MechaStellar Version 8 Released

Good morning everyone and thanks for your patience. The last two months have been a fun time working on MechaStellar. over the holidays and we got a lot of playtests in during December and January.  Today we are releasing Version 8 which overhauls the Pilot system and Melee system as well as points adjustments for the Pilot and Performance stat.  Below is a quick summary of all major changes, we also have some in-depth posts here if you’re curious about any design decisions.

Melee

The Melee Clash was updated to be more interactive and offer more choices for the Attacker and Defender.  Now both sides get to Attack and Defend against one another starting with the attacker.  Both sides split their dice pool into Attack and Defense, apply any modifiers then roll.  If the Defender survives they can now counterattack while the Attacker defends.  This gives some more strategy where you have to decide if you can destroy your opponent in a single strike, otherwise you may want to leave some dice behind for Defense.  As a benefit the Attacker chooses one of three benefits that improve their offense, reliability, or a cautious approach of improving their offense and defense.  Critical Hits are introduce here where rolling a 10 on Attack/Counterattack will count as 2 Hits.  Berserk & Melee type units hit on a 4+ and Critical on a 9+.

Pilot

The benefit for Skilled and Ace Pilot was reworked to make their benefits more powerful and also more applicable on an individual basis instead of an army wide benefit.  Instead of increasing your army’s Momentum these Pilots reduce the Momentum cost of Pilot Skills they use to a minimum of zero.  Note: Universal Skills such as Defense (+X Blocks) or Disengage are not affected by this.  The number of Pilot Skills have increased with several Commands moved to this section and a few new ones.  Some of the Pilot Skills are geared towards certain archetypes, for example “Take the Shot” costs 1 less Momentum for Sniper type units.

You are limited by only choosing 2 Skills per battle.  This choice lets you customize your army to fit your units without having a laundry list of potential rules to remember.  For instance if you are taking Amuro and the Gundam you may decide to have him be shooting oriented and take the “Fire Vulcans” skill and “Return Shot” skill, alternatively you might emphasize Melee and Defense taking “Unbeaten” and “Improvise” representing the Gundam’s tenacity and Amuro’s unique ability to overcome his opponents even using the Black Tri-Stars as a spring board during their famous Jet Stream attack.

Commands

With most of the individual Commands being converted to Skills the remaining ones for the most part were converted to affect multiple units or your entire army.  Several new Commands were added to give you an army wide benefit on your first turn, as well as some useful ones like Reinforcements which lets you replenish your forces.

Momentum

Starting Momentum is now based off of how many points you are playing.  Additionally, you gain +1 Momentum simply for attacking in Melee instead of claiming victory in the past.  The Momentum cap of 3 per turn has been removed as well.

Points

Each point of Performance doubled in cost going from 10pts to 20pts per level, with that Frame 1 high performance units will often be more expensive than Frame 2 lower performance units.  Pilot saw a sharp increase in points per level, this means that Aces like Char, Ramba Ral and the Black Tri-Stars will be more expensive and closer in points when facing off against the White Base crew.

Gameplay Tweaks

Critical Hits – As noted above Critical Hits can occur on Melee Attack.  They can also occur when Shooting, if your target rolls a 1 to Evade they have been Critically Hit.  Additionally, Tactical Advantage now allows you to convert Hits into Critical Hits instead of being a flat bonus.

Sniper types – Sniper types can now fire into a Melee which will be a handy benefit for your army.

Reinforce – The HP bonus for Frame 1-2 units was increased, this way units that go high on Reinforce like the GM Cannon II are rewarded with more HP.  Across the board most units will have a +100 HP increase.

D10 Armor Saves – Armor Saves were the last d6 roll in the game, we’ve converted them to a d10 system and modified weapon Penetration characteristics to match.  Angels and Evangelion’s were switched to MS class to represent how penetrating the Core instantly neutralizes the target.

Dice Pools – These have been capped at 10 dice. For shooting weapons any upgrades that would have pushed them past 10 shots will now be applied to a different stat such as DMG or PEN.

Destructible Terrain – Instead of tracking HP for cover we now allow for an Armor Save to be made for Cover to see if it survives or is destroyed.  This should lead to some fun moments where the Cover your opponent was relying on suddenly crumbles.

Full Throttle – Tracking the Evade bonus was a common complaint we received so we modified Full Throttle to instead give more movement if your Mech has invested in the Speed stat.

Profile Sheet Readability – We removed the grid style layout from weapons and abilities and adjusted the shading to make it a bit easier to read.  Additionally Weapon Upgrades and Prototypes have been condensed so it is on a single line with the weapon having a (U) or (P) at the end to let you know it’s basic stats have been modified. Lastly, a Slots / Power column was added to make the Special section for weapons to be cleaner and easier to read.  Titan have switched entirely to using power so all equipment choices cost them only 1 EQ Slot.

New Units (9) – Recon Zaku, Zaku Flipper, Zudah variants, GM variants

Mission Packs converted to VER 8

-Rebalanced Missions based on updated points costs

-The requisition ladder for new Mobile Suits was updated for each mission

Thank you all for reading and for all the feedback we’ve gotten on Version 7.  Big thank you to those who suggested reworking some of the skills and the help we add fixing some wording on the core rules and mission packs.  For the future we’ll be sticking to major updates at the end of the month.  As always if you have any specific units you’d like to request or general questions on the rules please let us know. You can drop a comment, send us an email or contact us on one of our social media pages here and here.