MechaStellar VER11 Design Goals – Momentum & Pacing

Note, Momentum points have been renamed to Morale Points in VER11, we’ll be referring to them as Morale Points in this post.

While making MechaStellar VER11 we wanted to update the gameplay in a lot of ways, especially with how Momentum (now named Morale Points) and Pilot Skills worked. Before we start deep diving on Pilot Skills we wanted to revisit Morale Points (formerly Momentum) and how the overall speed of gameplay has changed.

As mentioned in the previous post, Morale Points (formerly Momentum points) now come from one of two sources

Make a Rally Save when you activate a unit.
1. Make more Rally Saves if they are [Elite] and/or a [Warship]
At the end of the Round gain Morale Points for each Control Point [CP] you control

#1 replaces Momentum Shifts that have been a staple for several years now. Instead of gaining Morale Points from specific movements. In VER11 we experimented with several ideas like moving closer to the enemy, starting or ending in engagement range, simply being in the opponents half of the battlefield, etc. Here’s a DEVchat on the topic

Momentum shift = End a move action within Melee Sensors (2nd value) of an enemy unit or control point.

Yeah that’s simple, but if you say end engagement range of an enemy OR A CP, it helps make Bullseye more valuable.

Oh and I wanted to add, if you lose the move closer to nearest enemy part, then it’s harder to chase an enemy, i.e. GM 4″ vs Dom 8″. The GM moves 8″ total trying to chase, the Dom moves 16″, you get no Momentum because you can’t end in engagement range.

Ohhh I see. But if we leave it as move closer and each move action is a momentum shift, couldn’t the GM gain M+3 from move move accel? I feel like that’s way too much

Yeah….it’s cool if you’re the last model on the field for a heroic charge, but not if there’s a whole army there

For a lot of reason, we eventually left that mechanic behind and moved to a simple and easy to remember mechanic that rewards your high morale pilots. Now your unit generates it upon activating, with high Morale characters having the best chance to generate Morale Points for your army. It also lets you now at the start of your turn exactly how much Morale points you can spend, without having to hope you can earn more later.

That said, it does make Morale Points more rare, while VER10 was notable for being able to spam pilot skills almost every Turn, that’s less true in VER11. You need to be judicious with how you spend Morale. That said many skills are cheaper than before.

With slower Momentum generation it means the gameplay is now more focused on capturing CPs. In VER10, with how easy it was to gain M+2 via a momentum shift on your turn, often times the boost from CPs at the end of the Round might not have even been necessary, with several playtesters reporting they maxxed out at M=10 at the end of the round via CPs 70% of the time.

Now CPs would be the focus, but we also wanted to make getting to the CP and fighting over it a bigger part of gameplay. That means shortening movement across the board. Later in VER10, many units moved from Move 4″ to Move 8″ after the Hexastellar update where everything moved to increments of 4″ instead of 2″. Some units had Move 12″, some had 16″.

With very high moves across the board it meant some long range weapons felt useless, while short range weapons, with a power boost for their poor range, were getting used all the time. It also meant if you shot someone, a fast character could easily melee you next turn. Here’s a DEVchat on that topic

Take for instance an enemy that attacked you at range 24″. With move 8″, you can move 16, you have a melee threat range of 4″, that’s 20 of the 24″ already. One accelerate action puts you in melee instantly. Perhaps these moments should be more rare.

While fun, and definitely has the Gundam Vs gameplay feel to it, it wasn’t for everyone. It also made it trivial to bounce around Control Points all over the board. We made the design choice to lower movements across the board, and make movement upgrades very expensive. Not only does this affect capturing CPs, it also greatly reinforces role identify, where Raid and Battler types with their inherent move bonus, don’t feel like weaker roles, because in the past other units could easily purchase Move upgrades. Now, almost no units purchase move upgrades. Here’s a DEVchat on the topic

MOVEMENT

Make OYW Move 4″ by default and 8″ for Raid & Battler

Also, let’s consolidate Melee+Battler, Raid +Interceptor, the roles aren’t too different now

A lot of good can come from anchoring basic units at Move 4″, Raid = 8″, Jets 12″ it makes you want that role because only that role can move fast (and capture CPs, or get Tactical Advantage etc.)

Yeah but what about Tallgeese or fast units like Justice who aren’t really Raid or Battler types?

We can let them upgrade movement but it will cost a shit ton of points so you need to consider if that’s worth it. Like if it costs 100 or 200pts for a move upgrade, you might want to invest those points in pilot or mech upgrades instead.

Oh, and thinking more on it, smaller base movements makes transforming MS more special (and the ability more worthwhile) by giving a nice move boost at the expense of melee defense.

CPs are harder to capture Round 1 unless you are bringing a Raid, Battler, or Aircraft. This made the game feel more leisurely in a good way, while allowing those 3 specific roles a chance to shine. Round 1 had each player advancing and popping off shots at max range, then Round 2 to 3 the real fight for CPs begins. The Bullseye weapons are great for letting you choose your target and also becoming stronger when the target is on the CP.

Round 3-5, those high speed units can try to avoid combat, and dodge and weave in the oppponents deployment zone to try and capture their home CP. It made for a lot of fun battles where there were reasons to do something besides attack actions every turn. Overall, we think you’ll enjoy the new game pace in MechaStellar VER11.

MechaStellar VER11 Design Goals – Saving Throws

While making MechaStellar VER11 we wanted to update the gameplay and make it overall less lethal while still allowing for some lethal spikes in gameplay that are ideally player controlled. One of the biggest steps to making this design goal a reality was the update of the Saving Throw or [Saves] system. Saving Throws have been greatly expanded in MechaStellar VER11, in retrospect it’s a very simple and elegant change but it did take us a while to get here.

In VER3 – 10 Saving Throws were almost universally Armor Saves, saves you rolled against an Armor Penetrating weapon the majority of which were beam weapons and heat weapons. Depending on the VER sometimes kinetic weapons had PEN albeit much lower, and various melee weapons had PEN. An Armor Save worked like this:

Armor Save
- Make a number of Armor Saves equal to the number of unblocked Hits your unit took. (Max 5)
- Roll a d10, if it is equal to or exceeds the weapons Armor Penetration you pass.
  - VER8-10 If you fail, take 1000 DMG.
  - VER3-7: If you fail, the unit is destroyed.
    - [Elite] units could spend [M] to avoid death.

MechaStellar has always had the ideal of emulating the persistent lethality present in the universal century of Mobile Suit Gundam, but over the years we’ve adjusted how armor saves worked to make games either more fun, more balanced or both. VER11 takes this two steps further.

Step 1 = Barrage Weapons

These weapons have very high rate of fire, so we realized we needed to change something. So for Beam Machine Guns all of them gained a special note saying [AP Saves = 500 DMG], this way if the beam machine gun is pumping out 10 hits (failed saves = 500 DMG) while the rifle only gets 5 hits (failed saves = 1000 DMG), they end up roughly even. Naturally, weapon balance doesn’t always work that perfectly, but that’s the initial goal we set.

Step 2 = # of Saves = Triggers

Previously the number of Saves would be equal to the number of unblocked hits. So if you got 5 times, you were making 5 saves.

While developing the weapon Triggers system, we experimented with some triggers like Pierce, Siege and Finisher generating Saves if you roll the Trigger. It worked out amazing for beam weapons.

Suddenly you could take 9 hits from a beam rifle, but because of an unlucky roll the attacker only had one Crit Trigger, meaning you only had to roll 1 Armor Save, then take 9 low damage hits. In the previous system it was 9 Hits and then 5 Armor Saves which was often super overkill for most units that weren’t a Super Robot, and even then it was catastrophic.

