director - Uses guerrilla tactics to soften up enemies. The repair abilities of the flag ship are enough to keep this thing running almost non-stop, but the loss of fighters would hamper it's long term performance. Also, ships have very poor melee abilities, the director and his minions do very well against ships.

Team 2 - Strike Force
Superiority Pilot, Heavy Guns Pilot, Star Side Repair Unit
With two powerful engines of destruction and the band-aid machine, this group won't so much need to detect ambushes as much as they could just try to punch thru it, then patch up after wards. For seek and destroy missions, they can just blow up the whole asteroid field and hope to hit their target. Unless we equip the healing mech with a passable detection method.

Step 4: Outline an Adventure
Their are two areas within human controlled space. The Broadcast Zone, and everywhere else. The BCZ is where the first radio transmissions of Earth have reached so far. If the aliens reach this area, they will pick up the radio waves, trace them back Earth and blow it up. This would be very bad.
The premise of this game session, and a good portion of others, is that a task force of the aliens have come out of hyperspace really close to where the BCZ will expand to. Like, within the month. So the PCs have been ordered to stop guarding the Chicken Farm Planet, and hypaspace over and take out the observer ships, as well as cause as much havoc for the aliens in the area as possible.

There are three observers. One in open space, with the protection of a two cruisers and a compliment of fighters. One orbiting a gas giant, with a trio of enemy mechs. And the third was last detected going into an asteroid field in the fringes of the system, probably to prospect minerals.
The Asteroid Field Observer can be taken out quietly without the other two being made aware, but a large mech the equivalent to the PCs' Superiority mech will be it's protector. It will give the observer a chance to escape and send out a distress signal.
The other two observers grant different challenges. The open space observer is guarded by a larger force, and can harass the PCs by sending out guerrilla fighters if they choose to fight the orbiter first.
While the orbiter can dive into the gas giant and hide with it's close-combat oriented guardians if the PCs choose to attack the open space observer first.

Step 5: Write out a campaign

Session Two: Thew PCs are returning to Chicken Farm Planet just in time to witness a new alien weapon be unleashed. The chickens on the surface mutate into huge monsters and fly out into space.
A flock engages the PCs, a fight roughly equivalent to getting swarmed by several compliments of fighters.
Another flock mutates into titanic sized monstrosities and begin pecking away at the colony on the planet's surface. Rescue humans? Engage enemies? They've split into two groups, so a sound strategy would be useful.
A third flock of mixed sizes joins the weapon testers, who took advantage of the PC's absence from the system, and tries to hypaspace out. Will the PCs give chase? Or just fight off those they can nab before the portal opens?

Session Three: The PCs take the surviving colonists to a military base world for refugee processing (if any were rescued). Then they're given a new weapon to test out in actual combat conditions. A sizable force is on it's way to a nearby system. Seek and Destroy.

Session Four: The PCs are given a choice between attempting to capture an alien observer that's been docked for repairs at an alien supply depot, or convince some passing pirates that the survival of the entire human race is more important than a little space booty.

Session Five: The Pcs Have to hunt down a lost scout ship that reportedly discovered some vital information. Unfortunetly, the nebula they hid in had a small fleet of aliens dive in after them. The scout ship actually stumbled into the alien's BCZ and the info they had could be used to plan assault against the enemy home world. The next few sessions would be planned out according to the success or failure of the PCs in this session.

Step 6: Choose a Base System

Classic BattleTech

Step 7: Modding the Crunch
BattleTech is a decent system for giant robot fights. There's facing, hit locations, HP for each, and GIANT ROBOTS!!! Too bad I have to pay to learn more than that. Oh well. It's a start.

This is going to be a tactics heavy game, with roleplaying elements affecting only the plot. Rollplaying affects the plot in an objective oriented manner, the way wargamers have ladder and narrative campaigns, and stabbing BBEG affects the plot in D&D. But even as a tactics game, enough material will be developed so that random encounters independent of plot can be thrown in on whim.

Stuff that must be included

~ Hand signs that become runes... but only as long as the sign is held

Basically an option where instead of firing a laser, the person controlling the mech can do something else like put up a barrier or redirect a meteorite/missile.

~ Multiple wings that create defensive effects depending on shape and number such as cover, concealment... Hypnotism, Fear/Intimidate... constant damage at close range... long range slashing melee attack

combined with

~ Flowing ribbon-like cloth manifestation, possible defense purposes or a constant spell effect.

for Tyrial (Diablo 2) style wings that mesh well with the Evangelion style wings that unit-01 had in the movies. Also, from a crunch stand point, they help with the hand signs things, or hold extra weapons, or grant extra speed, or deflect incoming attacks, etc....

~ Halos

A very special ability that is chosen at mech creation. It will scale with level.

There will be multiple power levels. While every mech and ship will have the same minimum power level, as the game progresses, characters gain option like adding armor or improving their aim, or refining the power of their guns. Mechs will always gain more wings, and the number of levels the game handles will be based apon the maximum number of wings that can be achieved on a single mech. My research tells me the angel of death has 12 wings, so we'll base the number of levels off of that. Say, start with one par, and gain a pair every odd numbered level. So 11 levels. Ok 12, for kicks.

