I thought it might be worthwhile to share how some of the rules changes from VER9 to VER10 can speed up the game. Trying to keep the game fast and fun to play is an ever-present design goal for us, so here are some things we contemplate when making game changes.
Note: These time estimates are based on our games as well as our friends, many of whom are 40k veterans and used to fast dice.
The Melee Clash
Every Version change from VER4 to VER9 involved a major change or massive overhaul of the Melee system. VER10 is no exception. Melee has been a contest of dice pools for a few years now, prior to that you rolled dice, wagered momentum and then hoped for the best.
The dice pool system had you split your dice between Attack and Defense, and the Defender would the do the same. This was a lot of fun in high-powered battles, such as Shining Gundam and Master Gundam, where a counterattack was almost always expected; but for grunt on grunt combat it was almost always the best choice to put all your dice on attack. We got a lot of feedback on that over the years and eventually decided on the system we’re using in VER10.
In VER10 Melee has been split into two stats, Melee Attack and Melee Defense which oppose each other just like Shooting vs Evade. The various Combat Roles were all adjusted such that the generalist roles and the melee specialist got Melee defense bonuses, while the attacking raiders had to do without. Now there’s no longer a need to glare at your opponent while you decide how you want to split your dice pools, you just pick a target and start rolling and the defender does the same.
Estimate time savings: 2-10 minutes per Melee attack.
Shooting & Evade
VER10’s primary goal is unifying the core attack mechanic for shooting and melee. Whereas in the past, Shooting attack meant a quick subtraction of Shooting Accuracy – Evade, now you roll a shooting dice pool and compare it to an Evade dice pool. In VER10 both sides can roll their dice at the same time which has a minor time savings. However, it should be noted that sometimes the quick subtraction can be faster than a dice pool since only one player is rolling.
Time change: +/- 30-90 seconds
Elite Pilot Bonuses
VER9 introduced Pilot Bonuses to Evade and Guard as a homage to the official 1/400 Mobile Suit Gundam Tactical Battles game. The 1/400 game is very fast, and very fun and on every attack the defender can choose to Evade and have a better chance at dodging and attack, or to Guard and reduce damage if hit. We used a version of this in VER1 and VER2 many years ago and wanted to start using it again. For game balance though VER8 and 9 were very tightly balanced on shooting and evade, hits vs blocks (especially with regards to shields) so introducing the pilot bonus to defense meant we had to provide an equal and opposite bonus on offense.
We called these pilot bonuses and they added a bit of variety and choice to the game. One downside though, was that choosing a bonus on offense and then your opponent choosing a bonus on defense takes some consideration. While in some cases it’s very obvious which bonus you want, but for many general-purpose units the decision was less clear. Additionally, since VER9 and before required a quick mental math check, introducing +1 Accuracy or +1 Evade added an extra step of mental math. While it’s not so bad in Ace battles like a 3v3 match, it because a little cumbersome with large scale battles of 20 vs 15 for instance.
In hindsight we realized we should have kept this bonus exclusively for Level 1+ Pilots, since most large scale games use grunts. So for VER10, for lack of a better term we called them Level 1+ Pilot bonuses, but in last month’s update we’ve decided to call them “Elite Pilot bonuses” or “Elite Kaiju bonuses”. (“Skilled Kaiju Bonus didn’t quite sound right hah)
Shifting these bonuses keeps the variety and tactical depth for your important units, but allows you to play quickly with your grunt units without have to do some quick mental probability on each turn to decide which was the best bonus to choose given the target.
Estimated time savings: 1-3 minutes per Attack.
Movement
Movement is no longer an inch by inch ordeal, now you have two move actions and you can move up to that distance on each movement. While it might not seem like much of a change, it now prevents people who with say a Movement of 18″ would move 12″ to LOS obscuring cover, pop out 3″ and fire, then move 3″ back behind LOS blocking cover. Since you’ve only got two changes to move you have to be decisive. It also means you won’t have to remember how much movement you have remaining.
Estimate time savings: 30sec – 2 min per Turn.
Rapid Fire
A very minor change, but your rapid fire range is now listed on the profile so you won’t need to do any quick math to determine how far you need to move to get into rapid fire range.
Estimate time savings: 30sec per Turn.
Armor Saves
Armor Save bonuses are gone, but we have kept their spirit alive by letting some special units like Mazinger Z, have Rerolls on Armor Saves. A minor time savings by no longer having to do mental math like “okay so PEN 6 I’ve got Armor Save+2 so I need a 4+)
Estimated time savings: 10sec per Armor Save
Pilot Skills
The previous Pilot Skills, which were often situational or condition dependent, will still be in the game but as special abilities called “Trump Cards”. The core pilot skills are all effective and straightforward and might save a little time.
Estimated time savings: 10-30sec per Turn.
Summation
While some of the time efficiencies are quite small, over the course of a game with many turns and many attacks they can certainly add up. That said while we mention all the time savings above, there are new mechanics like Counter and Support ATK / DEF and Rout which have the potential to slow the game down. (Historically, spacing between units has been a major slow down point for other war games that rely on things like ‘pie plates’ to determine how many units are caught in an AOE attack, or requiring unit coherency by keeping squad members within a certain distance. With MechaStellar we try to be as time friendly as we can which is why you see large ranges on Support ATK instead of something like 2″ or 6″)
MechaStellar 