Now games would no longer potentially end early because of one lucky attack that absolutely obliterated a model while you lacked any momentum to protect the unit. There was one major downside. Triggers = Saves is great, but……what about weapons that didn’t have Armor Penetration?

A while ago we had removed Armor PEN from all regular weapons like rifles, bazookas etc. Those weapons could never benefit from that, which was a bummer.

Then the Eureka moment

“What if we just made alternate Saves for each weapon type”?

Again simple in hindsight, but never really occurred to us before. The impetus for this idea came from several competing ideas we were working on.

Suppression Mechanics on Machine Guns

Some wargames try to simulate suppression from machine gun fire by making morale worse or pinning a unit down and stopping their movement, we were trying to do this with machine gun traits already. Then we realized we could just make a “Mobility Save” where failing it could limit your movement.

(It was originally named Suppression Save, SP, but we didn’t want two S saves, and so Stun (or Stagger) kept ST abbreviation while Suppression became MB mobility Saves.)

Shield Breaks via Siege weapons or Finisher Phase

At this time Shields were extremely cheap in development and no longer modified your defense dice, so having one blow up was easy, involved no sheet changes and was encouraged because of how cheap they were. Figuring out how to do that was difficult. At the time, the Siege trigger was blowing up cover so we expanded it to include Shields, but it wound up with some weird sequencing issues. We also tried to do the same with the [Finisher Phase], which was still pretty rare. We stuck in a position where shields were cheap and hard to blow up, so everyone wanted one.

To solve this, we had the “Break Save”. All our regular weapons like cannons and bazookas which had 0 Armor Penetration, now had a reason to use a Save, a BR Break Save, which could blow up Shields on a failed save or cause damage.

Expanded Design Space for Weapons

Thanks to Step 1, we realized these saves didn’t need to do 1000 DMG either. MB could be 500 DMG, Break Saves could be 500 or possibly higher. Barrage MB weapons could be 200 DMG.

We no longer had blank space on the Save column of a weapon profile for non-beam weapons, and best of all, because all weapons now had a reason to invest into improved Saves, it made it much easier to balance weapons. All the weapons that used to have 0 Armor Penetration used to have very high damage. Instead of 700 or 800 DMG bazookas they were now 400 or 500 DMG.

Likewise, our problems with machine guns having no where to invest points into attack dice, we could now put those points into better Barrage Triggers, or high mobility saves. This game a lot of design room for all kinds of weapon types and was a tremendous win for the DEV Team.

Of course, we couldn’t forget ST Stun Saves or PP Push/Pull Saves. While these existed in VER9 as special Armor Saves, like 6S or 8P; we could now formalize them as separate saves in MechaStellar VER11. The mechanics got simpler and easy to use and we were able to shrink down the Push / Pull and Stun Saves special rules from 1 page down to 1/2 a page.

Overall the Save system was full of numerous wins. Weapons were easier to balance and less deadly. Saving throws, especially beam weapons were less deadly, all other weapons gained utility by possibly causing movement penalties, action penalties, forced movement or shield breaks.

With the universal rule that Saves = Trigger Now every weapon follows the same format

Roll attack.
Count hits.
Count triggers.
Hits = damage.
Triggers = saves.
Done.

There were definitely some concerns about lethality especially beam weapons going down. Here’s a DEVchat on that topic

HP is way too high if weapons are only doing like 1 Save per attack. Even worse if Iron Wall can let you take the beam shot…

Yeah, that’s a good point and Iron Wall is a cheap gurantee

To use Guncannon as an example, if the enemy has M=2 (and they almost always will) I would never use beam rifle when I could use cannons, because cannons will actually deal damage, when beam rifle gets even 4 hits through, if on average I pass 2 and Iron wall passes the other 2, I take no damage

So either Iron Wall needs to become M-3 or we need to make beams dangerous again

I guess we could change Iron Wall to maybe do +1 DEF & Pass 1 Save for the rest of the Turn . That also makes it Anti-Zeal

Yeah but then it’s stepping on the toes of Flash again, we’re trying to keep the two very distinct swim lanes now

True, true. What about Focus?

While lethality is down overall, it’s still very possible for your [Elite] and [Ace] pilots to still be very deadly. We’ll cover Pilot skills in depth in the future, and the most basic skill allows you to turn 1 die into a 10, meaning you can always add +1 Trigger and thus +1 Save to the target. Rest assured, if the dice are aligned Amuro can still one shot a Zaku with a beam rifle, and a beam saber is often no question.

On the other hand, we’ve had battles of 3 man squads of Zakus and GMs go 2-3 rounds of melee without wiping each other out. It’s led to some really fun moments on the tabletop with “WAIT HE SURVIVED”, “NO WAY, THE LONE SURVIVOR JUST KILLED 2 GUYS”. We hope you get to enjoy moments like these as well with the new and improved MechaStellar VER11 Save system.

MechaStellar VER11 Design Goal – Finisher Evolution

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. Finisher is the 2nd most modified Trigger since we started developing VER11, coming in right after Barrage. Ultimately, Finisher was removed as a Trigger but we thought the development process of ups and downs, repeated dead-ends then eventually repurposing Finisher into an alternate system would be worth the deep dive. So keep reading below.

At the start of VER11 Finisher had the following ability.

Finisher
- When target is below 50% HP, each Trigger deals +1 Hit. (Can Stack with Critical)

This is probably the simplest and cleanest version of Finisher we ever had looking back on it. It was also quite potent making it the most commonly used combination trigger, combining with Critical, Bullseye, Siege, etc making every combination deadly.

On the flip side, it was completely inferior to Critical outside of Combination triggers. That meant we were always looking for different ways to implement Finisher. Finisher in VER9 and VER10 went through many different revisions providing several different frameworks, some loved, some hated by players. Finisher in VER11 is major improvement over all previous versions, both from a balancing, thematic, and enjoyment perspective. But before we get to the [Finisher Phase] let’s go through Finisher’s evolution.

With the VER10 Finisher Rules of make X+ Hits to Trigger a Finishing Blow we tried with

Finisher
- Each trigger lowers the number of unblocked hits needed for a Finishing Blow.

This was very similar to VER10 but didn’t help our lethality problems, or all the problems we had in VER10 so it was scrapped. It also had a number of sequencing problems when it came to attack and defense, when a targets shield could be used, and whether it would be broken (by the finisher). Here’s a DEV chat on the topic.

How about a system where Finisher trigger immediately activates Finisher phase?

Only way this works is to make defender roll first, then attacker, then finisher phase.

Yeah, but sequencing gets clearer for Shields / Siege

Ok, but it gets ugly because now you have to commit to Flash / Iron Wall before knowing the attack. I mean yeah, it might have that Gundam EX Vs feel, but has big potential for feels bad moments; and heavily lets the attacker probe defenses without burning momentum. Again not a bad thing but probably not a good sequence, even if it gave us fun nostalgia for VER 4-9 with defender rolling vs attack.

At the start of VER11, the number of Saves you rolled was still equal to the number of unblocked hits (capped at 5). Same as VER10. We were looking at ways to modify this and make the game less lethal, since high attack beam weapons were still extremely lethal. One option was Finisher.

Finisher
- Each Trigger generates an unblockable Hit.