The crunch as of now.
Combat is divided into four phases. Energy, Move, Shoot and Recharge.

In the Energy phase, spaceships allocate power to systems, and mechs decide what their wings are going to do.
In the movement phase, everything moves, and some ships or mechs will have different speeds depending apon what they did in the energy phase.
The Shooting phase has all of the weapons and stuff work out their effects.
Then the Recharge phase figures out the effects of end of turn events, like recharging the batteries, or ejecting the cockpit.

Everyone goes thru each phase together, although entities with a higher initiative will act first in the phase.

Like BattlerTech, every mech and ship has 9 hit locations corresponding to a 2d6 roll, and each location has an important function.

Mechs:
2 Head - contains the mech's brain and primary sensors. Minor damage often turns off the halo.
3-4 Left Arm - often holds a weapon, but is sometimes used in combination with the left shoulder or other arm to hold a bigger weapon. Sometimes holds another kind of device.
5 Left Leg - Greatly facilitates movement on surfaces, like those of a planet, in combination with the other leg. Often just dead weight in space.
6 Left Torso - In addition to being able to mount a weapon, also has a maneuvering thruster for space flight.
7 Centre Torso - Houses the cockpit, pilot and a maneuvering thruster.
8 Right Torso - See Left Torso
9 Right Leg - See Left Leg.
10-11 Right Arm - See Left Arm
12 Centre Torso

[technomancer]

Since move and attack are different phases, you might want to consider that low init moves first, but high init attacks first. That way the people with the better init can position themselves better for the attack phase.

[ckafrica]

Been a long time since I played battletech but my recollection was its largest weakpoint was taking a bloody long time for combat resolution if you had more than 2 lances on the board at any given time. Something you might want to address if you are trying to run it as an RPG.

As an aside, Renegade Legion's location, armor and critical system (for the space ship simulator, never played the tank game) was way cooler than the battletech method. Not that it was any less cumbersome but I thought really neat; and I was a big Battletech fan back in the day

[the_taken]

1192334130[/unixtime]]Since move and attack are different phases, you might want to consider that low init moves first, but high init attacks first. That way the people with the better init can position themselves better for the attack phase.

Hmmmm.... I like. This is how they do it in Classic BattleTech, BTW. At least, that's what the starter rules are telling me.

1192338852[/unixtime]]Been a long time since I played battletech but my recollection was its largest weakpoint was taking a bloody long time for combat resolution if you had more than 2 lances on the board at any given time. Something you might want to address if you are trying to run it as an RPG.

Which part took so long?
I'm still trying to grasp the value of each hit location's toughness and assigning a base weapon damage mechanic based apon this. So if it's how many hits it takes to remove a mech from play is what takes so long, I'll hand out less HP per part.

If it's the turn mechanic, well here's a more detailed workings

1. Ships allocate energy to whatever systems, mechs designate wings to tasks
2. Send commands to NPCs (not advisable to have NPCs early on)
3. Move (since this is often a space game, terrain won't be factor 'till the PCs are ready, as often as possible groups will be moved together)
4. Declare targets for your mech's/ship's weapons
5. Roll to see if you hit, and where you hit (one dice for accuracy, two dice for location, max two weapons per character at early levels, four weapons at once are possible for mechs period)
6. Defending target's controller rolls to see if his force fields deflect or absorb any of the attack (I love me soak rolls)
7. Subtract the damage dealt to parts. extra damage carries over inwards. destroyed parts stop working. (see Classic BattleTech for the exact method)
8. self-repair abilities go off
9. ships recharge energy

[JonSetanta]

Uh.
Wow.
.... cool.

[CalibronXXX]

1192334130[/unixtime]]Since move and attack are different phases, you might want to consider that low init moves first, but high init attacks first. That way the people with the better init can position themselves better for the attack phase.

Expanding upon this idea: you could have people with the lowest initiative move first, but allow those with a higher initiative count interrupt their action, ala immediate actions, and still have the highest initiative attack first.

[the_taken]

1192478057[/unixtime]]

1192334130[/unixtime]]Since move and attack are different phases, you might want to consider that low init moves first, but high init attacks first. That way the people with the better init can position themselves better for the attack phase.

Expanding upon this idea: you could have people with the lowest initiative move first, but allow those with a higher initiative count interrupt their action, ala immediate actions, and still have the highest initiative attack first.

I'll put this in the "More Ideas Box". If I have an idea what to implement as an interrupt, they'll show up in the advacned rules book.

1192441560[/unixtime]]Uh.
Wow.
.... cool.

Yes. Yes I am.

