MechaStellar NOV23 – HP Overhaul

I noticed in the October update that a lot of G Gundam units don’t have a good reason to invest in Armor beyond level 3, so I was working on a HP tweak for Armor 4+ units.  While working on that tweak I noticed a loophole on a Dom Variant where it could be built better and cheaper as a Frame 3 unit instead of a Frame 2 unit. 

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened, many of the points hikes in the last couple years have originated in someone on the team finding an edge case where you could build one unit cheaper and better as a higher frame unit.

When looking at this unit we went over a few ideas on how to fix it.

The first suggestion was to do exponential growth on HP like we used to a long time ago, this would potentially solve our Armor 4+ problem as well as making a Frame 2 high armor unit have more HP than a Frame 3 low armor unit.  This was a no go since a quick check found that Kaiju would end up with obscene amounts of HP, the largest growing to 30,000 HP with little effort required.

My suggestion was to use a Triangle number growth format on Armor.  A triangle number is like a Factorial but with addition instead of multiplication.  To give an example a Triangle number of 3 is 3+2+1=6 and a triangle number of 4 is 4+3+2+1=10.  It’s called a triangle since if you draw it out as dots you wind up with a triangle shape with each new number (1 dot on top, then 2 dots, then 3 dots, etc.)  We used this in a SRW campaign since it’s an easy to purchase HP upgrades, for instance if you are already at HP3, when you buy HP4 you gain 400 HP then buying HP5 gives you 500HP etc..

This one ended up being really promising, a lot of established Mobile Suits and Super Robots wound up having a similar HP to what they currently have with some minor variance while some of our grunts with high armor got a respectable HP bonus out of it.  Our favorite kind of change is one that provides a small or no impact to most units.

Half way through updating all the mobile suits we came to the unfortunate realization that not only did this not solve the problem with our Dom variant, but it now made all Dom variants at Frame 2 inferior to a Frame 3 version.  So back to the drawing board.

Of course there’s always the option to simply raise points like in the past, but we try to avoid that whenever possible since some units are anchored at a particular point cost that we don’t want to disrupt.

Lastly, the solution came from a simple suggestion that we have grunt units match the HP scaling of prototype and high end units (i.e. Gundam types).  Initially there was quite a bit of disagreement on this one, since we’ve had a split between grunt and Gundam HP scaling for a couple years now and there was concerns that some grunt units would become too tough and it might lose the lethal feel of mobile suit Gundam.

So to settle the argument, we did what came naturally and switched our grunt mobile suits over to the proposed HP system and got some games setup.  Looking at the new profiles we noticed that even with a significant HP boost the Zaku was still vulnerable to a OHKO shot from a beam rifle or beam spray gun, likewise for the Dom but with 2 failed saves.  Not bad, not at all.  Now to test it.

Here are some photos of a playtest series using the classic grunts of GMs, Zakus, Doms and the Gouf.  There were a few moments where we were a bit worried about the lethality being too low but that was easily solved by returning the Bazooka back to 800DMG and bringing melee weapons up to 400 DMG. 

Around game 4 we started to appreciate the feel for it with some highlights including a Gouf Custom hitting a GM Command, scoring a finishing blow and it barely survives with an Armor Save, likewise for a GM Kai whose beam saber scored a single hit on a Gouf who rolled a 10 on its Armor Save and proceeded to survive 2 more rounds in a drawn out melee brawl. 

These moments were a lot of fun, where everything relied on the dice to see if a favorite unit would survive another turn, and having them barely survive an encounter with a beam saber or heat sword felt like the tense moments from Mobile Suit Gundam.  Many of these moments would not have been possible without this change and subsequent HP increase.  So we decided to stick with it.

Here are a few more photos from a game series where we added in some Super Robots since we’d need to adjust all the close range weapons like rocket punches and tomahawk boomerangs to account for the HP increase and melee damage boost.  While Getter and Mazinger didn’t see much in the way of HP upgrades, it made the game more tense for both of them since they had to put more effort into obliterating a grunt unit (or 3 in Mazingers case) with the HP boost.  It wasn’t dissatisfying in the slightest and the challenge was appreciated by the 500pt units.

Even though grunt HP was upped a good chunk the overall gameplay flowed well, not feeling that much slower and the extra breathing room for a GM or Zaku to take a couple extra hits from a machine gun or missile pod was nice.   We will be raising machine guns from 6 Shots, RF+2 Hits to 7 Shots, RF+3 Hits because we still want to retain Zakus and GMs have a small chance to one shot each other.

No system alteration is of course perfect.  One potential downside is that large scale battles will have a lot less attrition in Round 1 and 2 and instead of 60-100% casulaties by Round 5, 40-70% casualties is probably more likely.  Not necessarily a bad thing but definitely different than the “hanging on by a thread” feel the game had been presenting for many a year now. 

Still even with a game with one 500pt Super Robot and 15+ grunts mobile suits on either side there was additional bookkeeping required since most units have a good chance to survive an attack, even a high ground artillery barrage.  There was more to keep track of but it didn’t feel like a drag, veteran players shouldn’t have any issue adapting.

One important thing worth mentioning we noticed that with Battlers and Firepower getting +1 accuracy, Evade rolls aren’t as fun as they used to be.  More on this in a bit.

We also got some recent feedback about players concerned that the Federation units in general tended to have much better HP values over the Zeon side of the house.  While both sides have the same HP scaling, Federation units tend to invest more heavily into the armor stat, which isn’t surprising considering the Gundam’s claim to fame is it’s near invulnerable Luna Titanium armor. 

That said, the HP change we were testing would likely be good to go immediately, since by raising the HP of all grunt units by approximately 50% would give a lot more breathing room when it came to playing, especially with new players, and it made grunt units a lot less likely to be mulched by high accuracy units with a high ROF weapon like a Gatling gun or missile boat.

(As an added benefit the HP overhaul makes designing small units like Aura Battler Dunbine or Code Geass significantly easier)

Now that still doesn’t solve my Armor 4+ problem.  To resolve that we have two tweaks to HP and Armor that we implemented with the HP overhaul.

• Adjusted the Evade penalty for when Armor > Frame level to instead trigger at Armor 3+ instead of 2+
• Adjusted the HP Bonus when Armor > Frame Level to occur at Armor 4+  instead of 2+
• Provided bonus HP for each Armor Level starting at Armor 4+
• Raised the HP of all Frame 1-2 units a medium amount proportionally
• Raised the HP of all Frame 3+ Mobile Suits a small amount proportionally