MechaStellar VER11 – Design Goals – Improving Triggers

In making MechaStellar VER11 we had a lot of new and interesting design challenges to improve the game.  Our overall goal to take VER10 and make it faster, more fun and easier to teach.  Weapon Triggers definitely fulfill the more fun part and so far its been fun to teach new playtesters that “yes you do get to roll another bucket of dice” on barrage.

That said while the Trigger system was fun, and the original Siege was blowing up cover left and right, there were some areas where it wasn’t perfect. We identified two areas for improvement and we’ve resolved both of those in the bonus October update. You can find the latest and greatest MechaStellar core rules here.

#1 Expected Attack Rolls

One of the biggest weaknesses of the previous Trigger system was that some weapons had a hard time landing a large number of hits. Critical, Bullseye and Barrage weapons would hit often, but Siege, Pierce and Counter weapons often struggle to hit. For those who were involved in the playtests you’ll know that the reason Focus gained an “OR” ability was to fix this problem late in the game for VER11 development.

Focus was a really elegant mechanic of transform any die into a 10, thus activating the weapon trigger.

Awesome for a lot of weapons, especially Crit weapons which gave them +2 hits. but for some like Siege and Pierce, if the attack couldn’t hit, an extra 10 wouldn’t change much. Thus we added in the “OR” option of +2 Hits. This way if you’re siege weapon was ready to unload a bucket of saving throws, you could also use Focus to guarnatee you’re hit made it through.

In short, it was a band-aid.

The new system was created thanks to a really great comment from a player. They recommended that all weapons act like Crit weapons (which is how the last 10 VER of MechaStellar operated) so that’s an easy sell. Then he recommended that all the trigger abilities just become bonuses on top of that.

To be honest, this is already how barrage works, where the barrage effect (roll lots of dice) and the same for bullseyes primary ability (target anyone) or Siege’s primary (blow up cover) was all independent of the dice roll. It was a big eureka moment for the Dev team and we jumped on it immediately. It’s been a big hit among the dev team and play testers and we hope you enjoy it too.

And as always, please share your feedback!! It’s super valuable too us.

#2 Remembering Rules

The other weakness of the previous Trigger system was that you had to remember what each trigger did when you were rolling the dice. Sometimes you remembered the effect after you rolled and realized perhaps another weapon would have been a better choice.

Now that all weapons default to Crit, and many have a bonus effect every weapon is effective by default, and some have a powerful add on effect (Bullseye – Target anyone | Barrage – Roll more dice | Siege – Blow up Cover) and you no longer need to worry about what you roll to use the effect.

While it may seem like a relatively minor change on paper, it did require us to readjust the points weighting for all weapons and do a full on rebalance. But fortunately we simplified a lot of design math moving to VER11 so it was less arduous than in the past. We hope you enjoy the new Trigger system!