----------

Looking at the sample mechs in BattleTech, I noticed a fairly disturbing pattern.
The weakest weapon available deals 2 damage. The weakest head piece has 6 HP, and that mech's armor scales up to 8 for the centre torso.
There's a myriad of weapons, that range from 1dmg multi-shot missiles, to 10 damage lasers. And then there's the occasional 20dmg blaster. The hit locations scale funny though. The centre torso can be any where from 8 to 47, while the maximum a head piece has is 9. And most weapons will deal less than 9dmg in one shot. With 8 hit locations, and most taking at least 3 hits to remove, fights will often last a really, really long time. Then I notice this other chart beneath the weapons list in every mech's entry.
Zounds! Subsystems! If its explained in the introductory rules, I probably just missed it, but my guess is that every time you hit a part, you roll a d6 and compare the result to the subsystem chart and tick off a subsystem point, or something. Then these add up, and when certain subsystem has taken enough damage, like a hit location, your mech stops working. So your iron tough mech is more likely to just shut down from losing it's balance or... or... blowing an actuator than it is going to blow up.

Well screw dat.
The subsystems will not have special charts or funky die rolls. When you blow off a mech's left or right torso piece, it losses a maneuvering thruster, it's fly speed is reduced by 1, and the arm doesn't work. There are no extra rolls.
Even ships will be subject to the same rule. A "subsystem" works 'till all of the armor points protecting it are gone.

Let's also remove some of the randomness in targeting. When the the PCs hit something with a melee attack or close range attack, they roll 3d6 for the hit-location and pick the two dice they want.

Let's get damage and armor values in a more reasonable range.
Basic two-handed guns or one handed melee weapons deal a base damage of 10.
One-handed guns, mech fists and tentacles deal 7.
The centre torso has 8 points, side torsos and legs have 7 points, arms and head have 6.

Yes this means that weapons often will one-shot kill a mech. This is intentional. I want fights to be swift and bloody.
Now, what saves your mech's ass from lasers are it's wings. Every wing you have allows you to reduce the amount of damage you take from one attack by 1d6, then it does nothing but recharges at the end of the round.

Works out rather nicely? Y/N?

[the_taken]

Wings and Halos
An integral part of the mechs is their magical wings. Flowing ribbon like protrusions that are extensions of the pilot's and sacrifice's combined mental prowess given a physical form. They are an integral part of the mech's function, mimicking and counteracting the powers that gave the aliens an initial advantage over the human military forces.

The wings can perform a number of different tasks. In the first phase of a turn, players decide which task their pair of wings will be performing. As in the movement phase, characters with the lowest initiative decide what their wings are going to do first.

Shield: The wing pair envelopes the mech and attempts to block attacks. Provides two d6s to reduce the amount of damage taken for the turn.
Recover: At the end of the turn, the pair retracts inward and restores (5+1/3*lvl) to a single armor point. This ability does not work if the mech has zero armor points on the centre torso.
Fly: The wing pair arcs backwards and pushes the fabric of reality, increasing the mech's fly speed by 1.
Death Slash: The wings in a pair coil together, ready to strike in the shooting phase as a single tentacle. Alternatively, a pair of wings set to perform a Death Slash may instead be used to defend against another mech's Death Slash as if performing the Shield task.
Hold Something: The wing pair holds an item, acting as another hand, allowing the mech to utilize a two-handed or shoulder mounted gun while missing an arm. A mech must still have one non-wing connection on a weapon to use it, so loading a 10 wing mech with 9 pistols is impossible.

Halos are a glowing ring that hovers around the head piece of the mech. They are very faint, but become brighter as the mech and pilot become more powerful. Game Crunch: they provide the mech with a passive bonus, unless the head piece has zero armor points, in which case the halo has been shut off.

Toughness: The mech takes (1+1/3*lvl) less damage from all attacks.

Powerful: The mech's tentacle attacks deals (1+1/3*lvl) additional point of damage.

Hermes: The mech's fly speed and base movement speed are (1+1/3*lvl) higher.

Troll: The mech restores (1+1/3*lvl) armor point to every hit location at the end of the turn unless it has zero armor points on the center torso.

[the_taken]

Equipment
There are twelve levels.
At every odd numbered level, a mech gains a pair of wings, starting with a pair at first.
At first level the creating player decides on a halo, and every level that's a multiple of 3, the halo gets better and brighter.

Now I'm going to hand out equipment. The power of your equipment should based apon your level, after all, you get more wings, which can have enormous defensive benefits. But you should also be able to trade in your current equipment for another, equally powerful set at no cost.

So I'm going to have a pool that each character gets points added to. Before the mechs leaves HQ, the controlling player spends points from the pool on equipment, and when they return the equipment, the points are put back into the pool. The point pool represents the capabilities of the mech's armory and weapons cache. The benefits can come from tithes from the planets the players are protecting and salvage they collect from fighting the aliens.

I have a though process.
A one-handed gun requires 1 tech point.
A melee-weapon requires 1 tech point.
A two-handed gun requires 2 points.
A shoulder mounted gun requires 3 points.
Upgrading a two-handed gun, or a shoulder gun, to a long range gun requires 1 point.
You can upgrade the armor on all of your mech's hit locations at the price of 1 tech point for 1 armor point.
You can upgrade the damage on a weapon by 1 for a single tech point.

Now I'm stuck, 'cause I want to include the option of buying a shield. Something that acts as an extra hit location that must be destroyed before the actual hit locations it's covering can be hit. I'm thinking the weakest one should have 7 armor points and protect the arm and side torso it's covering, as well as the centre torso.
I want opinions on how many points this is worth? 3?
Should obtaining the general armor upgrade also upgrade the shield's armor points?

