Thanks for all the feedback thus far on the VER9.4 Drafts. Here’ a summary
Evaluating Solutions to improve the Dodge / Guard Paradigm of VER9.4
#1 Minovsky particles giving free rerolls and non crits outside Sensors range is too powerful when combined with Dodge / Guard
This one was submitted by NekoJustice with a good analysis of the problem, fortunately this was resolved relatively quickly with a solution to adjust Minovsky particles interference to occur at ranges beyond 24″.
Red has another solution he’s been cooking up but that one needs to be looked at some more before it’s ready for public release.
#2 Guard works great against everything but Machine guns and simlar high Rate of Fire (ROF) weapons
This one was submitted by BaconBasedEconomy and he also proposed a solution to replace the current Guard (+1 Block) with instead DMG-100. The DMG-100 would be effective against most weapon types but it would not be very helpful against high damage weapons like bazookas or some cannons.
There are currently 2 major issues with this one:
- Unforeseen rules interactions. How does DMG-100 interact with the Focus action or the Seasoned Veteran pilot trait which boosts low damage weapons. How does DMG-100 interact with Shields that gain bonus blocks against lower damage weapons. For this one, while we liked Shields becoming stronger, we quickly saw in playtesting that by allowing this to stack, it would let a unit with Cover gain 2 blocks vs a Beam Cannon, normally you need a Great Shield and a hefty evade penalty to do that, but now a Zaku can easily get that while maintaining a +4 Evade which is unbalanced.
- This alters gameplay considerably with a lot of low damage weapons that will now struggle against high HP targets, something we recently corrected with beam machine guns. A solution for this might require machine guns to move up to DMG300 which I’m not keen about.
Further testing and evaluation is needed but currently we are leaning towards sticking with +1 Guard in lieu of -100 DMG. Fortunately the Perservere skill (a pseudo-equivalent of Persist / Wall in Super Robot Wars) already exists which gives DMG-100.
#3 Beam Rifles are easily stopped by a unit with a Shield and Guard.
When a 4 shot beam rifle strikes a unit with equal performance and a Shield, that unit is very unlikely to be hurt. The Shield + Guard combo gives 3 Blocks to a grunt unit, so the defender needs to 1. Not roll any Crits and 2. Roll a single 7+ or 8+ depending on the role on 4 dice to avoid all damage. (Note this is only a problem with grunt pilots, Skilled / Ace Pilots don’t have this issue).
Red did some quick home testing and replicated the issue, although in his games there were far more crits rolled so it wasn’t as one sided but still an issue that needs to be resolved ASAP.
This problem was brought up by GP04 Gebera who offered several solutions. Which we’ll look at below.
#4 Downgrade the bonus block on Shields
Unfortunately this one is a no go, if we downgrade the bonus block it greatly limits the amount of weapons it is useful against and is no longer worthwhile.
#5 Guard only works in Rapid Fire range
Not a bad idea it makes you use Dodge while far from the enemy and you can only Guard while you are close. It’s reasonably balanced but we want the player to be able to make a choice when they are attacked so this one won’t work either.
#6 Give all weapons +1 Shot to compensate
This is a good idea since it’s a passive solution that doesn’t require any mental effort to remember anything. There are two downsides, high rate of fire weapons would likely get +2 shots, which pushes them closer to the cap of 10 shots on a weapon which doesn’t necessarily affect gameplay that strongly but has a big impact on unit creation rules. The second is that giving all weapons more shots increases lethality in the game and we just spent the last few months increasing durability so this may negate all of that.
#7 Challenge gives bonus hits.
Challenge is an old time favorite and a homage to the earlier days of 40k. While not many players use it, in its current form it’s actually a great defensive tool to keep your enemies strongest ace occupied instead of decimating your grunts and vulnerable back fielders. This one is an older idea from chromantibook.
If we wanted to give it an offensive side it would look like this: When you challenge a unit with an equal or greater pilot level both units gain +1 Critical Hit against each other.
Anyone can issue a challenge if they go first, so it would allow for a grunt with a beam rifle to overcome a shield+guard combo unfortunately it would only be one unit per round and is more of a band-aid then a holistic fix. Still a fun idea worthy of consideration though.
