MechaStellar VER11 Core Mechanic Update

In making VER11 we wanted to improve on the Core Mechanic from VER10. VER10’s biggest change from 5-9 was to change the core mechanic from “Attacker declares target, and defender rolls” to “Both attacker and defender rolls”, something we hadn’t done since VER2.  This core mechanic remarkably streamlined the game, having both Shooting and Melee use the exact same mechanic and gave us a lot more design space to use, since now a unit could have improved attack of defense, each rolling their own dice pools, whereas previously we only had 1d10 of Evade per shot meaning we were constrained on a units Shooting and Evade bonus.

It was a big success and made the game significantly easier to teach resolving our #1 FAQ of “Why can’t I roll dice to attack”.  That said, keeping units balanced against each other and allowing higher performance units to dominate meant giving bonus +HITs and +DEF.  While not a huge burden, it did introduce additional mental math to the game. 

One of the guiding philosophies behind Version 11 has been deceptively simple:

Can we remove one more calculation from every attack?

Over the past several versions, Mecha Stellar has steadily moved away from passive bookkeeping and towards active decision making. Momentum generation has been simplified. Weapon abilities have become more distinct.

What if passive HIT and DEF bonuses simply disappeared?

It Started With A New Playtester. Interestingly, this discussion didn’t begin with mathematics. It began with language. One of our newest playtesters, who is bilingual in Japanese and English, repeatedly stumbled over mechanics that experienced wargamers barely think about. When they saw:

Beam Rifle

• ATK 5d10
• +3 HIT
• HIT on 5+
• CRIT 10+

They continually expected the +3 to modify the dice rather than the final result. Experienced players perform these calculations almost automatically, but new players don’t have years of wargaming habits to fall back on.

VER10 Attack process

Resolving the attack requires players to:

1. Roll attack dice.
2. Count successful HITs.
3. Add passive HIT bonuses.
4. Roll defense dice.
5. Count successful DEFs.
6. Add passive DEF bonuses.
7. Add Shield and Cover.
8. Compare the totals.

None of these steps are individually difficult. However, they occur during every single attack. That raised a simple question.

Why Are Players Doing This Math At All?

The profile generator already calculates:

• Weapon bonuses
• Role bonuses
• Performance bonuses
• Frame bonuses
• Pilot bonuses

Players never actually perform that arithmetic themselves. So why are we still asking players to perform the final arithmetic every single time they attack?

One of VER11’s design principles was “what can we change to make this game the faster and easiest to teach”.  So we started experimenting with removing bonus +HITs and +DEF entirely.

VER11 Dice Pool Development

First we had to decide how we would get rid of these bonuses. Were we going to roll them into the attack dice pool, have them affect your target number (TN) to hit, or something else entirely. For a quick thought exercise we ran a game and just took every +HIT or +DEF and turned it into bonus dice instead just to feel how swingy the variance would be. Instead of:

Instead of Beam Rifle

• ATK 5d10
• +3 HIT

Simply put: ATK 8d10

Likewise, instead of: Evade 7d10 +3 DEF

Simply print: Evade 10d10

It was a super simple idea to implement but unfortunately…several problems immediately appeared.

Concern #1 – Reliability

One of the biggest arguments against removing passive bonuses was consistency. Flat bonuses make advanced machines feel reliable. A veteran rifle currently attacking with:

5d10 +3 HIT is remarkably dependable.

Changing that to: 8d10

Creates roughly similar averages…but noticeably more variance. Elite machines would occasionally roll poorly. Initially, I wasn’t convinced that was acceptable.

Concern #2 – Weapon Identity

Another concern quickly followed. If every passive bonus simply becomes more dice…would rifles and machine guns begin feeling too similar? Fortunately this was resolved as we were developing the weapon trigger system which created Barrage weapons (machine guns), crit weapons (rifles), siege weapons (bazookas), etc

Dice Pool Warfare

The initial model worked well, but we weren’t sure exactly how we wanted to build the dice pools for each unit. We had to develop a system where the WEAPON, PERFORMANCE, MECH COMBAT ROLE, PILOT all influenced this dice pool.  Of course, we had to keep this within the 10d10 dice cap, since exceeding that cap proved disastrous for late stage VER10.

We wanted a system where units started off around 4-6 d10 and could max out at 10d10.  With 4 inputs of Weapon, Performance, Mech Combat Role and Pilot, it was going to be very hard to keep this within the 4-10d10 limit.

