MechaStellar Design Blog

VER9 November Drafts Updated

Just a quick update since I’m on travel. The draft profiles for UC Gundam have been updated on the VER9 Drafts page. I noticed a few units had too large of an HP gain like GP02 and the Full Armor Gundams, the revised HP formula will still greatly improve grunt HP while keeping the heavy hitters closer to their previous HP totals.

Additionally there have been some tweaks to Beam Rifles, Beam Cannons, and melee weapons including the Beam Saber and Heat Hawk to better work with the new Shields paradigm and make the standard GM shield more useful against these weapons.

Also here’s a quick draft for updated Secondary objectives:

Destruction

Top Gun:  +2 VP anytime your Skilled or Ace Pilot destroys an enemy Skilled or Ace Pilot or if they destroy the enemy Commander.

Strongest Prototype: +5 VP anytime your Frame 4+ unit destroys a Frame 4+ Unit.

Rout the Enemy: +1 VP for every unit destroyed (Max 5 per Round).

Surprise Assault: +1 VP when you destroy a unit in the first Round of battle. 
                              +3 VP when you destroy a unit with Tactical Advantage.

Undefeated: +2 VP every time your Commander destroys a unit.  Gain a bonus +2 VP every time your Commander destroys a unit with a Melee Counterattack.  

Survival

Bonds on the Battlefield: +X VP equal to the total Pilot Level of 3 surviving units.

Last Bastion: +3 VP if your Commander survives. Gain a bonus +3 VP if 50%+ of your units (round up) were destroyed as well.

Minimize Losses: +5 VP if 50%+ of your units (round up) survive the battle.  Gain a bonus +1 VP each time you spend at least 1 Momentum to save a unit.

Flawless Insertion: +10 VP but lose 1 VP for each of your units destroyed in Round 1

Invincible: +1 VP each time your unit take 0 DMG from a Shooting or Melee attack.

Control the Battlespace

Repel the Enemy: +1 VP anytime an enemy model leaves your half of the battlefield or is destroyed on your half of the battlefield.

Dominate the battlefield: At the end of each round gain +3 VP if you have units in 3 quadrants, +4 VP for 4 quadrants.  Do not count units within 8” of the center.

Behind Enemy Lines: At the end of each round gain +2 VP if you have 1 unit within 16” of the enemy table edge and +3 VP for 2+ units.

Scorched Earth: +5 VP when you use a melee action on a Control Point destroying it.

Swelling Momentum: +2 VP at the end of each round if you have more Momentum.

MechaStellar NOV23 – Shields & Evade Overhaul

For me personally some of the most fun is when you have a favorite unit who is rolling really well and managing to evade a lot of attacks. From VER5 to VER7 Evade was in general pretty high, especially for the high mobility units, VER8 did a good job of flattening the shooting / evade range for most units so when you are playing with OYW units it was very rare you ran into a situation where a shooty unit didn’t have a reasonable chance to hit even a unit with high evade.

The most recent balance patch in October gave a nice improvement to the Battler, Interceptor and Firepower role, unfortunately it appears to have tipped the scales a bit too much onto the shooting side, especially compounded with the new Target Lock rules. In this post we’ll look at some options we considered before moving forward.

Continue reading “MechaStellar NOV23 – Shields & Evade Overhaul” →

MechaStellar NOV23 – HP Overhaul

I noticed in the October update that a lot of G Gundam units don’t have a good reason to invest in Armor beyond level 3, so I was working on a HP tweak for Armor 4+ units.  While working on that tweak I noticed a loophole on a Dom Variant where it could be built better and cheaper as a Frame 3 unit instead of a Frame 2 unit. 

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened, many of the points hikes in the last couple years have originated in someone on the team finding an edge case where you could build one unit cheaper and better as a higher frame unit.

When looking at this unit we went over a few ideas on how to fix it.

Continue reading “MechaStellar NOV23 – HP Overhaul” →

MechaStellar – Three Month Look Ahead

Here’s a quick look at the monthly update schedule for MechaStellar. We like to do these after a poll closes. The winners of the last poll were Gundam X, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and Combattler V & Voltes V.

In September & October we released the heroes of the Gurren Brigade. In November we’ll also include the Dai-Gurren battleship as well as the enemy battle ships of the four generals, their personal ganmen as well as Viral’s Enkidu, The Spiral Kings Lazengann and a few ganmen profiles. This should complete all the units pre-timeskip.

In November we will also release the first batch of units for Gundam X including the main cast. We’re also including a balance patch that will resolve a couple underlying issues as well overhaul the HP / Evade / Shield systems to make it a bit more forgiving for new players and grunt units.

In December we will have Combattler V and Voltes V.

We’ll also have more drafts available for Zeta Gundam on the VER9 drafts page. https://mechastellar.com/ver9-drafts/

In January we will do Great Mazinger.

Be sure to vote in the next poll too, we will be selecting the top 3 choices as winners. You can find the poll on the MechaStellar downloads page: https://mechastellar.com/game-downloads/

Battle Report – Federation vs Zeon Grunts 1000pts

This is a battle report using the MechaStellar Rules for a series of games we did testing out changes to HP, Evade and Shields. This is the first series where we focused on grunt units without any Ace Pilots bringing as many cheap and useful units as we could.

Check below the break for a really fun battle!

Continue reading “Battle Report – Federation vs Zeon Grunts 1000pts” →

Battle Report – Federation vs Zeon and Getter vs Mazinger 1500pts

This is a battle report using the MechaStellar VER 9.2 Rules for a series of games we did testing out changes to HP, Evade and Shields. This is the second series, where we took the forces from the first series and then added one super robot each, this way we could also test out the modified close range weapons like Tomahawk boomerang and Rocket Punch.

Check below the break for a really fun battle!

Continue reading “Battle Report – Federation vs Zeon and Getter vs Mazinger 1500pts” →

New Poll Opened

A new poll has been opened for which Mecha series to add to the roster next. Last poll the winners were Turn A Gundam, Captain Harlock: The Arcadia of my Youth, and more Braves (Yuusha) series such as Da Garn, Goldran, Might Gaine etc.

For this poll we have options returning from last poll as well as Gundam Seed, Ideon and Yamato.

  • Gundam Seed
  • Yuusha Raideen (the 1975 version)
  • Daitarn 3
  • GoLion and GoShogun
  • Galaxy Cyclone Braiger
  • Aura Battler Dunbine
  • Giant Robo The Day the Earth Stood Stil
  • Space Runaway Ideon
  • Space Battleship Yamato

MechaStellar VER 9.1 and October Roster Update

The October Update is here and we have additional units from Gurren Lagann as well as a few requests from Mobile Suit Gundam including some terrestial warships such as the Gaw and Big Tray.

We also have a balance patch, the first one in four months. This affects a great number of weapons and units (including the fan favorite Big Zam) which you can find summarized after the break. If you want to read more in-depth check out these two posts.

Melee and Close Range Weapons Overhaul

Combat Roles Update

All the new mecha profiles and rules can be found on the downloads page: https://mechastellar.com/game-downloads/

Continue reading “MechaStellar VER 9.1 and October Roster Update” →