#8 The Attacker gains a bonus equivalent to Dodge / Guard
Since the game was well balanced in 9.3, by introducing another defensive element in 9.4 we could easily balance it out with an equal and opposite offensive element. Here’s how it works.
All units gain the following option when shooting.
- Shooter chooses Precision (+1 ACC) or Bonus Shot (+1 Shot)
- (For the older players if this looks familiar this is how it worked back at the end of VER6 where the Focus action was created and replaced the previous Aim action)
- Skilled Pilots increase the bonus to +2
- Bullseye [M-1] updated to be Precision gains +1 ACC.
In addition to balancing out Dodge/Guard it also gives players more agency when they attack. Even better it supports cross era play, now your OYW army has more options in their toolbox for even the average grunt to threaten something from the Zeta Gundam era with a much higher Evasion.
It’s worked out well in playtesting and so is added to the most recent VER9.4 Draft.
But there are several downsides with this solution.
First and foremost is mental math, we had several version updates in 8th trying to cut down on mental math and this will be returning it to the forefront. On the brightside it will be a universal benefit for all units so the more its used the easier it will become to remember, still we’re not 100% happy with adding back in more mental math.
It also overlaps heavily with Focus which will need to be revised.
The other big issue is that this is a powerful ability. Let’s take a Dom with a skilled pilot and gunnery expert. Suddenly that 3-4 shot bazooka gains +2 bonus shots and another +2 shots from Gunnery expert, making 7-8 shots. Even against an Ace Pilot with a Shield the 3 blocks will likely not be enough, and if you are relying on Dodge instead with 7 attacks there’s a high likelihood of there being several crits.
We’ll need to tone down several pilot traits in order to make this work. Before when Skilled Pilot was a powerful passive bonus, most pilot traits were relatively modest (Gunnery Expert used to be +1 shot for instance) but they power crept up as skilled and ace pilots became balanced around spending Momentum.
We also have to consider critical hits. While the updated Improvise skill will allow you to reroll up to 2 dice for free once per Round as an Ace if the dice are not with you you may wind up facing down a bazooka with 3 out of 7 critical hits, leading to six DMG 800 hits. Ouch! That brings us to #9.
#9 Critical Hits and Critical Evades / Defense
One of the most common questions we get in demo games is whether or not 10s are special on Evade (or melee Defense) usually after a new player rolls a bunch of 10s and they are quite disappointed when the answer is no.
We experimented with critical blocks and evade at the end of VER7 at our FLGS but decided against including it in VER8’s release in January the following year. Although some of our friends have been continuing to test out critical evade / defense ideas for us. After a year of feedback and revisions those ideas were eventually released as the 150pt upgrade you see on Master Asia’ and Schwarz Bruder’s Gundams as well as Gurren Lagann.
We have a new idea that may be a bit simpler and will solve some of our previous issues, although on its own it still doesn’t solve the beam rifle vs shield+guard problem so it will need to be combined with either #8 above or #6 give all weapons +1 shot. Onto the idea.
Critical Hits & Critical Defense
- Critical Hits are only a single hit, but it’s an automatic hit, and more importantly they can only be blocked by Momentum or Barriers.
- Critical Defense always Evade regardless of your evade bonus. In addition for every critical defense you roll, remove one critical hit
Here’s a quick example:
Mike’s mobile suit (Evade+2 with a Shield) is attacked by a beam cannon making 4 shots at Shooting Accuracy 13.
Shooting 13 vs Evade+2 would normally need a 11+ but 9s and 10s are critical defense and thus always evade.
Mike grabs 4d10 and rolls them getting [1,2,4,9] the 9 is a critical evade and so he removes that but he also removes the crit hit (1), his shield will block the 4 and so he removes that. He is left with a 2, a critical hit which can only be blocked by Barrier (which as an average grunt he does not have) or Skill Defense.
Mike loses 1 Momentum [M-1] to negate the final hit since he does not want to the damage or risk an armor saves against a high penetration beam weapon.
What we like about this idea is 3 fold.
- Crits are down to 1 hit, so we no longer have to worry an 80pt unit flatlining a 500pt unit because of a terrible die roll full of 1s against a bazooka.