[MagnaSecuris]

You will want to consider the implications of non-mech combat. half of your classes aren't mechs, and are not constrained by things such as arms when it comes to carrying weapons.
This is vital. Space combat is not like ground combat. You need to figure out what kind of engines these ships use, how their fuel usage will affect their combat actions (whether they use fuel or 'push against the fabric of reality').
How do these characters contribute to ground combat? How effective is orbital bombardment? Can they enter atmosphere? What weapons don't work in atmosphere? Will a loadout optimized for atmosphere not be effective in space?

Are there tanks?

Also, think about how missiles will work. Will they be attacks that require special anti-missile defences? Or will they be like mini-characters that are deployed and directed onto suicide melee attacks on their own turns.

EDIT: Also consider that there aint' no stealth in space.

[the_taken]

You bring up some very interesting points.

1192674283[/unixtime]]
Are there tanks?

Yes there are "tanks" in space. But we call those something else, just as we call "tanks" on water something different too.

You will want to consider the implications of non-mech combat. half of your classes aren't mechs, and are not constrained by things such as arms when it comes to carrying weapons.
This is vital. Space combat is not like ground combat. You need to figure out what kind of engines these ships use, how their fuel usage will affect their combat actions (whether they use fuel or 'push against the fabric of reality').

While combat spacecraft are going to follow slightly different rules for certain portions of the turn, they will follow the same guidelines for how fast they are, how tough they are and how powerful they are. I will get to them when I get to them.

How do these characters contribute to ground combat?

They don't while in the mech combat system. But if it comes to playing out fight with the little green men I'll just slap together a simple minigame, maybe buy Fengs Shui or look up Counter Strike d20.

My inspiration for this game is part Evangelion and part Robotech, and then maybe some Star Trek or something. (All of the space fights start to mesh together after a while.)
The Evas would auto win against standard military if they had S2 organs/generators (as the Angels/Messengers did), and could simply stand around and give the Japanese Black-ops the finger, ignoring their bullets and missiles and nukes with impudence.

How effective is orbital bombardment? Can they enter atmosphere? What weapons don't work in atmosphere? Will a loadout optimized for atmosphere not be effective in space?

All of these will be either story affects, or objectives in a scenario. "Stop the enemy dreadnought from dropping bombs on the hapless colony. Enemy mechs block your path."

But mechs will move a little faster in a gravity based environment like a space platform or rock body environment. That is unless they use their wings to amp up their fly speed enough.

Also, think about how missiles will work.

Entities that appear on the battle map during the Energy Phase, costing energy points to deploy based apon their power. You can either try to outrun them, or try to destroy them if you have a higher initiative. They'll have the special ability to follow a target in the move phase if the target has initiative over them.

EDIT: Also consider that there aint' no stealth in space.

Interesting read, but I don't care. Stealth will be some sort of skill/tech roll/score that works irregardless of flavour text. I might just use Feng Shui rolls.
Really, I don't give a shit about realism for fantasy. Just suspend your disbelief and play along.

[the_taken]

More Rules as they po p into my Brain

I'm going for the hex grid battle mat. And there was much rejoicing. All speed and weapon ranges will be measured in units called hex, which simply represent moving from hex to another, while turning will be measured in sides of a hex.

There are two speeds available to mechs; flight and ground.
Flight speed is most often used while in space since their is no ground to move on. A mech has a base 1 flight speed, plus an additional 1 flight speed for each maneuvering thruster that the side torso pieces provide. Losing a side torso reduces the mech's flight speed by the bonus provided by the thruster.
Ground speed becomes available when a mech can use its legs, such as when it's on a planet, moon, or other gravity generating environment. Every mech has a ground speed of 6 hex as long as it has both legs still functioning. A mech with only one functioning leg has a ground speed of 2 hex, and might as well try to fly, even though a minimum amount of flight speed must be used to counteract the effects of gravity (usually 3.) A mech with both legs non-functional has a ground speed of 1.
Additionally, a mech with all of it's legs functioning may have it's pilot choose to not perform any actions in the Shooting Phase and move at its run speed, which is a base 18 hex.

Starships don't have a ground speed. Character controlled starships have an engine which provides a flight speed of up to 3 hex if enough energy is allocated to it.
Starships also have to face and move in a certain direction unless they spend 1 move speed to face a different side. Mechs, and very small starships like fighters, are not subject to this limitation.

Tech Points
Every character has a pool of tech points, which are use to upgrade their mech or starship.Tech Points in the pool = 2*lvl, +1 at Lvl1, +1 at Lvl12 (Start with 3 tech points)

Mech Exclusive Upgrades:
Melee Weapon: 1 tech point - one handed item, range 0-1 hex, base 10 damage
Greater Melee Weapon: 2 tech points - two handed item, range 0-1 hex, base 13 damage

Pistol: 1 tech point - one handed item, range 0-12 hex, base 7 damage

Riffle: 2 tech points - two handed item, range 1-18 hex, base 10 damage
\-> Sniper Upgrade: 1 tech point - range becomes 1-100 hex

Shoulder Riffle: 3 tech points - shoulder-and-arm item, range 2-12 hex, base 10 damage
\-> Sniper Upgrade: 1 tech point - range becomes 2-100 hex

Turbo Thruster: 1 tech point - improves the maneuvering thruster on the back of the centre torso, increases the mech's base flight to 2.
Hyper Thrusters: 2 tech points - improves the maneuvering thrusters on the backs of the side torso pieces, increasing the bonus to flight speed from each side torso piece to 2.

