MechaStellar VER10 – October Combat Roles Update

In the latest roster update for the VER10 draft rules we’ve updated a lot of roles, renamed a couple, and even converted some of the special types (Assault, Heavy Arms, Indomitable) into combat roles as well.  Below the break we’ll cover a brief history of combat roles and then the impetus for change.

First a quick history lesson. 

This is going off of memory and a few items I’m going to reorder to make it easier to follow, rather than the truly accurate back and forth updating of roles that many long time players will know; so the timeline will not be perfectly accurate.

Originally MechaStellar had four roles, Gunner (Later renamed to Firepower) for shooting, Battler (later renamed to Melee) for melee focus, Versatile which was good at both, and Hi-Mobility (later renamed to Raid) which prioritized movement. 

For special types the original 3 were Assault, Heavy Arms and Indomitable, with two more being added in VER5, Melee & Sniper, but those two were later converted into Roles around VER8.

In VER5-VER9 we started updating, expanding and renaming roles quite a bit.  For naming we switched over to the naming conventions found in Gundam, Mark Simmons provided translations of the most common roles with examples of those as well which you can find here

https://www.mechatalk.net/viewtopic.php?p=356716#p356716

In Mark’s typology we have a Fighter type, with sub specialities of Close Combat and Interceptor, an Attack Type, a Bombardment type with subspecialties of Sniper, and I suppose you could lump in EWAC as a bombardment support type.

The general purpose Fighter type, this was our Versatile role and was renamed to “Battler” since at the time we were planning on Combattler V and Aura Battler Dunbine being versatile units good at shooting and melee.  In VER10 we’ve reworked unit roles enough that we now have a versatile Versatile role, and a Battler role which is similar but with a focus on close combat and defense which is a better fit for the agile Dunbine and Combattler.

Close Combat Types like the Gyan would be given the name “Melee”.    Previously, we would use Battler types which had strong melee and average shooting and use Melee as a special type to further boost their melee.  Around this time period we converted Melee and Sniper into stand alone roles instead.

(Sidenote: There’s a lot of discussion over whether the Gouf should be a close combat type or a more broad type of role, give all of its variants and ability to swap loadouts, for us we differentiate them by having the Gyan be completely melee focused, while the Gouf is mostly melee focused with some shooting proficiency.)

Interceptor types like the Nemo or Jegan were front line fighter types which prioritized Defense, as the roles introduction it role focused on Evade.  However, in VER10 we’ve split this role into Interceptor (Shooting & High Evade) and Guardian (Shooting, Melee, Evade, Melee Defense).

Attack types which flourished in Zeta represents units that can push past enemy lines and attack important targets like a base or a warship.  For this we had the Raid role and would later introduce the Attacker role in VER8, with Raid focusing on movement and shooting while Attacker focused on movement and melee.  The Attacker role of VER8&9 has been renamed to Battler.

( Battler itself has been a name used for several roles in the past.  In summary, there was a Versatile (Zaku) and a Battler (Gouf) role originally.  The Versatile role was renamed to Battler, and the Battler role was became a Melee role, however, it would later become apparent that a role that was good at melee but not has hyper focused was needed and so this became the Attacker role.  Now in VER10, the versatile role is reverting back to the Versatile name, while Attacker (melee and evade) is reverting back to the Battler name.  Confusing, right?)

Bombardment types would be labeled as Firepower (previously known as Gunner) and Sniper Types would become a role instead of being a special type, that enhanced a units shooting regardless of Role.

In VER10 we’ve had a lot of ideas we’ve been floating around since VER8 and now finally have a chance to work them out.  Some of the radical ideas include looking for ways to reduce the points cost of various units, to this end we’ve turned “Pilot Level”, “Size modifier” and “Special Types (Assault, Heavy Arms, Indomitable” into 0 cost modifiers.  For the most part this has worked well, but Pilot Levels especially need to be monitored to ensure the downside is not easily avoidable so it becomes a strict upgrade.

The Special Types were zero cost modifiers, that would enhance a units stats while typically degrading one or more defenses.  It was an interesting experiment, but we kept winding up with units that could punch far outside their weight class, while being very fragile in return; and glass cannons are generally never a good thing for game balance. 

To that end, we have done the same we did for Melee and Sniper types in the past and converted Assault, Heavy Arms, and Indomitable (now renamed to Unstoppable) into Roles.  Each of these roles are very similar to an existing role, but have further enhanced offense at the expense of defense.  Unstoppable is similar to Versatile, Heavy Arms is similar to Firepower, and Assault is similar to Raid/Battler.

A bit part of this decision was a lot of feedback we’ve gotten since the launch of the open playtest for VER10.  Many people have noticed that roles were no longer as distinct as they were before.  Even though a Zaku and Dom were different roles, a slight performance increase made the Dom superior in every way.  So we shifting the stat cost weighting of VER10 away from VER8/9 and closer to the weighting of VER7, in turn we saw a greater difference in stats between Versatile and Raid types for instance.  It also allowed us to curb the incredible power of the Firepower role which had been blasting through units left and right for the last couple months. 

The October update primarily modified stats for the Firepower, Melee, Raid, and Battler (formerly named Attacker) role, while the other roles remained mostly the same.  That said we are working on a second pass at role rebalance, to accommodate roles that increase Sensors (Sniper, Firepower, HeavyArms & Warships) and make sure its an offensive boost and not a defensive boost for these units.