The first step was to flatten performance, initially 1-4, with One Year War = 1-2, Zeta = 2-3, CCA+ (F91, G-Reco, etc.) = 4, which roughly corresponded to dividing all current performance by 2.  Later when dice were at  a premium it was further collapsed into 1-3, with 1 = OYW, 2 = Zeta, 3 = CCA+.  We also flatted Frames to 1 (grunt) 2 (superior unit) and kept the high Frame units provide a performance boost, this way original RX-78-2 Gundam (Frame 2, Performance 1) was on the same playing field as the average Zeta grunt like the Hizack (Frame 1, Performance 2.) 

While flattening performance does take away a lot of the nuance we had before on building mobile suit profiles and making each one very distinct, MechaStellar still has a lot of levers we can pull with both combat role and equipment loadout that we can still make the dozens of GM, and Zaku variants / descendants feel different from one another.  The tremendous upside is that people can much more easily field older models vs newer models, using their favorite models without having to dive deep into an upgrade system.  With our goal of making it easier and more fun to teach newer players this was a huge boon.

With Frame & Performance providing a bonus of 1-4, that limits what space we have avaialble if we want to keep all weapons around 4-10d10.  Now we only have 6d10 left to play with on our maximum limit.  And we still have to factor in the Weapon’s base dice, Combat Role (Sniper, Battler, etc.), & Pilot.  And also consider if there will be any other bonuses, like Target Lock gaining +1d10 ATK.

Mech Combat Roles & Pilot

This became a really challenging problem for the design team with essentially two camps.  We know we couldn’t have both pilot and mech role provide the same exact bonus because we had a limit of 10d10 and not much space left.  Earlier in the development of VER11, when we still had +HITs and +DEF, pilots gave a bonus +1 Hit and +1 DEF, with those gone we would have to decide what to do.

CAMP #1 (including this author)

• Pilots should improve the number of dice rolled
• Mech Combat Roles should improve your chance to Hit (Sniper Shoots on a 3+, Battler melees on a 3+, versatile Shoots and Melees on a 4+ etc.)

CAMP #2

• Mech Combat Roles should improve the number of dice rolled
• Pilots should improve your chance to hit (Sniper pilots shoot on a 3+, Brawler pilots melee on a 3+, versatile pilots hits and shoot and evade on a 4+ etc.)

Both camps had good reason for how this fit the verisimilitude of piloting a mech.   We went back and forth on this a lot and prototyped two different types of profiles for VER11, which was quite a burden on our layout editor but we’re grateful for them doing double the work.  While neither camp was wrong, and both options worked well we eventually decided on Camp #2 since it felt more correct that the pilot was improving the odds, while the machine was providing the ceiling.  In essence, only a true pilot could bring out the full potential (DEF on a 3+) for the Tallgeese (DEF on a 3+ with a huge defense dice pool) or a Gundam Dynames (Shoot 3+ with a huge def dice pool).

We had rebalanced all combat roles at the start of VER11, in VER10 a role would have a bonus ranging from +0 to +4, while in VER11 it ranged from +0 to +2 shortening the variance.    So before a Sniper might be +4, a firepower unit Shooting+3, a Raid unit Shooting +2 etc; this has all been collapsed down to a max of +2 on Shooting or Melee.  This meant we could do either +2d10 dice, or improve target number (TN) to hit like 5+ to 3+. 

But on the pilot side of things, we had simplified everything that Elite pilots HIT and DEF on a 4+, while an Ace unit HITs and DEF on a 3+.  But later on, we had the idea to further expand this.  Since one of VER11s goals was to reduce the number of “oh I forgot I have this ability” we ended up moving all previous pilot traits to optional upgrades, while all pilot bonuses became passive bonuses, allowing a unit to improve their TN for shooting, melee attack, melee defense, evade or morale.  We found it a lot better to have pilots modify TNs for both attack, defense and morale keeping it all one unified mechanic, rather than pilots improve Morale TN but provide bonus dice to combat.

Finalizing Weapons Dice

So with our goal of 4d10 – 10d10 on the dice pool we have the following.

• Frame & Performance 1-4
• Mech Combat Role 0-2
• Pilot 0 (but improves your TN to Hit or DEF)

With a cap of 10d10 that leaves us with (-4d10 Frame / Performance, -2d10 Mech Combat Role) = Weapons can at most be 4d10.

So we set the majority of weapons with attack dice of 2d10 to 4d10.  Weapons will be further differentiated by their Triggers which we’ll cover later.

Likewise for Defense, a mobile suit would be 3d10 Evade and 1d10 Melee DEF plus similar bonuses on Frame, Performance, and Combat Roles.  Super Robots would often be 2d10 Evade 2d10 Melee DEF with flexibility there for the slower Big O or Ideon types and the more agile Daitarn or Raideen types.