VER10 Pilot Bonus Update

We’re working on VER10 for MechaStellar, based on some playtester feedback shown in our previous post we’re looking to update one of the Pilot bonuses that affect the core mechanic.

Core Mechanic

VER10’s main goal is to have Shooting and Melee use the same mechanic. The way it will work is that you roll your d10 dice pool for attack, each 5+ is a Hit and each 10 is a Crit Hit worth 2 Hits. Same system for Defense where a 5+ is a DEF and a 10 is a Crit DEF.

Your GM Ground Type fires its machine gun into a Zaku. Your machine gun has 8d10 shots, your mobile suit performance / combat role gives a bonus +3 Hits.
You roll [2,3,4,5,5,7,7,10] = 4 Hits & 1 Crit = 6 Hits, with the +3 bonus we’ve got 9 Total.
The Zaku has 8d10 Evade and gets +1 bonus DEF from its Performance/Combat Role.
They roll [2,4,4,6,7,8,8,9] = 5 DEF, with the +1 bonus we’ve got 6 DEF total.
9 Hits vs 6 DEF, 3 Hits get through, each dealing 200 DMG. The Zaku takes 600 DMG.

Pilots

Skilled & Ace Pilots get access to Pilot Traits (passive bonuses) and occasionally exclusive skills. They also get a flat upgrade to Attack and Defense.
If a Skilled or Ace Pilot makes an attack they get to choose either Bullseye or Barrage.

• Bullseye gives +1 Crit Range, so Crit on a 9++ for instance.
  • If your weapon ignores cover like a Sniper Rifle, it’s +2 Crit Range for 8++.
• Barrage gives a flat +1 Hit. +2 for certain weapons like Machine Guns and Micromissiles.

There’s a similar choice on defense, in general you choose either the safe bet (+1 Hit or +1 DEF) or you gamble and hope you get some crits with a better crit range. The system works decent and we’ve tweaked it enough that typically you want to choose Bullseye with Snipers & Pistols, and want Barrage with Cannons, Bazookas, Machine guns and Missiles.

Playtester feedback

While the system works fine, the playtesters would prefer if Barrage gave a die related bonus instead of a bonus hit. So with Bullseye increasing the Crit Range on the die, they want barrage to do something else that modifies the die, rather than a static bonus you add on after rolling.

So when it comes to dice modifiers we’re kind of limited in what we can do that isn’t already covered by a pilot trait / skill. Here are a few we’ve been considering

Improved chance to Hit
This is currently a pilot skill/trait.

Rerolls
This is currently a weapon trait for micromissiles for instance.

Triple Crit
Crit Hits are worth 3 Hits
Pro: Quick and easy to remember.
Con: I don’t think this is intuitively the best mechanic to represent a barrage from a machinegun.

More dice, more fun
Barrage gives bonus dice on attack. Something like a bonus d10 on Attack or +2 with machine guns. Or perhaps +2d10 on ATK but +2 Hits on Machine Guns / micromissiles.
Pro: Intuitively this feels like a better fit, more dice = more shots which sounds like a barrage to anyone reading.
Con: Dice pools are capped at 10d10. We’ll have to rebalance every weapon in the game, to ensure there’s room on the current weapon to accept +2d10 shots.
We’ll also need to spend some time fine tuning the bonus and weapon’s to ensure that Bullseye remains the better option than Barrage for weapons like Sniper Rifles.

Currently, most people on the team are leaning towards bonus dice but VER10 is still a long way off so we’ve got time to tinker for a bit and try different ideas if one doesn’t work out.