Doing an overhaul of melee weapons meant having to update all of the current Mecha Unit Profiles. Whenever we have to do a pass over everything it’s also a good time to implement any other system wide changes. Today we will look at the update to the combat roles starting with the Attacker role.
Continue reading “MechaStellar VER9 – Combat Roles Update”
We’ve received a lot of feedback regarding GaoGaiGar and to a lesser extent Getter Dragon specifically regarding weapons that give 3 Hits on a Critical Hit. The chief complaint being that these units can often stack many hits to the point where it’s almost impossible to resist them in melee. As a result we’ve had to look over these units and this weapon type and consider solutions.
For those who exclusively play Gundam units the bottom line up front is that Beam Sabers and Heat Hawks are dropping down to 300 DMG per hit, Heat whips and Dragon Fangs are now a melee attack option. Units with high crit abilities such as Sandrock or Minaret Gundam are having their weapons reworked. For the Super Robot fans read on below the break.
Continue reading “October – Melee and Close Range Weapons Overhaul”
Today’s post we’ll explore some of the design goals that went into MechaStellar VER9.
Continue reading “MechaStellar VER9 Design Goals”
The King of Braves GaoGaiGar will release during the end of month May roster update. We will also be releasing MechaStellar VER 9 Core Combat Rules in May. VER 9 is the Super Robot update and like the last several updates to VER 8 is intended to cut down on mental math.
Continue reading “MechaStellar VER 9 Planned for May2023 Release”
Finishing Blow started off as a Melee experiment when we were working on solutions for what to do with units who were able to break past 20d10 Melee dice. At the time we were coming off with different ideas for what to do with those extra dice and what could be a good universal option that would applicable to a Real Robot as well as a Super Robot.
We eventually settled on “Glory” as our solution for units with high dice pools, thanks to a suggestion from one of our players but we kept Finishing Blow in a design notebook for use later. While we were prepping for the G Gundam release and working on VER 8.8, in particular the Focus action we decided to consider looking over the Finishing Blow system again.
Continue reading “MechaStellar VER 8.8 Design Goals – Finishing Blow”
This is the 2nd in-depth post looking at the changes made in VER 8.8, you can read the full VER 8.8 summary here and the design goals post on the weapon rebalance here.
With the update to VER 8.7 we upgraded several of the Pilot Traits to have 2 effects, a good number of these ended up giving a +1 Evade bonus. While this was a nice bonus, especially for several units who were middle of the road for Evasion, I personally got a lot of great feedback on these our players and other members of the team regarding that. Mainly that with VER 8.7’s goal of reducing mental math, adding a slew a +1 Evade bonuses runs counterproductive to that goal.
And that’s a great point! So in VER 8.8 we went about trying to scrub as much mental math as we could from the game. No longer will your gameplay halt every time a Skilled or Ace pilot comes up and you have to add in several steps of bonus accuracy and bonus evade, and “what was the target number again??”
Lesson learned! Let’s see what we can do instead.
Continue reading “MechaStellar VER 8.8 Design Goals – Mental Math & Focus”
This update kicked off with the complete reworking of the thrown weapons from last month. Our first new series added in 2023 is G Gundam, we began prototyping units in April and started playtesting in July of 2022, with G Gundam being the next release all forthcoming units receive heavy playtesting the two months leading up to release.
During the playtests for G Gundam models, one unit in particular stood out. Gundam Maxter almost exclusively uses short range weapons, with a pair of magnums and several different punches including a cyclonic, burning jet of fire, and semi-visible bursting machine gun punch. We were able to utilize existing weapon profiles to at least give each punch a different special effect but something was lacking. What we observed was that many of punches (and even the twin magnums) felt rather samey, and it didn’t feel like there was a good time to use one over the other.
Continue reading “MechaStellar VER 8.8 Design Goals – Short Range Weapons Update”
Here’s an indepth look at some of the design decisions that went into the MechaStellar VER 8.7 Unit Profile Sheets Update. For your convenience I have included the relevant summary line item list for each of those categories from the main update post as well.
Continue reading “MechaStellar VER 8.7 Design Goals – Unit Profile Sheets”
Closing out the VER 8.7 update here’s an indepth look at some of the design decisions that went into the Weapons update. For your convenience I have included the relevant summary line item list for each of those categories from the previous post as well.
Continue reading “MechaStellar VER 8.7 Design Goals – Weapons Update”
Here’s an indepth look at some of the design decisions that went into the Balance Patch, Unit Profile adjustments and Weapon adjustments. For your convenience I have included the relevant summary line item list for each of those categories from the previous post as well.
Continue reading “MechaStellar VER 8.7 Design Goals – Balance Patch”
MechaStellar 