- Similarly, Crit evades give you a chance to stop critical hits without relying on rerolls or huge Momentum reserves.
- Players can get excited about rolling 10s on Evade or Melee Defense again.
While it sounds like a great idea on paper it needs a lot of testing, evaluation and feedback to see if it’s worthwhile and not otherwise disruptive to game balance. We are hopeful that this will add the good kind of random variance to the game, where you get more memorable momentums where ExKaiser or Voltes V pull off a blade catch because they lucked out rolling 10s on Defense, or your Gouf narrowly avoids having its head blown off by a GM Sniper II thanks to a lucky streak of 10s on Evade preventing Crits.
In addition to that we still need to iron out how Target Lock, high crit weapons like Sniper Rifles, and the aforementioned 150pt trait will work with the new Crit system. If we were to give each one a +1 crit range, your GM Sniper II with Lydo Wolf gets +1 crit range from its sniper rifle, +1 crit range from its massive sensors and now critically hits on a 1-4. If we were to slap the 150pt upgrade on Royal Gundam to represent Gentle Chapman in his prime as a winner of the Gundam Fight tournament he would critically hit on a 1-5. Perhaps a little too strong!
Now onto the decisive problem with Critical Hits and Critical Defense. It doesn’t translate well to melee.
Evade uses only a single die pool so it’s simple to look at the die pool and pick up your crit defense (9 or 10) and then remove a crit hit (1 or 2) as well. The same doesn’t apply to melee, where the crit hits are in your opponent’s pool. Furthermore it’s not as intuitive, consider the following scenario. The attacker rolls 4 hits and 1 Crit hit, the defender rolls 2 blocks and 2 Crit defenses.
Does a Critical Defense in melee provide a normal block and also block a critical block? If so, then in the example above it is fully blocked. Or does it count as 1 block that can also block a Critical Block? If so in the example above 1 hit is going through. Either interpretation makes sense to a player but we strive to have rules that are simple and intuitive without needing to consistently look things up. As a result, this idea is getting shelved for the time being until we’ve had more time to evaluate it.
Below you’ll find a summary of changes in the VER 9.4 Core Rules and Unit Profiles
Core Rules
- Upgraded Challenge to give +1 Crit if the enemy is a Level 1+ Pilot
- Made Revenge a special case for Challenge instead of Tactical Advantage
- Updated the Focus action
- Added in an Attacker bonus of Precision (+1 ACC) or Barrage (+1 shot) on Shooting Attacks
- Removed the Size 3+ clause from Melee Clash and instead made it part of the “Slow and Laborious Trait”
- Commanders gain access to exceptional pilot skills even if they are a basic pilot
- Updated the following skills – Bullseye, Make it Count, Tear through the Ranks, Improvise, Seize the Day, Unbeaten.
- Updated the following Pilot Traits – Legendary / Renowned Pilot, Gunnery Expert, Deadeye, Furious Fusillade, Immortal, Untouchable, Elusive, Lone Wolf / Solo Operative, Tactician, Fearsome.
- Merged Renowned Pilot & Seasoned Veteran. Merged Deadeye and Furious Fusillade. Merged Heroic Spirit & Steel Resolve.
- Based on feedback updated M-Particles to be 1/2 Sensors range and give 1 free Evade reroll.
Unit Profiles
- Removed Shoulder Shields, gave those units an HP Upgrade instead
- Adjusted points on several Zeon units (Zaku Cannon, Gigan, Zaku II FZ, Dra-C Custom)
- Fixed EQ errors on various Warships, most received a small upgrade
- Updated Newtype to no longer use rerolls
- Replaced Large Fuel Capacity with Dynamic Entrance / +1 Speed
- With every unit getting the option for accuracy bonus, reversed a previous weapon update that gave auto-hits to short range weapons like tomahawk boomerang, rocket punch, drill missiles etc.
- Simplified Armor traits (i.e. Super Alloy Z) for Gundam Wing, Mazinger, Big O, Evangelion
- Updated [CC] weapons to gain a bonus on size, i.e. Smash is ARM PEN 5P, Gigantic Smash is 7P
- Adjusted Big O Profiles to have a larger sensor range to deploy further infield
You can find the drafts here: https://mechastellar.com/ver9-drafts/
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