This way a Finisher weapon was creating Saving Throws regardless of the opponents defense roll. A novel concept, but ended up being a mess for mental math later. Around this time we were also developing the saving throw system in parallel which we’ll cover in the next post. At the start there were only Armor Saves (just like VER10) with some unique ones like Stun versions or Push / Pull versions. We then added in a “Finisher Save”. Here’s some DEV notes during this time period

Next version – Finisher triggers generate Finisher saves if there are any unblocked hits. But that gets weird with armor saves and finisher saves having different generation mechanics, Armor Saves is one per hit, Finisher Saves is per trigger , probably confusing for new players.

Next version – Finishers are just Crit weapons, but a passive bonus in the Finisher phase, they cost more than Crit weapons (maybe too strong and doesn’t help me blow up shields, without going to finisher phase)

Next version – Finisher weapons all have Siege (thus every roster can deal with shields now) and also a bonus during Finisher phase, which is Crit on trigger, they cost more than regular siege weapons

Next version – Finisher does generate finisher saves. Turn ARM PEN weapons into PEN 8+, now all saves depend on triggers {{this is when we prototyped what became the final Saving Throw system}}. Save = Triggers lowers lethality on beams, if we kept it as unblocked hits = saves then finisher saves would be super overkill.

However, it can get kind of weird if you have more saves than hits, do you still cap saves with hits? What happens if you get 5 Triggers and thus 5 Saves but there only 2 unblocked hits; okay well I guess 2 Hits and 5 Saves. Alright, but what about squads? How do I split up 2 hits and 5 saves across 3 units??? {{We eventually solved the Squad issue}}

Next version – Unified trigger and save mechanic. [E]nergy weapons and Finisher weapons cause armor saves and finisher saves respectively, where # of Saves = # of Unblocked Hits (Max 3). The trigger for these weapons raises the save cap by 1. For example, Finisher 8+, roll 2 8s, the cap is now 5, better get 5 unblocked hits through to maximize that

Next version – Finisher = Crit if target HP<50%, or Tac Adv (Blindside, high ground etc.). Maybe anti grunt if we do Frame 1-2. Conditional = Bonus in Valor phase.

Next version – That was way too complicated, let’s revert back. 1 Trigger = 1 Save. If there are 0 unblocked Hits then there are 0 Saves. Otherwise, Hits and Saves are not dependent on each other. How about we just get rid of Finisher Saves for now, and Finisher = Each Trigger is DMG+100.

This became our go to Finisher for the longest time.

Finisher
- Each Trigger gives DMG+100 to each unblocked Hit

That said, as hinted in some of the DEV Notes earlier, we had also been developing a [Finisher Phase] system simultaneously. Eventually, we combined that concept with the Valor skill such that using Valor meant entering the [Finisher Phase] on your attack. Valor was extremely well loved by playtesters. But more on its development later.

As we developed the Finisher Phase we also realized that we no longer needed to have separate Finisher weapons. You didn’t need to have “Drill Attack” and “Giga Drill Breaker” as separate weapons, each costing separate points (and often a lot of points). Instead you could “Drill Attack” who’s special ability was “[Finisher Phase] Role change to Breaker”. Thus your regular weapon with Pierce as its Trigger switches to a combination trigger like Breaker (Pierce + Crit) during the Finisher Phase.

We could then apply this to various fighters, GaoGaiGar’s Heaven and Hell going to [Finisher Phase] Role Change Overkill, Wing Zero’s Twin Buster Rifle max output would [Finisher Phase] Role Change to Dominate, Sky Gridman having a laser circus would [Finisher Phase] Role Change to Swarm. It created a lot of distinct possibilities with minimal mechanics needed, instead reusing what was existing.

Your super robot could attack normally and when you wanted to fully commit to the attack and use Valor, suddenly you cut loose, do the impossible and make a massive powerful attack. It meant we no longer had to make Finishing moves dependent on Momentum (now Morale Points), or Power, or single use, etc. It was just dependent on you using the Valor skill. Everything was finally coming together.

Now that the [Finisher Phase] system (and the 1 Trigger = 1 Save System) was completed we realized it was time to say goodbye to Finisher as a Trigger. It was a fun way to start of VER11’s development, but now it’s true power was codified in a distinct game mechanic, satisfying one of our design goals to leverage existing systems rather than create new mechanics. In this case, leveraging the valor skill (which itself went through a dozen iterations) and weapon abilities to build out the finisher phase creating dramatic and anime accurate moments on the tabletop.

MechaStellar VER11 Design Goals – Bombard & Siege Trigger Evolution

In making 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 can blow up cover with your first attack then fire on the exposed target with your next attack”. Bombard and Siege went through a lot of revisions, one eventually being removed while the other was heavily modified until it reached it’s final form which we’ll discuss in this post.

At the start of VER11 development Bombard and Siege had the following abilities:

Bombard
- If the target has no Cover, each Trigger is a Critical Hit.
- Bombard was priced cheaper than Crit, a CRIT 9+ weapon is the equivalent of a Bombard 8+ weapon.
- Typically used on Cannon types and some missiles
Siege
- Each Trigger rolled blows up 1 level of Cover, i.e. reducing Level 3 to Level 2 Cover or Level 1 to Level 0.
- If you attack Cover directly the weapon trigger becomes Siege, if it was already siege, improve your Trigger TN by 2, i.e. Siege 9+ to 7+
- Typically given to Bazookas, some missiles and some melee weapons

We went through several variations of each trait, trying to preserve the combined arms combination where Siege weapons benefit bombard weapons. Siege was a tricky beast, we were experimenting with Siege also destroying or weakening Shields / Armor as well as Cover. Triggers could blow up Cover, or lower a targets shield or armor level by 1. Whether it was permanent or temporary was still up in there. Here’s one DEV conversation

I think I figured out how to fix sequencing on Siege

and make the rules text shorter

so each Siege trigger lowers Cover or Shield bonus by 1. Cover is permanently lowered, Shield is for the rest of the round (synergy by activating bazooka unit first). The iron wall skill reactivates the shield bonus

To permanently break shields, we’ll have to rely on Finisher weapons

so finisher needs to be common either on common weapons like a beam saber

or maybe on everyone’s generic close combat [cc] attack

At the time of this discussion, Finisher weapons were updated to cause a “Battle Damage” save which could blow up a shield first and foremost, and if target had no shield then it might cause system shock like severe damage to a (weapon), leg (propulsion) or head (main camera). This eventually morphed into “Break Saves [BR6+]” and “System Shock” Saves which we’ll discuss later. Likewise, we’ll talk about the Finisher Trigger in the next post.

While we made headway with the shield breaking philosophy moving into Break Saves, Siege continued to be a difficult Trigger to work with, if we wanted to have Siege affect a targets Shields, Armor, or Defense in addition to blowing up cover. Sequencing in particular for the attack action (dice rolls -> triggers -> skills -> bonuses like Cover and Shields -> Defender skills) and Siege was quite messy since the Trigger would occur before the Defender could use Skills, so having a Skill that would prevent your shield from blowing up got messy in the sequencing.

So Amuro would use either Flash or Iron Wall depending on who he’s fighting, so we could have Flash or Iron Wall skills prevent your Shield from being reduced or broken

Yeah, but right now defender doesn’t choose skills until after attacker has resolved attack and triggers which means Siege triggers can reduce the Shield to 0 before the defender even chooses skills

right..well, we could have the skill restore the shield bonus, like if you used Iron Wall this turn, restore your Shield bonus

it feels like we’re just making this more complicated than it needs to be

Likewise, we run into problems if we give Siege a passive bonus like +1d10 ATK if target has no shield. Does that activate if the target started with a shield, but then your triggers blow up the shield, at that points do you add the extra die. All that spawned this DEV conversation.

