Next Roster Addition Poll Results

Here’s a quick update for the poll we have on the game-downloads page. We keep an eye on this poll to see what our players would like to see added to the roster next. The last poll saw G Gundam and GaoGaiGar as the top two results for the poll. Since we’ve updated the poll, Aura Battler Dunbine took an early lead but was taken later that month later by Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.

Based on the polls now we’ve had a lot of Gundam fans stop by, since the next Gundam AU is currently taking the lion’s share of of votes. In 2nd place is a 70s Super Robot Show (Combattler V, Daitarn 3, etc.), in third place is TTGL and 4th place is Aura Battler Dunbine.

Bringing up the rear are Captain Harlock, 80s Super Robot Show and more units from the Braves series.

MechaStellar Low Grav Battles Playtest Photos

Here’s a collection of photos for one of the test games using the Low Gravs variant of the Stellar Warfare rules. For this series of games we have two Salamasis cruiser and two Musai cruisers each with a sizeable number of Mobile Suits onboard duking it out on the moon. Below you’ll see a very brief battle report to go with it, out of the 10 test games Zeon won 6 and the Federation won 4.

The minis used are the Gundam 1/400 collection and the older gunpla kits for the Salamis and Musai cruiser.

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MechaStellar March 2023 Roster Update – G Gundam

For this months updates we have several more Mobile Fighers from G Gundam to add to the MechaStellar roster including Neros Gundam, Tequila Gundam, Lumber (Grizzly) Gundam, John Bull (Royal) Gundam, Pharaoh Gundam and Minaret Gundam.

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MechaStellar VER 8.8 Design Goals – Finishing Blow

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.

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MechaStellar VER 8.8 Design Goals – Mental Math & Focus

Kou Uraki face 0083 — Wait what was your shooting accuracy again?

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.

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MechaStellar VER 8.8 Design Goals – Short Range Weapons Update

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.

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MechaStellar FEB23 Update – VER 8.8 Released

For this February’s update we are updating the Core Rules to VER 8.8 with a renewed focus on trimming down Mental Math we’ve updated several Pilot Traits and the Focus action. We’ve also updated the short range weapons (16″) including beam boomerangs, heat rods and the infamous Rocket Punch as well as Machine Guns and Gatling Guns. Lastly, “Finishing Blow” has been added to add some more variety to Melee combats when it comes to assigning ATK and DEF dice.

We’ll have two in-depth posts exploring the weapons update and the focus/pilot traits update, here’s the first one focusing on short range weapons and machineguns. We’ve also updated the VER 8 Example of Play to match the rules update. Below the break you’ll see the summary list of updates for MechaStellar VER 8.8

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MechaStellar VER 8.7 Design Goals – Unit Profile Sheets

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.

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MechaStellar VER 8.7 Design Goals – Core Rules Updates

Here’s an indepth look at some of the design decisions that went into the VER 8.7 Core Rules Update for MechaStellar.. For your convenience I have included the relevant summary line item list for each of those categories from the previous post as well.

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MechaStellar JAN 2023 Update – VER 8.7 Released

For this months update we have a major update to the Core Combat Rules along with a balance patch and overall UI improvement to the Mecha Profile Sheets. We’ve also added new units to the roster based on player requests. Below the break is the summary of updates, you can read a more indepth breakdown on a few updates in a follow up posts.

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