MechaStellar VER10 has done a lot to rework the Momentum system based on feedback from VER9 especially. In this post we’ll look at how weapons that used to drain Momentum have been updated.
One of the core ideas is starting off Momentum at 10, instead of tying it in the size of your forces. Your starting Momentum however, is lowered if you bring along any Skilled or Ace pilots, in exchange for them being a free upgrade (one of those radical ideas we’ve had fun with during the change from VER9 to 10.)
In the game we’ve got a broad class of weapons, affectionately named “Death Rays” which encompasses things like the Big Zam’s main megaparticle cannon, Wing’s buster rifle, Yamato’s wave motion gun, and various super robot attacks like Da Garn’s Earth Buster or the Ideon Gun.
Death Rays being extremely powerful attacks needed a way to limit them from being used over and over again. In many games that might be represented by a huge energy draw, Super Robot Wars for instance will have these final attacks drain a huge chunk of energy, sometimes 50-90% of a units energy supply.
For us we’ve been limiting them by requiring it draw Momentum like [M-3] for instance. This works fine from a balance perspective previously, but in VER10 your momentum swings back and forth very often and we wanted to get away from a units main gun (in the case of Wing Gundam) using up most of your Momentum when you could be using that for the fun revamp of pilot skills.
To that end we started experimenting with a new stat to represent limited ammo, or energy that would power a weapon. We ended up using the area formerly used by Special types (Assault, Indomitable and Heavy Arms) mentioned in the previous post, and gave it a very simple “Each point of Weapon Endurance (W.EN) is worth 10pts”. We then started updating all our death rays and unique weapons/named attacks which drew on Momentum (like Giga Drill Breaker or Machine Gun Punch) to work with the new system.
The system worked pretty well, and it also gave us a chance for a unit like Mazinger to upgrade some of its famous attacks and require an Energy cost to go with it, making the attack a bit stronger but also making it so you don’t spam the attack constantly.
Less than a month into it, one of our playtesters asked the very obvious question. “Why create a new stat for Energy when Super Robots already have a Power Stat.”
Great question! And so, Weapon Endurance/Energy went the way of the Dodo bird and we switched over to these weapons drawing on a units Power stat. That said, Power ended up getting renamed to Energy since [EN-1] takes up a lot less space than [Power-1] on a weapon’s profile.
Overall, this update primarily affected super robots, both those released and those forth coming. Mobile Suits, which do not have a power stat, instead of have limited use weapons with a single shot Mega Beam Launcher or a Buster Rifle with several shots. This in turn raises the cost of these weapons, but that’s really for the best. At one point in VER9, because Momentum was so sparse (and thus so valuable) a death ray weapon could be as cheap as 2slots, whereas now they are starting off around 10slots. A big difference!
Last but not least, we took some early feedback and modified how Power and Boost work, giving them a quick reroll boost to attack or defense respectively. Overall, it’s been more fun among the playtesters. Hope you enjoy!
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