Reply To: Big Stompy Robots

[Alexander Wasberg]

Thank you for saying so!

I try to go for some more realistic color choices from time to time, but I can’t bring myself to do camo on mechs. In my mind they are a weapon of terror as much as actual destruction, bold colors makes sure the enemy sees them when you want them to and active camo/stealth systems allow you to be a bit more sneaky when needed, at least thats how I picture it in my games 🙂

I am tinkering around a bit with Starport Scum, as I love the open-endedness of the system. So far I’ve only had the chance to run a quick test game with a pair of mechs per side, but I believe that every attempt will take me a little closer to the end goal.  While there are vehicle rules for the game, they are better suited for limited apperances and as scenario objectives.

So I’m trying to get the mechs ( and later on other vehicles too!) function closer to the way a character does, but with some changes to differentiate between a man in a vehicle and one on foot.

Right now it looks like there will be two ways of handling mechs; One more detailed with hit locations for games centered on/exclusively containing mechs ( think Battletech and anime shows like Gundam) and one more streamlined with a single damage pool (like in the original vehicle rules from Ivan) for games with a mix of mechs/vehicles and ground troops.

I’m trying to find a way to use a single attack stat like in the original ruleset, using traits to set weapons apart from each other rather than using a list of pre-made weapons with set stats. The trickiest bit so far is figuring out a good balace between attack dice and the accompanying traits vs. defence dice and traits vs. HP pool for each mech in a way so that it doesn’t turn into static slug-fests or that everything blows up as soon as it’s hit.

I haven’t got the formula down just yet, but I hope that some more testing will help me find a suitable solution.

 

I’ll let you know if I make any progress!

http://lasersandbroadswords.blogspot.com My project blog