Welcome to Mecha Monday! Here we dedicate ourselves to mecha RPGs, wargames, and boardgames alike. Here we start games, tell campaign stories, share resources & assets, and seek advice for our games and homebrew.Assorted Mecha Goodness:https://pastebin.com/E2wi55AZEmbryo Machine Translation:https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1r_cjOLuUp3HussVRhbQYU3G0zK6hwy1rLancehounds Homebrew:M3g4 folder/eMEBUbCL#kj2FRrlqTa-02U16XpnVRgPrevious Thread:>>96798588Question of the Thread:What thoughts do you have on fancy/special technologies that make mecha possible? Thread Theme:https://youtu.be/T_kEs91V3b4
>TQI mean, the classic is some kind of neural interface that requires the mentally-interfaced machine to be shaped like a person...Super-awesome alloys are also a good one.
>>96959074>What thoughts do you have on fancy/special technologies that make mecha possible?I prefer a different question.The question isn't "What makes mecha possible", but rather "What technology have made fighting a war as efficiently as possible no longer a necessity?"I see a mech as being akin to a dueling sword, or a set of ceremonial armor. Is a ceremonial set of armor protective? Of course. Can a dueling sword still be dangerous? Absolutely. Would you use either in World War 3? Probably not. But what about a world where conflicts aren't settled through massive wars, but through interpersonal duels? Where pure resource and combat efficiency aren't important because both sides abide by a pre-agreed upon set of rules? In such instances you needn't worry about pure efficiency, so your can customize your weapon to achieve a different goal entirely...winning the crowd.
>>96959074I was always a fan for the motion capture suit concept for mech piloting. Maybe with the pilot suspended in an inertia dampening fluid.
I think I'm getting better at making maps in my VTT, for those who GM, what do you normally watch out for when making stuff? I try to give various amounts of height and cover based on the terrain and conditions while also throwing in map objectives that aren't just "kill everything on the screen". I'm using a tileless system for Lancer and it's been working well so far outside of occasional issues with awkward cover.>QoTTIt's necessarily to make up something when the square cubed law exists, whatever flavor you have is fine, but I prefer sci-fi super-metal stuff instead of fantasy or willpower based solutions.
>>96959074>TQProbably highly-efficient artificial muscles, in a form that has very limited applicability in conventional vehicles such that if it really had to be used in a tank, then that tank may as well be a mech in all but name.This tied in with what >>96959186 said.Because fuck the 'wouldn't XX technology be better used on a tank?' faggots.Speaking of which, fantasy mecha are such an obvious derivation of the magic Law of Similarity & its corollaries. What more if magical properties lets it ignore inertia & momentum to some degree.
>>96959239faaaaaaag"erm actually they suck dick but no one cares and they're all just larping" is the gayest outcome. Great way to deflate all tension and gravity, that all of them would instantly toss aside their mechs to make way for tanks if it ever got "serious".Dueling variants of mechs are cool though.>>96959598>It's necessarily to make up something when the square cubed law existsNo one even knows what it actually means, it's just a buzzword for people who don't like mechs in the first place. You literally just need big feet or more points of contact.
>>96960558If you can't see the appeal of mechs being the equivalent of jousting then there's no helping you.
>>96959503I used to feel the same but I eventually decided I liked there being a bit of "friction" in how they control. To help sell the power and size/weight of the things. I forget which property did it, but I like when it's a mixture of direct control and the equivalent of binding actions to keys (kind of like vidya controls).
>>96959074>What thoughts do you have on fancy/special technologies that make mecha possible?Just possible or dominant? Because for possible you only need a good enough internal combustion engine, which we have. Haptic interface with some refinement is more than enough to drive a small mecha (Heavy Gear sized). For dominant you need way more - at minimum a good reason for why walking locomotion is preferred over wheeled or flight. BT myomers are actually a good answer even if rules laid out for them are pretty shit. Also I always thought that BT would be way better if their FTL worked planet to planet instead of needing spaceships. Would have been way more obvious why people invested so heavily into mechs.
>>96960581"G Gundam but it's gay"
>>96959598I like to work in destructability elements, to properly sell the scale of the fighting. For my 2D maps, that means having terrain markers for rubble and fire, which I can overlay on top of existing terrain when a character does sufficient damage to that object. Or putting special decals on the map like craters.If you are working with TTS or a similar program, maybe you can construct a building or terrain feature from stacked objects, then have rules for collapsing it? Or little markers to toss on the table to represent a missed shot?
