Gundam SEED released in VER10, and had been in playtesting since VER 7. Gundam SEED (and Astray) were our most highly requested series, so we were happy to finally release a highly polished product. Look forward to it. In this post we’ll cover the current development for Nanolaminate armor.

SEED will soon be updated to VER11, one of the benefits of this update is opening up more design space on weapons and also for defensive abilities. We used this to update VER10’s Nanolaminate armor from IBO and also for Phase Shift Armor from Gundam SEED. For both of these we are basing it around Saving Throws, which was expanded in VER11 to go from just Armor Saves to also include Mobility Saves (typically machine guns or small missiles), Break Saves (typically bazookas or large heavy weapons like a mace / gundam hammer), and then formalizing Stun and Push / Pull into their own category, whereas previously there were alt. Armor Saves.

With the new Save categories we could better represent Nanolaminate (heavily resistant to all armor Saves and especially AP armor piercing saves) and also Phase Shift (heavily resistant to [K]inetic and E[X]plosive saves but weak to beam [E]nergy saves).

That said we didn’t start there.

Here’s what we’ll call VER10.5, it’s mostly identical to VER10 but it includes the first major step to VER11, the weapon Trigger system. Things like target numbers to hit or def from pilots haven’t been developed yet, and likewise the expanded Save system hasn’t been created yet.

This is more or less using the VER10 system we had for Phase Shift, just a flat defense bonus and higher defense bonus vs Kinetic and Explosive weapons. Not bad, but we were trying to move away from flat bonuses from a design perspective, with Shields (and Cover) being the only item that would keep a flat bonus.

Here’s the Destiny Gundam profile which was used in our VER10.5 playtesting, at this stage we were started to integrate the expanded Save system, but we were still doing the flat bonus to Hit, instead of the TN. You’ll also see on the profile a lot of things have changed such as the Bonus Objective (Operation Angel Down), Phase Shift Armor, the Lumiere system, and no longer needing to burn white space on things like “This trait gives improved attack”.

In this system we were treating Phase Shift as a Barrier, which seemed to represent the system pretty well. Phase Shift is essentially a separate pool of HP that can block Kinetic, Explosives and Melee weapons, even beams too. The exception being those catastrophic beam hits that tear straight through the machine, as represented by AP Saves.

Overall it worked pretty well and fit the fiction. But while playing, especially with Hyper Deuterium Phase Shift which can regenerate Phase Shift each round, the question came up.

Wait why do I need to track two different HP pools? Why not just one.

One of the glowing benefits of new players is that they see things from a completely different angle than the Devs. Thanks to that insight we developed the current VER11 implementation.

For VER11, Phase Shift units have a very high pool of Armor HP. Phase Shift also reduces Saves DMG by 200, making these units impervious to machine guns and small missiles saves. On the other hand, [E] Saves cause significantly more damage.

Since Phase Shift runs on batteries, you also lose HP every round, making every Round a race against the clock, and providing a lot of tactical decision making in whether you want to dodge or just let Phase Shift take the hit.

If you want to start using the Strike Gundam right away, here’s the profile.

If you’d like to check out the other SEED units they are currently available to our Patreon Subscribers here: https://mechastellar.com/srw-drafts/.

Thank you for your support! https://www.patreon.com/cw/MechaStellar

Iron Blood Orphans is a fan favorite of many players and is an oft requested series we add to MechaStellar. In the next several months we’ll have Mobile Suits from Gundam 00 and IBO making their debut. Look forward to it. In this post we’ll cover the current development for Nanolaminate armor.

MechaStellar VER11 added a lot of design flexibility for us which has been very helpful when we try to redesign abilities like Phase Shift Armor and Nanolaminate Armor to try and better represent how it behaves in the original setting, while also allowing your opponent to still have fun if they bring a lot of [K]inetic or E[X]plosives vs Phase Shift, or a lot of [E]nergy Beams vs Nanolaminate.

IBO’s Graze first debuted in VER10 by player request. Here’s what the profile looks like then.

Nanolaminate gave a huge DEF bonus vs Energy (Beam) attacks. It also provided bonus defense vs attacks outside range 16″, to simulate the world of IBO where you have to get close, even with shooting, to make a dent in the armor.

The downside of course being that if your opponent doesn’t bring an Beam heavy armor, then you have effectively wasted a bunch of points on antibeam coating. We gave an option in VER10 to reduce the units points by 100 if the enemy does not have beam weapons.

Still, it’s not perfect, and we’d prefer it if grunt units were cheaper than 150pts. Here’s the initial VER11 playtest version of Nanolaminate.

We started off with something similar, keeping the +1 DEF vs ATKs at R:16″+ but instead of the bonus Defense vs Energy, we instead tried an option where you would auto pass Saving Throws vs [E]nergy Beam weapons.

This represented the fiction really well, the nanolamine quickly dissipates beam weapons. However, it is an extremely powerful ability, and if a unit relies on beam weapons and they average 3 saves, then on average you will pass 1 save and the other 2 are auto pass which makes beam weapons worthless.

Fits the fiction well! But not very fun from a gameplay perspective. Balancing this points wise is also difficult since its effectively an always-on skill “Iron Wall” vs [E] attacks. Setting this at 150pts proved to be a bit too cheap for such a strong ability. And as we mentioned earlier, we don’t want grunts to become super expensive.

We wanted an ability that ideally would encompass the anti-beam and the anti-long range using the same mechanic, rather than using two mechanics (pass [E] Saves and +1 DEF vs long range) in the previous iteration. We went through a couple options, and brainstormed for a bit on how this would affect [E] weapons (Beam rifles) as well as melee beam weapons that were lacking the [E] tag.

Then after discussing heat weapons for a bit and realizing that those are also not really present in the IBO setting, we opted to have the ability become anti AP Saves.

With the new design space in VER11 with multiple type of Saving Throws we decided to have Nanolaminate represent and anti-Save DMG ability. In the above example, all Saves are DMG-200, this instantly eliminates machine guns from causing save damage, which is rather appropriate given IBO favor’s rifles over machine guns for their grunts. Likewise, it rewards Cannons (high range and damage but low Save) vs Bazookas (high damage and saves), great since in IBO cannons are much more common.

Last but not least, having it target AP saves hits both beam sabers and heat hawks and mechanically agrees with the setting that has traditional high hardness weapons rather than beam sabers or super heated weapons.

Since MechaStellar is a crossover game, beam rifles and beam sabers are still able to hurt nanolaminate units, both on base damage (100 – 200 DMG, compared to a 400 – 600 DMG) and also on Saves, although they are drastically reduced. A Beam rifle at R:16″ does 0 Save DMG, while in point blank range can deal 300 DMG, likewise for the Beam Saber.

That’s all for now on Nanolaminate. Here’s the profiles for Hashmal and the Pluma updated after this game.

If you’d like to check out the other IBO units they are currently available to our Patreon Subscribers here: https://mechastellar.com/srw-drafts/.

Thank you for your support! https://www.patreon.com/cw/MechaStellar