I don’t like Siege being deadspace if target has no shield or cover

Run through several ideas, best thematic one is that Siege provides system shock saves (Battle Damage) if target has no shield or cover bonus.

However, for sequencing the cleanest way to do this is to make sure this trigger only happens if you start the attack and target has no Cover / Shield bonus. Basically attack 1 needs to annihilate that shield bonus, while attack 2 can cause battle damage.

Our VER11 Design Goal was to make things fast and fun without being overly complicated. Obviously these weren’t working so we tried a few more ideas. We also briefly considered Siege Triggers creating a “DEF penalty” like so

If target has Level 0 Cover each additional Trigger is -1 DEF bonus on this ATK only
- DEF Bonus includes Shields / Barriers / Armor etc and is Min. +0 DEF.
- i.e. Level 3 Cover, 5 Triggers, Level 0 Cover and target has DEF-2 (Min 0)
Problem of course being, -DEF is the same as +HIT, so it’s mathematically about the same as CRIT but with a limit that DEF can’t go below 0. This idea went belly up as well.

We considered Siege Trigger = +100 DMG if target has no shield bonus. But that stepped on the toes of Finisher, and also became a self-feeding ability since Siege also weakened shields. Not to mention the sequencing issues of does this apply during an attack when the shield is destroyed or not?

Eventually we moved on to just allow for Siege and Bombard weapons to have deadspace, times when the triggers won’t happen, but give them an always on passive instead. And so we got:

Bombard (Passive): If target has a Shield gain +1d10 attack
Siege (Passive): If target has no Shield gain +1d10 attack

Shields were much cheaper at this point of development, because Break Saves could wipe them out. And so we added these passives that way if your opponent had an all shield army, you were incentivized to bring Bombard weapons. This was okay for a bit but felt kind of gamey. While we were going through another pass on the rules to trim things that felt excessive, complicated or redundant, we eventually we got rid of Bombard, since Bullseye was taking over the no-cover Trait.

So then what do we do with Siege?

Siege was a fan favorite ability, and we held onto this Trigger until the final week. It was so popular that we even included a gameplay example in the core rules to reenact a favorite tactic of Justice Gundam which was to throw it’s beam boomerang and try to destroy a piece of cover. If they lucked out on the die roll and sliced through that building, they then used its cannons against the exposed target (Bombard weapons gave a Crit vs targets without Cover). The player who discovered that combo still thinks they are a genius =)

That said, Siege did eventually change. Not because of that combo, no in fact we loved it and everyone loved the “Trigger = Blow up that many levels of Cover”. The problem became that, if there was no Cover then Siege did nothing. And late in development 50% of Combo triggers were Siege + another ability. So having 1/2 of your combo trigger be useless if the target had no cover felt rather underwhelming.

One of the goals of the recent combat redesign has been making every weapon trigger feel both intuitive and exciting.

Siege triggers destroyed Cover was awesome! It produced some spectacular moments where a lucky roll could flatten an entire defensive position, but it also had a few downsides:

The trigger was only useful when Cover was present.
Occasionally you would roll 0 Triggers and not interact with Cover at all.
Siege didn’t combine well with other trigger abilities.
It limited the design space for Super Robot finisher weapons.

The new direction is to separate the battlefield role from the trigger effect.

Siege Passive

Reduce the target’s Cover Level by 1.

Instead of hoping to roll enough triggers to demolish terrain, Siege weapons now always accomplish their primary purpose—they weaken enemy fortifications. This makes Siege more reliable while reducing swingy outcomes where one lucky attack completely erased multiple terrain features. With Cover removal moved to a passive ability, Siege triggers are free to become something universally useful. The current direction is:

Trigger

Generate +1 additional Save.

This creates a clear distinction between the defensive-breaking roles.

Critical = More Hits
Pierce = Harder Saves
Siege = More Saves

Rather than punching through armor like Pierce, Siege represents overwhelming structural damage—more systems failing, more secondary explosions, and more catastrophic impacts.

This also opens the door to much more interesting combination triggers. Previously, many Super Robot finisher attacks defaulted to Breaker, because it was the only melee combination that consistently felt rewarding. With Siege becoming a universally useful trigger, there is now room for another powerful melee archetype, Overkill.

Breaker

Critical + Pierce

Each Trigger becomes:

+1 Hit
+1 Save TN

This represents concentrated penetration—drills, lances and radiation attacks designed to punch through or lethally bypass heavy armor.

Overkill

Critical + Siege

Each Trigger becomes:

+1 Hit
+1 Save

Rather than piercing, these attacks simply overwhelm the target through sheer destructive force.

This is a much better thematic fit for weapons such as giant hammers, rocket punches, pile bunkers, and other crushing finishers.

MechaStellar VER11 Design Goals – Barrage Trigger Evolution

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” and see their smiles in response. Since Barrage was the genesis of weapon triggers, and also the one that experienced the most changes we wanted to write about it first.

For Reference here’s how the Barrage discussion started

Enfilading fire = We could make Barrage an anti-squad weapon. But then it would only be useful against squads and not useful every game.

Sustained fire option = We could have barrage convert failed failed hits into hits, low power, not too exciting, and doesn’t keep parity with other weapons

Triple Crit option = Maybe Barrage triggers could be worth 3 Hits instead of Crit which is 2 Hits. Fun and definitely a hail of gunfire.

Dakkadakka option = threshold hits generate extra dice. Very fun, but we now we have an issue of weird mental math with dice overflow. Like start adding dice to your pool, but then if it goes over 10d10 then it’s extra hits. It’s not too strong but it’s not smooth at all.

SuperDakka option = What about an option where you reroll the trigger dice. And keep reroll trigger dice until you stop rolling triggers? This was max. fun, but then one playtester demonstrated how annoying it can be when you “pick up, and drop a die” and magically it keeps landing on the same number.

Indeed, even Buzzsaws will have the Barrage trait

From there we settled on the following:

Barrage 8+
- Every 8+ is an exploding hit, after counting Hits & Triggers. Reroll all your Trigger dice for bonus Hits. This reroll is considered a separate roll and does not count against the 10d10 dice cap.

Now we had to sanity check this in a couple games to see how powerful this is compared to Crit weapons. As mentioned in a previous post, we decided against all weapons have CRIT on 10s and instead CRIT would only be for certain Triggers like CRIT or BULLSEYE.

So rolling a 10 on Barrage was just a regular hit (that you got to roll again). Barrage has been the most fun ability, but statistically it’s slightly weaker overall than Crit, but it does have a higher chance of getting at least 1+ (albeit lower DMG) hits through.

The DEV Discussion looked like this:

We need to explain how to pick up dice in quick dice section. First remove the 1s and 2s. Then pick up all hits that are not threshold, i.e. Barrage 8+, pick up 3-7 as hits, and count your hits. Then pick up the threshold and count (don’t forget crits) and reroll them, then final count.

Actually maybe we should remove crits.

Definitely remove crits

Okay so if Focus moves back to +1 Hit and Hit on a 3+, then we need to make barrrage always hit on a 3+ otherwise we have a massive sequencing pitfall where players might scoop dice before focusing then forget how many 3+ they had.

At the time we were developing Barrage, some of the pilot skills were getting Overhauled. Focus would no longer be the “Hit on 3+” skill because now elite pilots were already hitting on 4+ or 3+. Later, one of the in development pilot skills would let you hit on a 2+. With all that in mind, we realized we would have sequencing issues with barrage.

If you wait for the reroll to declare skills, do you then have to go back in time and count those dice with the better Hit Target Number? What if you declare it before the reroll, but then it didn’t matter because all your reroll dice were Hits anyways.

