For this week’s update we are releasing the first batch of aquatic units starting with the Z’Gok and Hy-Gogg. We’ll also be releasing units from a Mobile Suit Gundam sidestory including the Act Zaku as well as Gundam Units 4 and 5 of the RX78 series. As always if you have any specific requests for Mechs to include in the game please leave a comment below.
Starting off with the Aquatic Units we have the iconic Z’Gok one of the most successful designs for Zeon’s amphibious rosters. Sporting a sleek silhouette, mega particle cannons and giant claws it was deadly on the battlefield, even more so when piloted by The Red Comet Char Aznable. The Red Z’Gok was surprisingly nimble combatant, Char discovered a secret entrance to the Federation headquarters in Jaburo and spearheaded the assault where he discovered the Federations first mass produced machine the GM, he quickly dispatched one with a claw through the cockpit in one of Gundam’s iconic scenes. Later when fighting Amuro, the Z’Gok proved exceptionally nimble dashing and leaping across the screen fighting the Gundam to a standstill before blowing up the ceiling and escaping.
For Gundam 0080 War in the Pocket we have two more aquatic designs. The Z’Gok E for experimental type, which was a more refined late war model as well as the Hy-Gogg which was a complete redesign of the large gangly Gogg. With flared batwings and long segmented arms the Hy-Gogg was truly unique and captured the eye of many fans when it came out. Both units were used to deadly effect against the GM Cold District type at the beginning of the series.
Design wise Zeon’s aquatic units were exceptionally heavy so we gave them all Frame 2 as a base, they are also the first units to utilize beam weapon’s on their side due to water cooling. We also created the “Amphibious” special trait, a Cost+0 trait that affects the Ambush [Command]. When using that [Command] Amphibious units must deploy in the water, however, you can use the Command to pull an amphibious unit back in to reserves to redeploy it later making them excellent for hit-and-run tactics.
Changing gears we’ll look at the units from the Gundam Side Story originally translated as “Space, Beyond the Blaze” and more recently mention as “Space, to the End of a Flash” but most will remember that it starred the Thoroughbred, a light green sister ship to the White Base and the blue and red RX78-4 and RX78-5 Gundam’s. This story originally debuted in the PS2 Game – Gundam Encounters in Space and later received a follow-up manga. The Thoroughbred, it’s Gundams and 3x Guncannon team were deployed into space following the Jaburo invasion and were assigned covert missions involving interrupting the supply lines between the moon and the space fortress Solomon.
Their antagonists were the Zeon units on Granada, one of the largest Lunar cities, spearheaded by Mallet Sanguine, a rather crazed fellow piloting the Act Zaku a lesser known competitor that lost out to the Gelgoog. The Act Zaku as well as the RX78-4&5 received the magnetic coating which drastically improved their turn around times and overall mobility.
Since the story debuted in a video game it had a branching story path. The RX78-4 had an experimental mega beam launcher and condenser unit that if it worked properly had the firepower to tear through several Zeon space ships. Unfortunately, the system (and the Gundam) had issues maintaining the power output and the unit would explode in a cutscene. As the pilot of Unit 5 if you played well enough you could save Unit 4 and the two of you would continue the campaign to eventually lead an assault on the space fortress A Bao Qu. If you weren’t fast enough, unfortunately the pilot of Unit 4, Luce Kassel would die leaving Unit 5’s pilot Ford Romfellow to mourn and mature as a character. Both paths are covered in the manga adaptation and it’s certainly worth a read.
On the antagonist side Mallet leads a force of Rick Dom and Rick Dom IIs against the Thoroughbred. Initially starting off with a beam rifle and gelgoog shield he finishes the story with the limiter removed on the Act Zaku as well as a potent combat stim injected giving him a reckless abandon and making him a bit more crazy than usual, he finishes the act with two heat hawks which he duels Ford’s RX78-5 with. For the Act Zaku we presented a standard version with a special 4-barrel bull-pup as well as the one used by Mallet in his final confrontation sporting two heat hawks and a stim-induced berserker trait.
Lastly we have the Bigro, one of the sleek mobile armors that makes an appearance in the original Mobile Suit Gundam, the 0081 Gundam Senki animated intro and Vol 3 of the Thoroughbred manga where it poses a dangerous foe to Gundam’s unit 4 and 5. The Bigro’s claim to fame was its exceptional speed, although as we see in the manga the Gundam units were briefly able to keep up with it before it reached max speed. We opted to give the Bigro the “Assault” type which gives it a 2nd action which is best used on a “Full Throttle” action each turn to let it reroll it’s Evade dice. As seen in most its incarnations a few well place beam shots will sink the Bigro.
Unit List Updates
-Zaku II Ace – Renamed to Zaku II Char Custom. +1 Thrusters, -1 Low Cost and Newtype I
-Zaku R1A – Corrected an oversight, they were missing Reinforce 1
-Gundam Alex – Corrected an oversight, was missing Ultralight Superalloy. Cost increased by 20pts
-Fists/Kick/Smash etc. have (CC) added to their entry to clarify they are a close combat weapon that can benefit from “High Speed Attack”
-Updated Armor Save Formula – Goal was to limit Armor Save to be Max +2. Indomitable and Reinforce 4+ no longer stack. Unit Affected: Gundam Armor Save +3 -> +2.
-Gigas – Updated formulas and removed extra EQ slots required on most weapons
-Updated Death Ray to 10 Power and 2 Momentum and remove the 5 EQ slot requirement
-Adjusted AA MPC to be 3 Power
-Updated Big Zam’s Profile
Misc Updates
-Updated Ambush Command with a benefit for Amphibious units
-Snipers – Minor verbiage tweak on ignore Shields/Cover
-Added verbiage on destructible terrain to denote that weapons with bonus hits deal extra damage to terrain
-Added red text to Co-op Campaign mode to confirm the Mission Commander chooses which Commands to take on each mission
-Added red text to Movement to specify you cannot move through enemy models
That’s all for this week, next week we will change things up a bit and release some non-Gundam units. Since Evangelion 3.0+1.0 finally got its overseas release we thought it would be a good time to dust off the Evangelion (TV) profiles and update them to Version 7. We’ll have those ready for next week along with some absolutely terrifying Angels to face.
MechaStellar 