Mechastellar: Deciding when to Twin-Link

Guncannon

In today’s post I’d like to talk about choosing equipment for your Mech.  Right now, my wife and I are watching through 0083 A Stardust Memory (Mayfly of Space).  For me it’s a rewatch after about 10 years, for her it’s the first time so it’s a new experience for the both of us.

When I’m designing Mobile Suits I usually try to wait until I watch the series they are in again.  In the case of MSV-R type suits, I don’t want to work on them unless I’ve recently read the sidestory they’re in or played in a game that does them justice.  There are many version of Gelgoog available to choose from, and now that we’ve entered space in the show it’s given me a chance to start designing the Gelgoog Marines.

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MechaStellar: Playtest Report – Zeta

Zeta Test Units 1
1/400 Scale Gundam Suits – Easy to find and make for great War Gaming

Last weekend we were fortunate enough to playtest a large number of games and game mechanic redesigns.  One large benefit of social distancing and the California stay at home order means we have a lot of time for indoor hobbies.  The pictures above and below show some the units we were using in various tests.

Zeta Test Units 2
I have a few 1/1200 Gundam battleships from our trip to Japan 2018.  Amazingly we got them for under $5 each.  They’re old kits that require glue to assemble but make for fun set pieces. 

This marks the third time we were playtesting Zeta suits and its a refreshing change of pace from the One Year War (OYW) suits that are far less mobile.  It also means we have to revise our tactics because our units are sturdier with a plethora of Gundarium alloy and far more mobile, especially transforming suits.

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Playtest Report – Jaburo Drop

Exif_JPEG_422

Playtest Report

<Meant to post this one two weeks ago>

We haven’t played a large game in a while so we broke out some forest and aquatic terrain and decided to try reenacting the Jaburo Drop from 0079.  We did the scenario three times, each time increasing the size of the army to see how well it would scale; it also gave us a chance to try some of the very minor rules tweaks we were discussing.  The scenario would be a pseudo two-mission campaign with the twist being the second mission (underground) kicks off while the first mission (top side) is ongoing.  The sooner the 1st mission is completed the sooner reinforcements can arrive.

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MechaStellar – Weapons Design

Full_Armor_Gundam_Thunderbolt-ova

When it comes to weapons we had the following design goals.

  1.  To the extent possible minimize variations
  2. Variations between weapons should be distinct
  3. Maximize re-usability of weapons between units

To elaborate a bit further on these, for #1 when looking at a list of weapons you don’t want to see 5 versions of a machine gun, or 4 versions of a beam rifle, each with their own nuance.

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MechaStellar: Update Combat Roles

Gelgoog cannon

Our suit roster is an excel sheet with a number of formulas where if you type in the Suit’s Frame Level and Performance level it will auto-populate all of it’s combat stats.  So while we were updating the attack and evade cells to essentially flip flop (Evade now uses the d20, Attack is now a static number) we decided to reevaluate a few of the bonuses each of the combat roles were giving.

Combat Roles Refresher

Each suit gets to choose one of four combat roles that define how they play.

  1. Gunner – Ranged focused
  2. Battler – Melee focused
  3. Versatile – Mix of Ranged and Melee
  4. Hi-Mobility – Evasion focused

Looking at the gundam universe for example the most common role will be Versatile as most suits fielded are general purpose.  Below are some examples:

  1. Gunner – GM Sniper, Gabthley, Gundam Leopard
  2. Battler – Gouf, Efreet, Sturm Galluss, Deathscythe
  3. Versatile – Most types of Gundam, GM, Zaku and successors
  4. Hi-Mobility – Dom, Kampfer, Hambrabi, Rick Dias, Sinanju

If you look at the Battletech / Mechwarrior universe you’ll see a lot more Gunners dominating the roster.  Heavy duty battlemechs with ablative armor are classified as “Titans” in mechastellar.  They’re rules are a bit different than mobile suits, in a general sense they have more HP and AP but less Evade.

  1. Gunner – Blackjack, Thunderbolt, Catapault, Zeus, Jupiter
  2. Battler – Kodiak, Violator
  3. Versatile – Shadowhawk, Centurion, Battlemaster
  4. Hi-Mobility – Griffin, Spider

Now then when it comes to combat roles here’s what we previously posted.  Note, we’ve adjusted some naming conventions, instead of Ranged Attack and Melee attack we’ve renamed them to Shooting and Melee.

  • Gunner
    • Shooting +5
    • Action Points +4
    • Evade -3
  • Battler
    • Melee +4
    • Move +4
    • Evade +1
  • Versatile
    • Shooting +3
    • Melee +2
    • Move +3
    • Action Points +2
  • Hi-Mobility
    • Move +6
    • Evade +3
    • Melee +1
    • HP-100

MechaStellar: Design Update – Melee

Gelgoog Naginata

While we were playtesting the streamlined but ultimately boring evasion system we also had a chance to play around with melee a bit.  Not the mechanic per se just the values.  In the original rules we had melee as a clash between two opponents, each rolls a d20 and adds their value, with the attacker getting a free reroll.

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MechaStellar: Design Update – Evade

Gelgoog d

Aloha everyone!  We’ve spent the past few months playtesting a different type of attack and evade mechanic for Mechastellar and today we’ll talk about the results.

First up the mechanic.  We had the pleasant experience doing a several large scale playtest games over the holidays in Nov/Dec to try out the VER 2.0 ruleset and it was quite successful.  We had a chance to try high level suits vs army of grunts, prototype vs prototype match-ups, melee master faceoffs (Death Scythe Vs Master Gundam), team games with objectives and multiplayer free-for-alls.

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