From that discussion we decided that:
- Barrage (Passive): This weapon always hits on a 3+.
- [Anti Squad] Elite Pilots get +1 Hit per Model, Ace Pilots also get +2 Hits per model in enemy unit.

Eventually, the “Anti-squad” effect got moved into an upgrade ability.

We were also considering a combined arms ability where Barrage causes a Suppression effect if the target is <50% HP they must make a Morale Save or lose a Move Action. This would combo with Bullseye which Crits against crippled targets that have only one move action. Ultimately, this train of thought let to “Mobility Saves [MB6+]” which we’ll discuss in the Saving Throw post.

Since Trigger and Skills were in parallel development paths, we had to keep updating Barrage as well. When the “Hit on a 2+ Skill” went through testing, Barrage instead turned into

Barrage (Passive): The Hit on a 2+ Skill is [M-0] for Barrage weapons, however, you may not use the Zeal skill.

Eventually that skill was removed entirely (who knows, it may reappear one day), so Barrage just reverted back to

Every 8+ is an exploding hit, after counting Hits & Triggers. Reroll all your Trigger dice for bonus Hits. This reroll is considered a separate roll and does not count against the 10d10 dice cap.

But it doesn’t end there. In the last week of VER11 development we came to a breakthrough. The other Triggers had hit roughly even parity, but Barrage still lagged a bit behind, a fun trigger but mathematically slightly weaker than all the others. While we were doing the very last round of testing, one DEV asked:

Is there any reason why we only reroll the triggers? What if we rerolled all Hits instead?

The reasoning was that we didn’t allow for rerolls to spawn Triggers. The reason was, back then, before we developed the Save system, we didn’t want any more triggers or saving throws because that could cause an insane tidal wave of damage. If they reroll all those dice, players might mistakenly assume they could hit and trigger again.

However, since the Save system also finished its parallel developed, the number of saves was drastically reduced per attack action, and Barrage weapons all had 1/2 DMG saves we realized there was no longer a reason to prevent additional Triggers or Saves. And we so we come to final barrage.

Barrage
- After counting up Hits & Triggers, remove all Misses then reroll the remaining dice one additional time adding any new Hits or Triggers to the original total.

First Count your Triggers (especially for Barrage) – Place a different color die showing the number of Triggers. This marker reminds you how many saves it will cause later. Pictured above the unit hits on a 5+ and will Barrage on 8+. They placed a different color d10 showing the number of triggers [3]. The player then removes any misses like the [1&2] then sifts through the Hits [6] and Triggers [8,8,9].

Barrage – At this point the player says to their opponent “OK, 4 Hits and 3 Triggers”. Then the attacker picks up successful (TN 5+) dice [6,8,8,8] and rerolls them into [5,5,10,10] = +4 Hits and +2 Triggers. “Ok, 8 Hits and 5 Triggers, your turn for Defense”.

Next post we’ll talk about the evolution of Siege & Bombard.

MechaStellar VER11 Design Goals – Sensors + Target Lock

In making MechaStellar VER11 one of our design goals was to repurpose existing stats to accomplish some heavy lifting on core mechanics instead of having to rely on specific traits or abilities. Like the Morale stat before it, Sensors became part of this paradigm shift, becoming an invaluable stat to boost your weapon Triggers.

In VER10 we debuted Dual Sensors profiles for Snipers and Firepower types, to represent how they had advanced sensors for long range combat whether it be sniping or long range bombardment / indirect fire, while the second value referred to their regular Sensor value. We also upgraded sensors to let it be both offensive and defensive, giving you a bonus d10 to ATK or DEF if the target was in your sensors range. It was a good idea on paper, but was often forgotten until later leading to many times where an attack was finished and one player went “WAIT, I forgot I got +1d10 to DEF because you’re in my Sensors range”. We wanted to avoid that situation in the future.

Still, we had to come up with an idea that would make Sensors valuable, not just for shooting characters. Something that would benefit melee centric characters. We experimented with a few mechanical ideas, but actually one of the Dev’s had a great idea about Sensors as a utility instead of a combat stat. And so we have the “Sensors Sweep” action.

Sensors Sweep

Designer’s Note: This is a mission-oriented action to earn VP. Create a narrative or use one of these examples: “Locate a missing scientist”, “map the battlefield”, “find the asteroid demolition charges”, “New Mech telemetry”, or “Analyzing Reactor Signatures”.

VER11 Scan a Control Point (CP) or enemy unit within Close Range Sensors, neither of which have been scanned before. Gain VP = 10x [Your Frame + Performance Level].
- If you are able to capture that CP, do so immediately.

The idea for this action was pulled from the VER10 Wargame rules for “Actions on Objective” which said:

It can represent searching for a missing pilot / scientist, secret cache of equipment, or top–secret design information. It can also represent performing necessary actions to complete the mission like setting demolition charges to break apart an asteroid or destroying the power conduits in a colony laser.

Now it’s integrated into the MechaStellar base game as a fun and useful utility to earn VP while playing the game. It’s a great way to simulate the various mecha shows, both real robots and super robots like Dancouga pictured above where each mission (or episode) isn’t centered around fighting but instead a very specific plotline like locating a missing person, making contact with rebel forces, finding the enemy mind control machine etc.

We briefly considered letting it generate Morale Points (Momentum) but decided against it. However, it has become an extremely useful ability to capture a CP without having to end your turn on top of the CP. Giving players one more action to use instead of burning 100% of your actions attacking the enemy. Also very valuable for our strategists with a cheap low performance rear echelon unit.

Long Range and Close Range Sensors

That said we still wanted that second sensors value to have more meaning, and we knew that Sensors = Defense bonus would not be returning. So we took some inspiration from Armored Core and now we have a Long Range Fire Control System (FCS) and Close Range FCS. So a Sniper might be Long Range Sensors 24″ and Close Range Sensors 0″, meanwhile a Battler is 0″/8″ and a Versatile unit is 8″/8″ which gave a really strong unit combat role identity.

The Long Range sensors would improve shooting attack while close range sensors would improve melee attack. Initially we were hesitant to give melee a boost, since in VER10 every unit had a “Close range stat” of 8″, but then we decided to make that melee or versatile types only, so now those units would get a bonus with beam sabers while snipers and firepower types would not. Likewise, your melee monster isn’t getting a shooting bonus.

From there we also adjusted which weapons would count as melee, making the cutoff roughly 20″+ = Shooting and <20″ = Melee, so Vulcans moved into the melee category, and considering how many melee monstrosities rely on vulcans it actually worked out pretty well. But unfortunately, added about 6 hours of work for our layout editor. Sorry….

Last but not least, we are bringing back “Sensors = Starting Deployment range” from previous editions, but this time only for Close Range sensors. This way you’re melee and front line versatile units can start further away from the table edge, and also allowed us to drastically simplify deployment rules.

As for bonuses, as we mentioned in the Elite unit post, we were trying to eliminate bonus dice abilities to give us more range to work with when developing weapon dice and combat roles, so Target Lock instead provides an extremely powerful “Improve Trigger Target Number by 1”. So if you normally Crit on a 9+, if you get within sensors range you can now Crit on an 8+.

Very powerful and very worthwhile, so for those of you worried about Rapid Fire being removed meant we would go back to castling, there is still a very powerful incentive for getting closer or for upgrading your Sensors with the Unit Upgrade rules. We’re also experimenting with making sensors boost a freebie for advanced grunts to make grunt units cheaper across the board. We’ll see how that works out!

In the next post we’ll start the deep dive on weapon triggers.