Meteor Shield: 2 tech points - one handed item, has 7 armor points that must be removed before the covered hit-locations can take damage. Covers the arm holding it and the side torso attached to it as well as the centre torso.
Comet Shield: 4 tech points - shoulder-and-arm item, has 10 armor points that must be removed before the covered hit-locations can take damage. Covers the arm holding it, the leg on the same side, all torso pieces and the head piece.

Repair Device: 2 tech points - one handed item, range 0-1 hex, restores 5 armor points to a single hit location*, up to 20 before being depleted.
Free Hand Repair Device: 3 tech points - shoulder item, range 0-1 hex, restores 5 armor points to a single hit location*, up to 30 before being depleted.
Ultimate Repair Kit: 5 tech points - shoulder-and-arm item, range 0-1 hex, restores 7 armor points to a single hit location*, up to 100 before being depleted. 2 repair points can be used to reactivate a mech that shut down from loosing all of its centre torso armor points.

*Note: A mech that lost all of it's armor points on the centre torso does not reactivate if these points are restored.


Starship Exclusive Upgrades:

Weapon Turret: 1 tech point - requires the allocation of 1 energy point and 1 crew to use. Weapon, range 2-18 hex, base damage 7, half-circle firing arc
\-> Cross Star Upgrade: 1 tech point - range becomes 2-100 hex if an additional energy point is allocated to it.
\-> No Dice Upgrade: 1 tech point - firing arc becomes full-circle

Ambross Missile Array: 1 tech point - Holds six Ambross Class Missiles. Requires the allocation of 1 energy point to use.
Balmadon Missile Array: 2 tech points - Holds six Balmadon Class Missiles. Requires the allocation of 1 energy point to use.

Base Engine: 0 tech points, automatically available - requires the allocation of 1 crew to use. Provides a speed of 1 hex for each enerygy point allocated to it to a maximum of 3.
\-> Speed Upgrade: 1 tech point, may be taken multiple times - increases the maximum speed by 1 hex.
\-> Maneuvering Upgrade: 1 tech point: The cost of turning is 2 sides for 1 speed.
\-> R1-shift Upgrade: 1 tech point: Allows the starship to move backwards at half speed
..\-> R2-shift Upgrade: 1 tech point: Allows the ship to move backwards at full speed.

Base Energy: 0 tech points, automatically avalaible - allows the ship to have up to 3 energy points, and restores 3 energy points in the Recharge Phase.
\->Improve Energy Storage: Spending 1 tech point increases the maximum number of energy points the ship can have by 3.
\->Improve Energy Source: Spending 1 tech point increases the total number of energy points the ship's energy source creates in the Recharge Phase by 2.

Self Repair Method: 1 tech point, may be taken multiple times - Requires the allocation of 1 energy point and 1 crew to use. Range 0 hex, restores 3 armor points to a single hit location.

Shared Upgrades:

Extra Armor: Spending 1 tech point increases the total number of armor points on every hit location by 1.

Stronger Weapon: Spending 1 tech point increases the damage of a single weapon by 1.

Escort Fighter: 2 tech points - hires a small starship to guard and fight for the purchaser. Has a speed of 10 hex, a base to-hit score of 5, a base 7 damage weapon with a range of 0-12 hex, and a single hit location with 7 armor points.

Stealth Upgrade: Spending 1 tech point grants a cumulative +2 bonus to the stealth roll

Detection Upgrade: Spending 1 tech point increases the static detection score by 2.

[the_taken]

Psychic Attacks
This is your brain on Astral Beam: *smash!*

The aliens have been harvesting souls and messing with them for far longer than humans, so they know a few tricks. A few of those involve supercharging the Soulstream with a portion of their sacrifice to try and separate an enemy from their mental faculties. This usually does not bode well for humans, but a will mech try its hardest to protect its pilot from these irrational attacks.

Every mech pilot has two mental scores. Ego and Serenity. Every psychic attack targets one of these scores.
At the beginning of a battle, each mental score begins at 1.
When subject to a psychic attack, the player rolls 1d6, and calls it a Sanity Check.
If the result is equal to or lower than the mental score the attack targets, the mech pilot becomes unable to participate in the rest of the battle.
If the result is higher than, the mental score increases by 1, but the mech and pilot continue to participate meaningfully in the battle.

Starships subject to a psychic attack automatically lose 1 Crew.
A ship with no Crew, like an Escort Fighter or a starship that has lost it's Crew to psychic attacks, can no longer participate in a battle if it is subject to a psychic attack. It just floats there.

[the_taken]

Red Shirts vs. Blue Pants: Rules for starships that want to board other ships.

