Tag: Pacific Rim

[MS] Design Goals – Cross Era and Cross Universe Compatibility

One of our design goals was to ensure there is some compatibility between both eras and different mecha universes.  Cross Era compatibility would let you reenact the Jaburo drop in Zeta Gundam or the Assault on Torrington in Unicorn where you field units from different time periods and have them at least stand a chance against newer models.  Cross universe compatibility would let you mix Gundam and Evangelion for instance, or Gurenn Lagann and Getter Robo like you would in a Super Robot Wars style game. 

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[MS] – Readjusting Shooting Actions for Gigas Units

In the past we allowed Gigas units to fire as many weapons as they wanted to, as long as they had a big enough reactor to power each weapon.  This lended itself well to any Mecha series where they will be loaded with guns, missiles, lasers, beams etc.  We initially came up with this rule since we wanted units like Big Zam, a mobile fortress, to be able to fire off multiple weapons at once, same for other Mobile Armors like the Dendrobium Orchis or the Neue Ziel. 

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[MS] – Weekly Playtest Photos

These were taken over the course of a few weeks in the brief moments when the baby was sleeping in the bassinet. The purpose for these tests were proof of concept for the Defend the City game mode or “Rampage” if you’re on the Kaiju’s side. This game mode offers victory conditions that focus on destroying the city for the Monsters.

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[MS] Design Goals – Giant Robots

Typo on Gundam Alex should be 18m vice 28m

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post we’d like to talk a little bit more about how sizing will affect the game. Since MechaStellar is intended to allow you to recreate a Super Robot Wars style tabletop skirmish that means we need to have someway to differentiate Mecha that are much larger than others.

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[MS] Design Goals – Titan Class Mechs

In MechaStellar we have two types of Mecha, a Mobile Skeleton or MS Class and a Titan Class. While the MS class is principally there to represent high mobility units like you’d see in Mobile Suit Gundam, Aura Battler Dunbine, Votoms or Zone of the Enders, the Titan class was envisioned to capture Mechs that tend to lack aerial mobility but offer considerably more durable and often with significantly more weapons. Titan class mechs can run the gamut of Mobile Armors, Getter Machines, Guy Melefs, Jaegers or even Evangelions. As we’ve been doing more Titan-only playtests recently this would be a good time to discuss this class of Mechs.

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[MS] – Playtest Photos week of 15AUG

Here are some quick playtest photos of this past weekend. The first one shows units from Pacific Rim, giant robots called Jaegers built to defend humanity from giant monsters named Kaiju. Fantastic first movie, highly recommend if you haven’t gotten a chance to see it. Jaegers and Kaiju use the rules for ‘Gigas’ a slower but more durable type of Mech and in this case giant monster. It’s also been fun testing out a new ‘Defend the City’ game type we hope to release soon.

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MechaStellar – Command Update: All-Out Attack

Going off our previous post we debuted a new Command that will allow your Ace Pilot to destroy multiple enemy units. One of the driving factors in this Command was to give units who only use a single weapon a chance to destroy multiple models. For units with multiple weapons that was easy enough thanks to the All-Out Attack Pilot Skill.

The Command System was updated such that the first time you use a Command it is free, while subsequent uses require momentum. We decided to make the pilot skill ‘All-Out Attack’ become a Command instead. This will allow Grunts with several weapons a chance to shine at no Momentum cost (for the first one at least). It will also be adapated to allow Gigas class Mechs to benefit as well. Below are the rules updates.

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(MS) Design Goals – Cross Universe Compatibility

In the previous post we talked about scalability. Wanting the game system to be playable at a small scale of 3vs3, to as large as armies of 30+ Mechs duking it out. Another goal we’ve always maintained was the ability to use Mechs from different universes in the same series but different series as well.

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