MechaStellar VER11 Design Goals – The Genesis of Weapon Triggers

While making MechaStellar VER11 we had to fix some core balance problems that arose at the end of VER10, in doing so we’ve created an entirely new weapon system called “Triggers” that we’re really proud of, and we’re sure you will enjoy on the tabletop. Read on for a discussion on how we got here and the genesis of “Weapon Triggers”.

At the end of VER10 we were doing some heavy testing on Warships as well as small size units like Aura Battler Dunbine, VOTOMS, and soon to be Code Geass by popular request. At the end of VER10, power creep led to Machine guns having a base 10d10 attack dice, and were capped at DMG 200. So for a small size machine gun you would see on a Knightmare Frame or Armored Trooper, if we lowered DMG to 100 we’d have to raise one of the other stats.

One option was to raise the rapid fire stat, say from +2 Hits in Rapid Fire range to +5 Hits in rapid fire range. Another option was to increase the attack above 10d10, with those dice being auto hits. So a 15d10 machine gun rolled 10d10 with +5 auto-hits. While the damage wasn’t very high by default, it was a bit demoralizing having so many auto-hits coming at you and having no realistic way to completely dodge the attack.

Then once you toss in pilot upgrades, a legendary soldier like Chirico could be pumping out high volumes of hits on attack and counterattack while also racking up Finishing Blows. Finishing Blow proved to be a very troublesome system, that was awesome for super robots but absolutely busted for any machine gun units, especially small units. We’ll deep dive on Finisher in a separate post.

Still you might be asking? “Well if this is a big problem for small size units, why not just get rid of small size units and make them use the same weapons as everybody else?”

And that’s a valid point!

Problem #1 For people who like versimilitude the 2m mech having the same damage profile as the 18m mech doesn’t feel great.
- Still it’s an abstraction so we can make do.
- But then we also have these two problems.
Problem #2 – Unfortunately problems were popping up on normal sized units too, especially when you add Squads into the mix.
- Plus machine guns + rapid fire was either overkill or unsatisfying.
Problem #3 – Rapid Fire heavily encouraged, getting super close, all the time, and sometimes felt like a punishment for rifles and bazookas who were heavily balanced around 1-2 unblocked hits, where rapid fire range feeling like a requirement to attack any evasive units. Something had to change.
- For Warships Rapid Fire range was essential to making them functional

So the DEV Team started working on “Barrage” as a trait that machine guns have, that let them feel like machine guns. Barrage was going to be a DakkaDakka type trait where rolling 10s were exploding dice that could be rolled again. This way, the small machine gun could be DMG 100, but have a bigger Barrage trait, i.e. [Barrage 8+]. Then the question came up, well does Barrage and CRIT stack? So 10s are worth double but also explode into more dice? If it’s Barrage 8+ are those also Crits? Generally, the Devs felt it should be Crit and Barrage because it might get complicated.

So the DEV Team asked a simple question. “What if we got rid of rapid fire?”

“What if you got rid of rapid fire? Replace with battlefield roles like Barrage, Bullseye, Counter, Finisher, etc.”

Now that’s a novel idea.

Getting rid of rapid fire meant we no longer had to worry about going over 10d10, we didn’t have to worry about machine guns spiking up to incredible number by virtue of being 12″ closer, we didn’t have to worry about some weapons being ineffective until you get closer forcing you to always move in for our staple weapons of rifles and machine guns, and especially Warship guns. We wouldn’t have to worry about writing rules to benefit or not benefit machine guns, i.e. DMG<300 or ATK>7d10, we could just say “This bonus applies to Barrage weapons”, and it make it way easier to calculate weapon points without half a dozen nested if statements. This would solve a lot of problem we have had over the years.

Suddenly we would open up a whole new design space for each weapon type, giving them all a Battle Field Role, where rolling this number or better would trigger a special effect; thus the name “Weapon Trigger” was born. Here’s a copy paste from the Dev notes doc, that shows our initial brainstormed ideas from that day for triggers and even a few melee weapon ideas.

Weapon Trigger Brainstorming

Crit 10+ = Crit on a 10 like usual
Counter 7+ = Only these weapons can Counter, but during Counterattack they instead hit on a 7+
- We can combo this with the Intuition Skill – Gain Counter 9+, if you already had counter then improve the number by +2
- To avoid this becoming super long we should not let the attacker get a counterdefense, but you can still use shields, cover, etc. to block.
Barrage 8+ Exploding dice on 8+, each 8 means rolling extra dice. This will be a separate dice pool so we don’t have to worry about the 10d10 cap.
- Because there’s a lot of sequencing issues with pilot skills, this weapon should probably Auto Hit on a 3+, Elite units instead gain bonus Hits per model in the squad making it a great anti-squad weapon
Bullseye 8+ These weapons Crit on a 8+ vs a unit on a CP or a unit with <2 Move Actions (crippled).
- Can target any unit, elite units gain a +HIT bonus
- Can cause System shock saves to cripple legs
Bombard – Crit on Targets without Cover. Trait for cannons, will combo well with Bazookas (Siege)
Siege 10+ Rolling this number blows up one piece of cover.
- Define cover by levels like 1-3, which gives +1-3 DEF. Each time a piece of cover is blown up lower the level by 1.
- Maybe Siege should also blow up Shields which was really common in 0079
- Simplest might be blow up shield instead of weakening, so if it’s a level 2 S2 Shield, then you need 2 triggers to blow it up, 1 trigger doesn’t hurt it, which would ease the bookeeping burden.
- Maybe using the Iron wall skill means your shield can no longer be broken that Turn, but then we run into a weird timing issues for the attack action…
Finisher 8+ = 8s are crits when target is below 50% HP

What about Combination Triggers?

AOE = Barrage (Anti Squad) + Siege (Anti Cover)
Breaker = Pierce + Finisher
CIWS = Barrage + Counter
Dominate (Warship) = Bullseye + Finisher?
IDF = Siege + Bombard?
Overkill = Crit + Finisher?

Weapon Type Brainstorming

Drill = Pierce
Scythe = Finisher
Saber = Crit or Counter?
Axe = Crit
Hammer = Siege
[CC] = Bombard or Counter?

A lot has changed since then, some triggers like Barrage have merged, others like AOE and IDF have become separate bonus Traits, but overall many Triggers are still very similar to their original incarnation. Before we start the deep dive on Weapon Triggers for Barrage / Bullseye, Bombard / Siege, and Finisher we’re going to take a small detour for Sensors and Target Lock which instead of bonus attack dice will instead modify a units Trigger value.

MechaStellar VER11 Design Goals – Momentum and Morale

Preface: Based on a number of requests from bilingual players, Momentum Points are being renamed to Morale Points.

One of the goals of VER11 has been reducing overall lethality while preserving the exciting moments that Momentum and Morale creates. One of the bigger changes at the end of VER10 was to give both players higher starting Momentum (Morale Points) to be used on pilot skills. This allows Flash to be used on Defense more often to prevent alpha strikes and help buffer early game mistakes. However, since units can generate Momentum on their turn, starting at M=10 was sometimes a penalty. In VER11 we’ve kept the spirit of that system in place, but instead of one player starting at 10, and the other lower; instead we have one player start at 5 and the other start higher.

VER10 Starting Momentum = Tally up your Elite level. The player with the lowest starts with M=10, the other player starts 10 minus the difference
- (i.e. Elite 7 vs Elite 4, difference of 3, the other player starts with M=7).
VER11 Starting Momentum = The player with the highest Elite Level starts at [M=5]. The other player starts 5 plus the difference in Elite Level to a maximum of [M=10].
- Player 1’s Elite Level is 7, Player 2’s is 4, the difference is 3, Player 1 starts with M=5, Player 2 starts with 5+3 = [M=8]

VER10 had 3 competing Momentum systems.