To use a boarding action, the attacking ship must be in the defending ship's hex during the energy phase.
The ship that initiated the attack allocates a number of crew and energy points to transfer some of it's ship's crew to the other vessel.
The defending vessel allocates any number of it's crew to defend against the attack. Attacking and defending crew cannot be allocated to systems in the next round.
Each side rolls a d6 for every crew they allocate to the fight, adding the results together, and calling it a Melee Roll. For every 3 points one side's melee roll is greater then the other, the losing side looses 1 crew for the rest of the battle.
If a ship has less crew than the number lost, the captain is captured and loses control of the ship.
The attacking crew can return to their ship if it is still within the same hex during the next energy phase.

[Username17]

If ships travel faster than light, whether through the use of soul drives or poorly explined super tech, then there's plenty of stealth. Space ships can only be detected through psychic hijinks, whick work however you say they do.

On combat: I think you should consider how long you want a combat to last, and then back form toughness, weapon damage, and to-hit chances from that information. Also consider how deterministic you want battles to be: the more times you roll dice over the course of a combat the less random the end result is going to be (with of course the interesting breakpoint where if you don't roll dice at all or roll an infinite number of times the result is completely deterministic).

From a stylistic standpoint you should consider whether you want gun fights to feel like throwing a Spear of Longinus at people - or feel like firing a Balundami Gun at fools. There is a lot to be said for firing off twenty different guns in a round while various things explode all around. Also there's a lot to be said for just stabbing the enemy in the face with a Progressive Knife and beig done with it.

Battletech mostly goes for the former. The idea is that you have a lot of different weponry with various mounts and optimal ranges and using any of it causes you to accumulate "heat". Of course, you can cheese Battletech hardcore by stripping yourself down to some really powerful long range guns and taking the rest of the space and loading up additional Heat Sinks allowing you to tell "resource management" to go fuck itself. Ideally here you'd eliminate that aspect by having energy build-up be a Halo property rather than something that came out of the resources you spent to slap weaponry on the sides.

-Username17

[CalibronXXX]

Consider allowing weapons that require both shoulders and one arm to use, both shoulders and both arms to use, or both arms and one shoulder to use.

[Username17]

The most interesting part of Battletech combat is Heat Management. As I understand it, you're going to be doing something vaguely similar but with Energy getting spent rather than Heat accumulating.

So basically, you'll have a battery. It will have some number in it like 20 or 30. Every turn, you'll spend energy out of that battery, and every turn your S2 engine will put energy into the battery. If those two numbers are equal, nothing happens. But at the end of the turn, if your energy expenditures exceed your energy accumulation, your battery depletes. If your battery depletes more than you actually have energy in it, you take damage. If your energy is accumulating faster than you're spending it, the battery fills up to your mech's maximum.

So longer range weaponry costs more energy to use and attakcs at longer range are less accurate. This ideally means that a strategy based on firing lots of long range beams is dangerous because someone who manages to close that distance quickly can take their full battery and kick you in the nuts with it.

If you want to stick to a more Eva look while still having the feel of having lots of explosions going on all over the place, consider giving weapons variable rates of fire. If you want to fire the Pellet Gun or the Positron Rifle more than once a turn, you just do and spend the Energy until you decide to stop (some weapons might also come with Recoil penalties on subsequent shots, putting an artificial limit on Alpha Striking). If you want to have more of a Max5000 look on your blue gods of death, then give the mechs a large number of weapon ports on their arms and shoulders and give everything a RoF of only 1, forcing characters to choose how many of their many many weapons will actually fire each round (you could throw in weapon over-heating rules to force characters to cycle weaponry as well).

But I kind of like the idea that each mech is running in there with like 3 or 4 different weapons and can fire them as often as recoil and batteries allow. For one thing, it creates the possibility of leaping on an enemy star demon, putting your pellet gun right up to its baleful eye, and holding down the trigger until your own mech goes into mandatory shut down - and that's bad ass. That would also cause lots of characters to give themselves an energy sword or vibro blade or something and then Kachû Tenshin Amaguriken all over people who piss them off.

-Username17

[Judging__Eagle]

A quick way to determine 'energy' costs for weapons; they cost the same in energy as they do in tech points.

Might not be very clean mechanically, but it makes firing a gun at very close ranges more effective than at larger ranges.

Which is probably something that you want.

Melee weapons should probably do awesome damage or something that makes them act awesome.

But there's no force-fields for them to negagte, so they'll just have to do more damage.

[the_taken]

I'm willing to change anything, as it took literally an hour to think all of this out. Not all at once, and typing took longer, but still, that's really not much brain power.

Things I am absolutely set on:

The game is almost RLT. An increase in levels allows for more tanking options, but RLT is the norm.

Psychic Attacks = Russian Roulette

Tech Point pool: every player gets a set number of points based apon his level. What the points are used for during a battle is important, but any character can have any number of modification going on between battles without reducing the points in the pool, and I won't care 'cause power levels only change when I (the GM) say so. (QBLU)

Mechs having only 4 hard points for gear. L/R hand, L/R shoulder. They can use a pair of wings to emulate a hand, but can only use a piece of gear as long as they have one real hard point on it.

