In the previous post we talked about several items in the MechaStellar SEP 2025 roster update. In this post we’ll cover Starting Momentum in-depth.
Momentum is one MechaStellar’s defining features, and has been for quite a few years now. It’s a game system we’re really proud of, momentum represents the collective skill, luck, morale of your forces will ebb and flow during battle. In the switch to VER10 Momentum could start at a flat 10, which was greatly in the early drafts, but with some major overhauls to the pilot system, starting Momentum was also much lower. We’ve been experimenting with several options and finally came up with a winner we’re happy with and play testers are happy with, some are even overjoyed.
We went through a lot of different experiments of starting Momentum, perhaps too many haha. One we tried to stick with was to quantify, Battle-Tested / Skilled / Ace units, and how much Momentum they would drain. We eventually settled on -1/2 (round up), -1 and -2 starting Momentum. This was fine, but we still ran into problems where, let’s say you wanted to run a Gundam SEED Le Creuset team, and you’re starting off with M-6 still (4 Skilled and 1 Ace).
While it was relatively fair, when comparing teams, we still wound up with very low starting Momentum overall. This was also in a time period where playtesters discovered some good turn 1 Alpha Strikes, and the need for higher starting Momentum become very apparent.
We eventually solved this by retaining the current comparison method, but now there’s a chance both players will start with M=10 or M=8, where historically it was often M=6 vs M=4. This comparison method has both players count up their “Elite Units”. The person with less Elite points, starts with M=10, the other players starts with the difference.
For example let’s say we have Kira and Mwu (2x Ace = 4) vs the Le Creuset Team (4x Skill + Ace = 6), a difference of 2. Kira and Mwu start with 10, while the Le Creuset team start with the difference (10-2=8). This gave A LOT more flexibility for people who like running thematic forces with lots of Elite units on both sides. You can also still field a grunt force vs an elite force and have a huge gap in Momentum.
Overall, we kept the same feel of the current Momentum system while overall massively improving the amount of starting Momentum. This is both good for balance and QoL in our opinion. Hope you all enjoy!
The latest update has quite a bit of changes both to the Core Rules, Wargaming supplement and the Unit Profile sheets. In this post we’ll cover a brief overview. Which we’ve broken into three segments. Some of these we will cover more in depth in followup posts. For the first segment let’s cover Lethality.
Lethality Update
One of MechaStellar’s claim to fame is having a level of lethality that emulates the world of Mobile Suit Gundam, where grunts, and even heroic Aces can meet their untimely demise from a well placed bazooka shoot or a beam vaporizing the cockpit. And while we’re very proud of that, it also means living on the knifes edge both for gameplay and designing game balance. But it’s also an incredibly fun challenge, and why we’ve continued to work on this game for the last, gosh, I guess we’re going on 9 years now.
MechaStellar has gone through many versions since then, each with it’s own version of lethality, with earlier versions leaning hard into the “instant-death” effects and the last few versions making failed armor saves (and now Finisher saves) being deadly but not always a guaranteed dead unit. Some of these we’ve been working on heavily the last two months and others (like Battle Damage) have had intermittent tests since the switch from VER9 to VER10. Lethality has been adjusted in the current update to MechaStellar VER10 in the following ways.
Armor Saves reduced from Max 5 Saves to Max 3 Saves.
This is how it was in VER9 as well, but we’ve found beam weapons have had a little too much potential energy loaded in them, and dropping it down to 3 still keeps them lethal while not being overbearing against an HP sponge Super Robot that happened to roll five 1s.
To balance that out, beam weapons have also been adjusted, in general going down -100 DMG, but going up +1 PEN, so they are more likely to have a deadly vaporizing hit compared to before. This also has the added benefit of less times where a robot is destroyed from base beam damage without even needing to roll armor saves (which always felt a little odd).
HP Rebalance
The HP formula has been on the operating table a lot the last 6 months now, although it’s not always apparent since we try to ensure that after we tweak it, most units stay roughly the same, while some outliers are brought in. With the change to Armor Saves, we also want to make sure that grunts like a Zaku will still die when hit by a beam rifle, so if there’s several hits and 3 armor saves there should be a very sizeable change that Zaku is dead. (Leo’s, of course are made out of explodium)
Shield Update
Shield bloat was cut down for the forthcoming Battle Damage update. But another casualty of that, was all the GMs which had cheap shields, now had much more expensive shields. This is a problem, because we try our best to make sure grunts mechs on both factions are equal points, and we also make the most of their equipment slots. In order to ‘pay for’ these expensive shields we’d have to either drop GM HP sharply, or keep it the same and raise everyone else’s HP. And I don’t think the world was ready for 4000 HP Zaku’s just yet. Fortunately we found a compromise, by looking for another avenue to make Shields cheaper, while dropping GM HP but not as sharply. We struck a good balance here, and Shield enthusiasts are overall happy.
Battle Damage
Speak of Shield breaks, we are bringing back Battle Damage from VER9 over to VER10 and this time it’s now a part of the Core Rules. However, we’re able to keep the ‘optional module’ flavor by limiting this only to Elite Units. Since Battle Damage can be a bit of pain to track, limiting it to Elite units helps A LOT. Just don’t setup a game with 10 elite GMs and 10 elite different colored GMs.
Battle Damage is a fun system to let you simulate all the times we see beam rifles shot and explode, arms cut off, thrusters hit, and the rare MAIN KA-MI-RA being disabled. Right now, the system is still a little too fiddly so we will likely pare it down to just a couple options that are easier to remember in the future based on playtester feedback. Overall, we’re happy that it works and it provides another avenue to keep your named pilots alive for longer.
Starting Momentum
Speaking of named pilots, the rules for Starting Momentum have changed and now in general you will be starting with much higher amounts of Momentum. We’ll cover this in detail in another post.
Similarly, Flash and Iron Wall now have super version that all but guarantee you to survive a heavy hit (if you’ve got a surplus of Momentum). Likewise, Valor is now limited to Round 2+ to prevent Round 1 Alpha Strikes which were becoming a problem again.
Finishing Blow
Last but not least we have Finishing Blow which received a major update. We’ll cover this in detail in the next post. The important thing to note, is that the target now rolls Finishing Blow (just like Armor Saves) and the numbers are now reversed being a 1 instead of a 10.
Stellar Warships have come a long way since VER8. They’ve gone through several different styles of gameplay until eventually have their turns plays out the same as any of mecha unit in the game. VER10 continues to streamline Warships by having their profiles mirror those of the Kaiju with very high HP but poor evasion and the special Havoc stat that lets them blow apart cover.
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.
As mentioned in our previous post we’ve been testing out various ideas. In this post we’ll look as size modifiers and the recent change to defense dice.
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.
I thought it might be worthwhile to share how some of the rules changes from VER9 to VER10 can speed up the game. Trying to keep the game fast and fun to play is an ever-present design goal for us, so here are some things we contemplate when making game changes.
Note: These time estimates are based on our games as well as our friends, many of whom are 40k veterans and used to fast dice.
This month’s VER10 Draft update has a very big gameplay change when it comes to scoring Victory Points. In this update a units full Performance cost is now worth Victory points. This means that low Frame units are now worth a lot more VP and it’s easier to seize victory without having to fully wipe out the enemy.
Some of the feedback we’ve gotten on the VER10 open playtest was that the roles no longer felt as distinct as they used to. In this post we’ll look at some of the changes that went into the September roster update to bring some of that distinction back.
MechaStellar 