One tied to Momentum shifts, where battlefield movement rewarded or punished momentum.
One tied to Morale which includes Captain’s orders that would allow the whole army to rally or the enemy to rout and a general Morale mechanics like when a pilot dies, or pilot traits that let you gain momentum on your turn or force your opponent to rout when you attack.
Lastly, capturing Control Points (CPs) rewarded you with Momentum at the end of each Round.

Historically, Momentum Shifts were tied directly to movement. Players gained or lost Momentum based on whether they moved toward or away from enemy units. This system successfully encouraged aggressive play and discouraged castles and kiting, but it also created several unintended interactions.

Because Momentum generation was tied to movement distance rather than battlefield objectives, players occasionally found ways to “farm” Momentum. The most notable example involved Zeal activations where players could spend Momentum, trigger a Momentum Shift, and immediately recover the Momentum they had just spent.

The system was functional, but over time it became clear that players were sometimes interacting with the Momentum economy rather than the battlefield itself. VER11 slims down the Momentum system to just two systems. We’re keeping CPs = Momentum / Morale Point generation, and now we’re going to better integrate every unit’s Morale stat.

As a reminder, we’re switching from “Momentum points” to “Morale Points” so from here on out we will start referring to them as Morale Points.

Control Points continue to provide the backbone of the Morale Point economy.

At the end of each round, players gain Morale Points for every Control Point they control. This ensures that battlefield objectives remain important and prevents games from becoming focused entirely on destroying enemy units. Player’s were committing to fighting on top of CPs to take and hold control of them because each CP could refill your stock of Morale points at the end of each Round. That type of gameplay was exactly what we wanted. Thus keeping CPs as a Morale Point generator was a no-brainer.

For an alternate way to gain Morale Points we experimented with a lot of different avenues. Momentum shifts were well beloved by players because it gave each unit a change to earn Momentum points / Morale points on their turn, which could change the tide of battle. That said, Momentum Shifts were very easy to game. First we rewrote the rules several times so the only time you would get those morale points would be if you started or ended your turn within engagement range of an enemy, this way you were rewarded for closing into melee or being locked in engagement range and gain [M+1]. It worked but it was more, or less the same as VER10 and we were still running into problems with people gaming the system.

So we decided to do something radical. A brand new system the rewarded our high morale pilots, that extremely simple and easy to remember.

The other major change is the expanded role of Morale. Historically, Morale Saves occurred infrequently. Most units could go several games without interacting with the Morale system at all. While Morale was thematically important, it often lacked battlefield relevance.

So with that, we started experimenting more with the Morale stat which was historically underused in VER10. Instead of an automatic [M+1] we considered having your units make a Rally Save, with the target number TN = Morale. So a unit with Morale 7+ rarely gets the Morale points, while a character like Guy Shishio with Morale 3+ is almost always getting it.

The more we tried this the more fun it wound up being. Eventually it morphed into, as soon as you activate a unit, make a Rally Save. So right at the start of your turn you would find out if you would gain Morale points or not, it might give you just enough to use a pilot skills like Zeal or Valor, or maybe it would let you fire in melee. Tension was added right at the start of your turn.

We also had to adjudicate during development how that would work with units in squads, how it worked with warships and also elite pilots. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the simple but powerful bonuses these give to Morale system when you read over the new rules.

Successful Rally Saves generate Morale Points, representing disciplined troops maintaining formation, hot-blooded pilots inspiring their allies, and veteran soldiers keeping the initiative during battle. This change serves several purposes.

First, it creates a reliable but limited source of Morale point generation.
Second, it gives Morale a meaningful role throughout the game rather than only during rare Rout situations.
Third, it allows different units to interact with the Morale Point economy in unique ways.

High-Morale units such as Captains, Elite Pilots, Kaiju, and iconic Super Robots naturally generate more Morale Points than ordinary troops. Rather than requiring special Morale-generation abilities like a specific pilot trait, these units now leverage a statistic already present on their profile. This accomplished a major design goal of VER11, leveraging existing stats instead of having to create specialist rules.

Rally, Rout & Battle Cry!

At the same time, Rout remains the counterpart to Rally.

Failing a Rout Save causes Morale loss, representing battlefield confusion, hesitation, and collapsing morale. Elite casualties and disengagements can therefore create dramatic Morale swings without relying on artificial catch-up mechanics or hidden thresholds.

Late in VER11 testing, during a game with a Super Robot with an extra action and nothing to use it on, we decided to create another combat action “Battle Cry”. For novelty, this action would once per Turn give them a chance to Rally, and as we thought about it we also decided to have it cause a Rout save to the nearest enemy. It was a huge hit, with our Super Robot loving player. It’s also great for certain pilots known for shouting in combat, like Kamille.

Then an epiphany struck. Instead of having a rule like “When an allied elite unit dies, the nearest enemy makes a Rout Save” which is easy to forget (dev’s included lmao); we thought “What if when you destroy an enemy Elite unit, Battle Cry becomes a free action that turn.”

“Woah, that’s a great idea” said one dev. Because now it’s a reward for the attacking player they would be sure not forget it. And even better, that action / event interacts with both players giving both a Rally and Rout Save. It’s one of our favorite last minute tweaks to VER11 so we really hope you enjoy it.

Summary

One lesson learned during development was that Morale Point systems work best when they reward meaningful battlefield actions rather than abstract movement patterns. Earlier versions rewarded moving closer to the enemy. The new system rewards fighting over objectives, committing to engagements, maintaining morale, and controlling territory. The result is a Morale Point economy that remains dynamic and aggressive while being easier to understand, harder to exploit, and more closely tied to the events occurring on the battlefield.

Perhaps most importantly, Morale Points now comes from doing the things a giant robot pilot should be doing:

CPs

Holding the line.
Capturing objectives.

Morale

Charging into battle.
Keeping your nerve under fire.
And inspiring your allies to fight on.

MechaStellar VER11 Design Goals – Pilot Skills

Continuing from our previous post on Elite units and pilots now we’re going to briefly touch on Pilot Skills. In making VER11 we’ve kept the same pilot skills from VER10 and revamped them for the current system. We’ll deep dive on the pilot skills in later posts. Next post will be on Momentum and Morale Points.

In VER10 we had the following pilot skills

[M-3] Valor = Gain +5 HITS
[M-3] Flash = Gain +5 DEF
[M-X] Zeal = Gain bonus actions

Early on MechaStellar VER10 we had a very tight balance between bonus Hits and bonus DEF. That common units when they were attacking each other would average 0-2 Unblocked Hits, which meant that damage was relatively small. Often Zeal was never a worthwhile choice unless you were a much stronger unit attacking grunts.

Typically if you wanted to Hit you would go with Valor which your target could trump by using Flash to reset field. Balance wise it worked extremely well, but +5 Hits vs +5 DEF sometimes felt rather underwhelming for some players. And if one player could secure a lot of Momentum they could quickly wipe out more powerful enemies which hurt the experience.

However, as MechaStellar continued that finely tuned balanced started to fall off. Unit roles had further expanded combat bonuses, starting with a range of +0 to +2, then later +0 to +3, then +1 to +4 for roles like Sniper, Battler, Versatile etc.

With these the average number of unblocked hits kept creeping up, and eventually Zeal supplanted Valor as the best way to attack multiple units, or to completely obliterate a single unit, not to mention wiping out the target’s momentum pool by forcing multiple Flashes. The Iron Wall skill was updated to counter Zeal by providing a defense bonus for the full turn but for some matchups Zeal would be the better choice than Valor.