Mechs having a chart where 2d6 determines which part is hit.

Mechs have the ability to reduce the amount of damage they take from attacks each turn by using any number of d6s from a pool based apon their level.

Rules To Discuss
I want high level characters to be threatened by lower level opponents. I want it to be tactically possible for a level 1 mech character to take on a level 4 character and win. Statistically improbable, but tactically possible.
For this I decided to stick with the BattleTech rule for accuracy. Your mech or starship has a "To-hit Score", a number which anyone attacking you must roll against with an "Attack Roll" and match or surpass to deal damage with an attack. If you move, your TH goes up, and if they move, they get a penalty to their AR. Larger increments of movement get you a better TH, while standing stops your AR from getting penalized.
Level shouldn't affect your AR or TH.
I like this setup for this style of play. I also want to attacks to land very often. Lets say, a d20+X is AR, and base TH is 5 for mechs. Moving 2 HEX increases your TH by 1, but penalizes your AR by 1. And then theses modifiers are doubled when dealing with long range weapons. If this is the rule to be used, then maximum speed will be something like 8 hex. With that in mind, you only fall the RNG if your dealing with long-range weapons and both of you are moving at max speed.

Oppinion: G/B? Y/N?

Initiative: I still have no clue how to decide who goes first, but I know I want to have as little chaos involved as possible.
Suggestions please?

Tech Points: The number of tech points should reflect the power of the character.Also the number of tech points should be based apon the pricing of gear/upgrades.
You should not be able to obtain more powerful gear at a higher efficiency of tech point spending than lower level ones. A single 3 point item must be worth the getting three 1 point items.
No single item is going to be a 'must have'.

---------------------
Judging from the comments, people are asking for both mechs and starships to have three resources to work with during combat.

Mechs: Tech Points, Energy, Wings
Starships: Tech Points, Energy, Crew

---------- Comments on play style:

Megas XLR is a really fun show. Coop pimps out his car into a mech and beats up an endless parade of comical mechs, monsters and aliens in an angry smash fest of crunching metal, exploding explosions, and eye melting lazers.
While that would make an awesome button masher, I don't want to play that kind of game using paper and dice. The kind of games I like to play at the table are slow and intellectually engaging, and rolling 50 dice is more along the lines of tedious. So we are going for a more Evangelion aproach to play-style, where making sound tactical decisions is rewarded more than attempting to initiate an angry smash fest. Being a melee god is a sound tactical decision, unless you're up against a higher level melee unit, or multiple competitive melee units. Like RPS and stuff.

[Username17]

Here's how I envision a turn:

• Step One: Roll Initiative Self Explanatory. This is really important.
  
  Step Two: Make Choices Starting with the mech or monster that rolled the worst initiative, everyone assigns their wing settings, halos, ad decides what weapons to have in their mech's hands. Also they decide how fast they are going to be moving.
  
  Step Three: Move Starting with the mech or monster with the worst initiative, everyone moves up to the distance they decided to move.
  
  Step Four: Fire Starting with the mech with the highest Initiative, everyone fires. You can fire as many of your weapons as much as you want, but the running energy total accumulates for the end of the turn and weapoons get recoil modifiers on subsequent attacks.
  
  Step Five: Pivot Starting with the mech with the lowest initiative, every mech and monster gets a free turn in place.
  
  Step Six: Fire Some More Recoil mods are reset, but energy expenditures are not, and mechs and monsters get another chance to fire their weaponry.
  
  Step Seven: Apply Energy and Regeneration At this point, after you've caluclated the effects of damage and everything, you compare your energy and hit point regeneration to your energy expenditures and losses. If this results in you having spent more energy than you actually have, you take damage right now.

---

This allows a clever positioning or a rear attack to nail an enemy out of half their attacks, but you can never be in the situation that happens in Battletech where a mech with high initiative and a jump pack can just keep moving behind a slower mech and never get shot at. This also allows for weapons which have to heat up or cool down and can only be fired in the first or second phase of shooting.

As for actual shooting rolls, I suggest doing it on 4d6, adding the dice together. This makes a nice bell curve without making a +1 or +2 into a world destroying event. I think that you should strive for a tank battle realism in this field, and thus you should have an absolute range attack modifier, and a separate "optimal range" for each weapon. So shooting farther targets is always harder, but if you're shooting targets outside the optimal range of your weapon you suffer heavy penalties (possibly -1 to -3 per hex the target is closer or farther than the optimal range range).

I'm not super clear on how you want to handle the energy shields. It seems that you want people to be able to spend Energy to purchase dice of DR when weapons hit them, right? It seems like you could get the same effect by having weaponry simply do Energy Damage and Physical Damage - once the enemy battery is depleted all the energy damage would be converted into physical damage at the end of the round anyway, and this makes an easy mechanic for mutual kills, which are awesome.

-Username17

[Judging__Eagle]

Oh, so there are some form of Energy Sheild?

Knocking down a targets 'energy' is a good way to replicate that.

