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.
Continue reading “MechaStellar VER10 Preview – Time Efficiencies”
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.
(But don’t let that stop you.)
Continue reading “MechaStellar VER10 Preview – Victory Points Update”
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.
Continue reading “MechaStellar VER10 Preview – New Guardian Role”
For this month’s MechaStellar update we have Space Battleship Yamato (Uchuu Senkan Yamato) both the classic series from 1974 and the 2199 revival from 2012. You can find the profiles under warships on the VER10 page: https://mechastellar.com/ver10-drafts/
This month also sees several updates to the VER10 draft rules. VER10 main focus is unifying the core attack mechanic so Shooting and Melee follow the same rules. While we’ve gotten good feedback so far on the core mechanics, some items have needed a lot more fine tuning of the balance which you can read about below.
Continue reading “MechaStellar Roster Update – SEP2024 – Space Battleship Yamato”
Here’s the current plan
Space Battleship Yamato – September & October
Gundam Seed – November & December
Aura Battler Dunbine – January 2024
VER10 – Planned release January 2024, with monthly roster / rules updates for the drafts: https://mechastellar.com/ver10-drafts/
In our previous post we talked about some of the weapon changes in broad strokes. Let’s look at a few items in-depth now.
Continue reading “MechaStellar VER10 Weapons Part 2”
For this month’s update we are releasing a large batch of profiles for VER10 which are available on the MechaStellar VER10 Drafts page. This page has the latest version of the draft VER10 Core combat rules and profiles for UC Gundam, Gundam Wing, Mazinger and Getter Robo.
Initially we had planned on only a few profiles but we’ve been working hard this month, both on a weapons rebalance and a layout update to get as many profiles as we could ready in time for the open playtest.
If you play any games using the VER10 draft rules, please use the google form to log your battle. It’s a short survey but it helps a lot when balancing the game. https://forms.gle/GCHTxV8XCkf3sm6WA
Here’s a really quick post showing the difference between a VER9 and VER10 profile. For this we have the AC Guy and the Zock, two of Zeon’s more unusual amphibious units. On top we have the VER10 profile and on bottom the VER9 profile. At the bottom of the post we have a PDF which should be full resolution, since the images can be a bit grainy when fit into the blog format.
The first thing I’m really happy to point out is that the profiles in general are larger and easier to read. VER9 cut down on the pages for the unit roster by being able to fit 6 profiles on one page, prior to this in VER8 and before mecha profiles were entirely horizontal and usually about 4 per page, but when we switched to VER9, the double sided layout allowed for a lot more room.
Still a frequent observance we’ve had from players is that occasionally some things can be too small. With VER10 we wanted to move back to 4 profiles per page while sticking to double sided. This way if you print out a page you can easily fold in half vertically or horizontally and have two profiles visible. Very handy, if you are only running a couple units on that page.
Moving down to 4 profiles, as well as removing a lot of the build-stats which are irrelevant to combat gave us more room to work with and increase several of the rows and columns in size making things a bit larger. Doing the layout editing it’s also a lot easier having more room for mech and weapon names without have to abbreviate as much.
Here’s a PDF with full resolution.
In our previous post we talked about a lot of the feedback we’ve got from playtesters in VER10 and the steps we’re taking to resolve some of the current issues. We also had a novel request to have Barrage affect the dice roll in the same way that Bullseye currently affects the die roll. Our proposed solution was to allow Bullseye to give +2d10 Shots when used, but in order to do that we’d have to rebalance the current weapons to ensure that the majority of weapons were less than 8d10 to take advantage of this request. We’ve finished up the weapon rebalance and wanted to share a few Dev insights when it came to this weapon rebalance.
Continue reading “MechaStellar VER10 Preview – Weapons”
We’re working on VER10 for MechaStellar, based on some playtester feedback shown in our previous post we’re looking to update one of the Pilot bonuses that affect the core mechanic.
Continue reading “VER10 Pilot Bonus Update”
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