MechaStellar: Mobile Suit Types Update

Aloha!  Sorry for the delay in posting, internet and blogging is not necessarily and easy thing on deployment.  Now it’s time for some design updates and playtest reports.  As soon as I finish them I’ll begin posting them so look forward to that.

In the last post we talked about Suit types to be used in Mechastellar.  Mechastellar is a Mech game to be used as either a tabletop war game or a tabletop RPG depending on your groups preferences.  The RPG / War Game system can be used to simulate your favorite mech series such as Mobile Suit Gundam or Mech Warrior.

While Mechwarrior of course already is an RPG / War Game, there are very few candidates on the market for Japanese style mecha such as Gundam, Macross / Robotech, Full Metal Panic, etc.  To that end Mechastellar aims to be a vehicle for you to create your favorite mech and have them fight to death in either a fight to the death scenario or in a protracted campaign.  My favorite series of course is Gundam so most of the examples will be Federation and Zeon type frames.

Now back to business!  In our last post we showed a simple framework for building a suit.  You had the level of the suit, then you were able to assign a Frame Type and a Combat role.  Mechastellar has grown a bit more complex since then.  To start we split up Level into Frame Level and Performance Level.  This way you can have a very powerfully built suit with a strong reactor and even stronger armor but that’s not necessarily tied into how it performs which represents it’s Attack, Evasion, and Movement.

Frame Level controls the following:  Hull Points (HP), Equipment Slots (EQ), Output (Action Points), Armor Save (ARM Sv), and Sensors.

Performance Level controls the following:  Ranged and Melee Attack, Evasion and Movement.

Frame Level provides 200 HP per level, +1 EQ Slot, +2 Action Points, 1 Better Armor Save and 1 better sensors.  You begin with a base of 4 EQ slots, ARM Save 8+ and 5 Sensors.  Here’s what Frames will look like:

Level 1 Frame: HP = 200; EQ = 5; Action Points = 2; Arm Sv = 7+; Sensors = 6

Level 2 Frame: HP = 400; EQ = 6; Action Points = 4; Arm Sv = 6+; Sensors = 7

Level 5 Frame HP = 1000; EQ = 9; Action Points = 10; Arm Sv = 3+; Sensors = 11

Performance Level follows a similar route, each level increases your Attack (Ranged and Melee) by 1 and your Evasion/Movement by 1/2.  Mobile Suits start with Evasion 15 base, while Titans (Western style Mechs) start with Evasion 10.  Movement and Evasion are lowered by Weight (WT) from excess equipment, or being a heavier style western mech.

Level 1 MS Performance:  Range Attack: +1; Melee Attack +1; Evasion 15; Movement 6″

Level 2 MS Performance: Range Attack +2; Melee Attack +2; Evasion 16; Movement 7″

Now if you recall from the previous post you can also assign a combat role such as Gunner, Battler, Hi-Mobility or Versatile.  Battler would provide +5 Melee ATK, +4 Movement, Versatile would provide +3 Range & Melee Attack and +3 Movement, Hi-Mobility provides +3 Evasion and +5 Movement.  Here are some comparisions.

Versatile MS, Performance LVL 1:  R.ATK +4; M.ATK +4; Evasion 15; Movement 9″

Battler MS, Performance LVL 1: R.ATK +1; M.ATK +6; Evasion 15; Movement 10″

Hi-Mobility MS, Performance LVL 1:  R.ATK +1; M.ATK +1; Evasion 18; Movement 11″

At early levels the Versatile suits is the reigning champion since they’re good enough at most things, this is why many grunt suits are Versatile, but as you ascend in performance level and no longer need to rely on your combat role to ensure you hit or evade, Battlers and Hi-Mobility suits really take off.  It’s a quick and easy way to make a Mech of your choice, so I look forward to you trying out Mechastellar.

We’ll talk about what these stats do in the next post.