You could have melee be considered hawt-sauce b/c it negates a target's energy rating and simply starts cutting into enemy armour.

Of course that means that when two mechs close to melee, one will kill the other very quickly or both will kill each other.

[Username17]

A weapon can be made more attractive by:

• Increasing damage per attack.
  
• Increasing damage per energy used.
  
• Increasing Rate of Fire (represented by reducing the penalty for attacking with it extra times).
  
• Shifting more damage from damage to energy to direct damage to the target.
  
• Broadening the optimal range of the weapon.
  
• Giving a weapon a flat accuracy bonus (also translates into higher RoF essentially).

A Weapon can be made less attractive by:

• 
  
• Decreasing damage per attack.
  
• Increasing energy costs.
  
• Giving harsher Recoil Penalties (thus limiting RoF).
  
• Shifting damage from direct to energy damage.
  
• Preventing the weapon from being fired during the first firing phase (called a "warm-up" weapon).
  
• Narrowing the optimal range of the weapon.
  
• Capping the range of the weapon to an arbitrary maximum range (example: a Magoroku Exterminate Blade can only attack 2 hexes away, a Lightning Scourge can only attack 4 hexes away).
  
• Giving weaponry an arbitrary accuracy penalty.
  
• Giving weaponry an arbitray limit on the number of times it can be fired in a battle.
  
• Splitting a weapon's damage up amongst multiple hit locations.
  
• Giving a weapon an arbitrary limit on the number of times it can be fired dring a turn.
  
• Increasing the number of slots a weapon uses (you only have 4)

So for example, the Magoroku Exterminate Blade has a hard cap of 2 hexes on its attack range. It doesn't really need an accuracy bonus, because it's already attacking enemies at minimum range. It might have an optimal range of jst exactly 2 hexes, meaning that it is at a penalty if opponents are just one hex away (and it can't attack enemies who are 3 or more hexes away). That's pretty limited, which means that it would be entitled to do some awesome stuff. The blade probably does direct damage entirely (meaning that it doesn't reduce energy at all, it just does big damage to whatever location it hits), and has a very low energy cost for the damage it does.

-Username17

[the_taken]

The 4d6 bell curve is really neat. Here's a graph that I made.


I really like the idea of a RLT game; the damage of attacks often removing an entire hit location from play. To keep with this trend, mechs have a base To-hit of 10. This leaves about a 10% miss chance when targeting a mech in optimal range. Then, penalties for attacking outside that become very large, very fast, in addition to the penalty for using many attack in one round.

Weapon damage has two factors that are referenced as the balancing point: Target's energy being used to soak the damage and the toughness of hit locations.

Energy Points that are not allocated to systems automatically generate dice to soak damage from attacks.
1 energy grants a d6 of soak, so a weapon should deal approximately 4 damage per point of energy (3.5 AveD6 roll rounded up to to make life shorter) plus Shot Advantage.
Shot advantage is just a few extra points you get for shooting the weapon. So low energy weapons can shoot allot of times, have their accuracy reduced, but have a higher damage to energy efficiency, while bigger guns have stronger single shots, but lose a bit in energy to damage efficiency due to the fact that it costs more energy for a single shot with less advantage.

[the_taken]

1194109803[/unixtime]]Energy Points that are not allocated to systems automatically generate dice to soak damage from attacks.

Scratch that. Energy Points must be specifically allocated specifically to force fields to grant soak.

No, that's too complimetcated.

Ok. Forget soak from energy all together. Soak dice come from a mech's wings, again. Extra energy sits in the battery. When you take damage from attack, you loose points of energy. Excess energy damage transfers to a single hit location at the end of a round, so there's only one hit-location roll. An actuator implodes or something.
Considering to having a cap on the maximum amount of energy you can pull out of your mech, so that we don't get a character that unleashes 100 Epts of lazers into the battle, kills everything then assplodes.
Considering having it possible to be knocked so far into the negatives energy points that you take damage every round.

[the_taken]

Mechs get a battery, which holds a maximum amount of energy points based apon level. Energy points are spent to perform actions, like trying to deal damage.

Mechs recharge a number of energy points per turn based apon their level.

Mechs get the ability to reduce damage based apon their level.

Why not have the last two be the same thing? That is, instead of reducing a limited amount of damage, why just have the mechs recharge energy as part of reducing damage, or some messed up flavour text like that? Why complicate things by having two separate numerical events that end up doing the same thing?

So instead of wings granting varying amounts of dice that may be used to reduce dice, we just say mech have glowing wings, and they're completely cosmetic. The dice that show up for various purposes are preset when you acquire them, and automatically 2 to 6 of them are used to generate energy at the end of the round.

------------ possible rules:

Mechs have a battery with a maximum capacity of 16 + 2xLvl.
A fist level, a mech generates a 2d6 energy points.
At every level after the first, a player chooses an ability that grants one dice to be used for a specific purpose. Such as:
generate 1d6E
increase evasion by 1d6
increase one attack roll by 1d6
increase one attack's damage by 1d6
or whatever

There are going to be level prerequisites on what kind of dice you can choose so that you can't just spam 13d6E every round and fill the battle with lazers every turn.