This month’s VER10 Draft update has a very big gameplay change when it comes to scoring Victory Points. In this update a units full Performance cost is now worth Victory points. This means that low Frame units are now worth a lot more VP and it’s easier to seize victory without having to fully wipe out the enemy.
(But don’t let that stop you.)
Occasionally we’ve gotten feedback from people on how they handle army building. We’re always happy when people get a chance to bring their favorite units but often times people will comment that they like a unit a lot but it’s worth a lot of points so they don’t bring too many of them. No Gelgoog only armies, sadly.
Victory Points have always been based on Frame level, it’s a relatively simple system that worked well since originally the majority of a units costs were directly tied to its Frame level. A couple years ago we added in bonus VP for performance tiers. This way a next generation mobile suit like the Marasai or Nemo is worth more VP.
We had been adjusting the unit cost math a lot during that time period so it was a welcome change with some of those more advanced units climbing higher and higher in points. For reference in VER3 the RX78-2 Gundam was 100pts, a Nemo was 30pts and a Zaku II was 10pts. In VER 9.5 the RX-78-2 Gundam was 200pts (without the pilot) while the Nemo was 150pts (sometimes as high as 200pts in drafts) and the Zaku II was 30pts.
While this system worked fairly well, there were definitely times were favorite units might be considered a VP liability compared to others. A Frame 1 Performance 7 unit was worth the same amount of VP as a Frame 3 Performance 4 Gelgoog, even though it typically had a better cost-to-performance ratio. While that may be perfectly accurate with how tech. produces in the universe of Gundam, it’s not the best for balancing out win conditions.
With the update to VER10 we’ve updated a lot of math for unit costs, we also eventually settled on how many points VP would be worth. For instance a Frame 2 vs a Frame 1 unit, the Frame 2 costs 1 more VP when destroyed and that has an inherent value reflected in how many build points a Frame 2 unit has compared to a Frame 1 unit.
This was also extremely important when it comes to defense weighting, we knew from testing what points values we wanted to give upgrades for Evade defense dice or Melee defense dice, but it was hard to justify that when Performance upgrades were relatively cheap. We first began testing out, VP = Frame level divided by 2, round up, so Frame 1/3/5/7/9 all increased a units VP cost when destroyed.
This worked out decently well, since it made sure that Performance 1 units like the GM Early or Zaku I were the same VP as a Zaku II / GM so it was one more encouragement to take the iconic grunt unit instead of the cheapest one. It was also nice, since we had already assigned VP to Frame 5+ & 8+, (and 10 for Turn A but forgot to include that in a rule update, woops) so switching those to 5+ / 7+ and 9+ was no big deal, we also needed to do the same for Performance 3 and 1.
We also had a chance over the last two months to test out, units adding their full Performance to VP. We ended up liking this one quite a bit better, not only because it made the points weighting easier for defense dice, but also because it made those low frame high performance units worth a lot more VP. Now if a OYW remnants army is able to bring down just a few newer machines the battlefield cost of attrition is much higher that it forces a pyrrhic victory on their enemies. It’s fun to think of it that way, and a bit easier to balance win conditions in general.
Last but not least here’s some comparisons.
(Note: Frame 3+ units have hidden performance boosts to represent units of that time, like a Gundam, having cuttingn edge technology. As a result Frame 3 units are worth 4VP instead of 3, and Frame 4 units are worth 6VP instead of 4)
| Mobile Suit | Victory Points (PRE VER10) | Victory Points (VER10) |
| RX-78-2 Gundam | 4 | 8 (Frame 4 + Performance 2) |
| Guncannon | 3 | 6 (Frame 3 + Performance 2) |
| Zeta Gundam | 5 (Frame 4 + Tier 2) | 13 (Frame 4 + Performance 7) |
| Guncannon DT | 3 (Frame 2 + Tier 2) | 7 (Frame 2 + Performance 5) |
| Zaku | 1 | 3 (Frame 1 + Performance 2) |
| Dom | 2 | 5 (Frame 2 + Performance 3) |
| Gelgoog | 3 | 7 (Frame 3 + Performance 4) |
| Hizack | 3 (Frame 1 + Tier 2) | 6 (Frame 1 + Performance 5) |
| Gaplant | 4 (Frame 3 + Tier 2) | 9 (Frame 3 + Performance 6) |
| Geara Doga | 3 (Frame 1 + Tier 3) | 9 (Frame 1 + Performance 8) |
| Sazabi | 6 (Frame 4 + Tier 3) | 12 (Frame 4 + Peformance 8) |
Lethality has gone down a bit so it’s a bit easier to keep your grunts alive, and if you can sink an enemy unit thats either a prototype (Frame 4+) or higher performance you can yield a huge amount of VP.
We’re still refining the VP scoring but this is a good start.
MechaStellar 