After over a year of trying to keep balance in check, new features were added like the Support and Squad system it soon became impossible to keep game balance. Certain units could stack bonuses, along with pilot traits to completely tear through the system launching huge amounts of hits on attack and counterattack while avoiding all but the most severe reprisals from the enemy.

Obviously something had to change.

VER11 had the big task to fix this issue. Weapon Triggers which we’ll discuss later, replaced Rapid Fire and gave other outlets for growth on small unit weapons you’d see on Votoms, Dunbine or Code Geass. Pilot traits which we discussed previously, switched over to smaller passive bonuses rather than traits you could stack for potentially tremendous benefit. Pilot skills would also need to be changed.

We’ll go into the pilot skill evolution in a separate post but in general we wound up with this frame work. Additionally, as we mentioned before ship Captains could now use all but one of the pilot skills making gameplay more universal and easier to remember.

Focus – Cheap but powerful offense skill
Flash – Potential large bonus for DEF based on your die roll. Not usable by Warships or Kaiju
Alert – Warship / Kaiju only. Bonus to DEF and Counterattack chance.
Iron Wall – A chance to nullify the damage or effects of a failed save
Valor – An expensive but powerful offense skill that also integrates Finishing Blow
Zeal – Bonus actions with a hard cap to prevent abuse.

MechaStellar VER11 Design Goals – Elite Units

One of our primary goals in making VER11 a simpler and easier to teach improvement over VER10 was to cut down on the number of “oh I forgot about this ability” on a mech’s profile sheet. Early in VER11 development the first thing we did was remove pilot bonuses, formerly Barrage, Bullseye, Dodge, Guard, etc. Instead, they were replaced with a Flat +1 bonus to HIT or DEF or both depending on the level of the pilot.

As we continued developing VER11 we got rid of bonus +HITs and +DEF and instead just used dice pools. As mentioned in our previous post on the Core Mechanic Update, we were considering how to handle Elite pilots whether or not they should include a mechs combat dice pool or improving their TN to Hit or DEF. Eventually we settled on having a unit improve Target Number (TNs) for Attack, Defense and Morale.

Pilot progression has existed in Mecha Stellar for years, and for the most part it has always worked. Ordinary pilots eventually became Elite veterans, then Skilled pilots, and finally legendary Aces. As Version 11 continues simplifying the core game, however, pilot progression became one of the last major systems worth re-examining. The original progression for VER 11 was straightforward.

Ordinary Pilot

HIT 5+ / DEF 5+
Morale 7+

↓

Elite

HIT 4+ / DEF 4+

↓

Skilled

HIT 4+ / DEF 4+
Morale 6+

↓

Ace

HIT 3+ / DEF 3+
Morale 5+

There was nothing inherently wrong with this system. In fact, it had one enormous advantage.

The Biggest Strength of the Original VER11 System

Elite pilots required almost no bookkeeping. Imagine deciding before a battle that every Zaku in your force was crewed by Elite veterans. Nothing on the printed profile needed to change.

You simply remembered:

“These Zakus HIT and DEF on 4+.”

Likewise, campaign progression was incredibly simple. A surviving pilot became Elite without requiring players to edit their profile. I considered this one of the system’s greatest strengths.

As Version 11 evolved, another issue slowly became apparent. The new version removes passive HIT and DEF bonuses from weapons entirely, in it’s place we now placed the units TN to Hit or DEF (i.e. 5+, 4+ or 3+ on the profile). So now if you change a characters elite level you would need to scratch those out potentially. Then another problem arose.

The Character Problem

In the above progression, all battle-tested, skilled and ace units wind up with the same bonuses. But that’s not really how we view our characters. Consider a few Gundam examples.

Late One Year War Amuro might naturally become both incredibly accurate and almost impossible to hit.
Kamille, on the other hand, feels much more like a pilot who continually invests in overwhelming offensive ability.
Quattro often feels calmer and more defensive than his younger self.
Emma Sheen represents professionalism and composure more than reckless aggression.

Those characters shouldn’t necessarily end up with the same statistical progression. They should tell different stories.

So we decided to let elite units choose where to spend their elite passive upgrades, splitting options into ATK+, DEF+, Morale+. A Battle Tested unit might be Morale 5+, or Hit 4+ or DEF 4+. A skilled pilot would choose 2 of those, or perhaps only have ATK 3+. It worked great, but the more we played the more we felt it didn’t represent the full breadth of characters present in Mecha fiction. For example, Amuro might be an all rounder, while Kamille favors shooting over melee, similarly we might see Quattro more reserved and defensive than the aggressive Red Comet.

We realized that it would be a lot better to further split up ATK and DEF into Shooting / Melee ATK and Evade / Melee DEF. Each level of elite unit, whether it be Battle Tested, Skilled or Ace, will have points available to improve these target numbers giving us a lot more variety in types of pilots. Consider the following:

Basic pilot – Morale 7+, ATK / DEF 5+
Char – Morale 5+, Shooting 4+, Melee 4+, Evade 3+
Ramba Ral – Morale 6+, Melee 3+, Evade 3+, Melee DEF 4+
Black Tri Stars – Morale 6+, Shooting 3+, Melee 3+, Evade 4+

Now let’s consider some pilots with very similar archetypes, we now have a lot of flexibility to make them feel different

Might Gaine with Maito Senpuji – Morale 5+, Shooting 3+, Melee ATK 4+, Melee DEF 4+
GaoGaiGar with Guy Shishioh – Morale 3+, Melee DEF 4+, Melee ATK 4+
Gurren Lagann with Kamina & Simon – Morale 3+, Melee ATK 3+

Campaigns And Scenarios

Perhaps my favorite aspect of the new system is that campaign progression and historical scenarios now use exactly the same language. A rookie pilot surviving battle after battle simply chooses upgrades as they earn promotions. Likewise, historical characters can simply begin at different stages of that exact progression and you can use the optional upgrade system to take a base profile and make it the best version of that pilot. The system naturally supports both.

One realization kept resurfacing throughout the discussion. Version 11 is increasingly moving away from making every veteran mathematically better at everything. Instead, it encourages players to ask:

“What kind of pilot did this character become?”

Did they become gods of melee?
Did they become impossible to hit?
Did they develop legendary marksmanship?
Did they simply become one of the calmest, most reliable commanders on the battlefield?
Those answers should not all be the same.

Hopefully, the new pilot progression finally allows legendary characters to feel legendary in different ways. Campaigns, however, tell a different story.

Pilots earn promotions through surviving battles and achieving victories, slowly investing in ATK, DEF, or Morale as their experience grows. Reaching 3+/3+/3+/3+ should feel like the culmination of an extraordinary career, being the best pilot to ever live and having your final battle as Axis is falling towards Earth or right before Genesis fires on Earth.

Elite units now provide passive bonuses fully built into your unit profile, you no longer need to refer down to their pilot trait or need to remember what it does. Fear not though, for the previous pilot traits of VER10 still exist, but now become upgrade options for any given unit.

Likewise, we are making Elite Captains play just like an Elite Pilot using almost all of the same pilot skills (with 1 exception) and have the same passive pilot abilities. Captain’s orders and mission commander orders are also still in the game but they will also be relegated to upgrade options.

We’re still experimenting on whether or not we want elite units to also improve, Weapon Trigger TN, Save TN, or DMG, so were looking for feedback from you, on whether that would be AWESOME or TERRIBLE for game balance.