>>96959074So what mecha TTRPGs do people actually play? The only ones I've ever heard about are:Battletech, which is apparently Supreme autism.Lancer, which is apparently more about political soapboxing and roleplaying JR meetings than mech combat.GURPS, which is a meme non-answer.
>>96961397I try to give opportunities to my players for destructible stuff, yeah, one of my guys is a Cannon user and really likes his Jackhammer Round so I give him walls and buildings to blow through, my VTT makes it easy to just take chunks out of objects and terrain in game so the feedback for them is nice. I should probably start giving tougher terrain more than 10HP though, might just visibly make walls thicker for stuff I don't want them to get through as easily.>>96961614Lancer can be good if you just say that the Union is the Star Trek Federation and avoid playing with idpol obsessed people, the mechanics of the system are solid.
>>96961614>So what mecha TTRPGs do people actually play?I mentioned this is a previous thread but I don't run a mecha system, I run Traveller and put mechs in it.The problem I have with every mecha game I've tried (Robotech, Mechwarrior, Heavy Gear, Mekton, etc.) is that they are so focused on the mechs that hey leave so much play opportunity outAs a game master, I strive to create situations where the players have multiple ways of solving their problems and a variety of tools to do so. Mechs should be one tool but there should be viable reasons to leave it parked sometimes.
>>96961011You mean "Gundam, but it's better". Mechs are too pretty to be associated with gritty war, they're better as tools of a duel, something with flare and culture and soul.
>>96959239>>96963734Go shit up the Battletech thread and leave us alone they’ll fall for it more >>96961614Heavy Gear and BCG
>>96963984>Comes into the mecha thread>Gets angry when he sees mecha
>>96961614>Lancer, which is apparently more about political soapboxing and roleplaying JR meetings than mech combat.The combat is the only good thing about the game. I just fixed the setting by basing my campaign on a massive asteroid mining colony that got burned by the Union reps at one point so they’re a splintered civilization that the various corps are trying to wrangle for themselves.
>>96959239Efficiency in war is often secondary to effectiveness. If building mechs is more effective than traditional weapons then they will build mechs. Efficiency only matters when it comes to how scalable production is.
>>96964575Well, therein lies the rub. Assuming no plot armor or magic, what are mechs really effective at? Toughness, not particularly, speed, not really, firepower, less than you'd want.But style? Oh yes, mechs are VERY effective when it comes to style. Nothing is more stylish or more cool than a mech. So naturally any form of combat where style is more important than killing the enemy is going to prioritize the usage of mechs. And where do we see that? In duels, jousting, honorable combat between nobles and warriors, the stakes may be large or small, they might be fighting for their country or just settling a personal grudge match or just having a friendly spar, but no matter what you don't want to go into the arena of battle if you're not also going to win over the crowd.Regular vehicles are like Legionaries. They get the job done, but they're boring. But a mech? A mech is a gladiator. It's triumphant and glorious, and flashy as it should be.
>>96964632>Assuming no plot armor or magicAnon. This entire board is about make believe and games. Your entire argument falls apart after this because it's a distraction from the fact we are all playing pretend. You pretend to be intelligent and I pretend to care. See? We are playing pretend.
>>96964679Hey, retard-kun, the question of the thread was "What thoughts do you have on fancy/special technologies that make mecha possible?", if you didn't want to engage in the premise of the thread then you don't have to.
>>96964014More that the question of mecha "realism" and "efficiency," along with the desire to relegate mecha to duels, has a history of starting arguments here. It strikes at the underpinnings of both Real Robot and many Super Robot genres, and frankly it is harder to apply to an actual tabletop RPG!I've run tournament arcs in my games before (though not the mecha games), and it can be difficult to make sure each PC gets enough spotlight time. Not impossible, of course. Maybe each duelist mech has a pilot and co-pilot (controlled by another player). But harder than "your team goes to fight the bad guys/solve the problem together.">>96964695This is true. We don't need to engage with it.
>>96964632For human shaped mechs, the best use would simply scaling up the versatility of a human. This assumes situations where the use of hands provides an advantage. My favorite mechs fall into the "chick legged"type; think the AT-ST from Star Wars or the Locust from Battletech. In theory, these are mobility mechs. The idea is that they would have great speed over difficult terrain. In my mind, this would give you a lot of the advantages of helicopters with out the noise and a lower power consumption while sacrificing actual flying and altitude. Another type of mech I don't see often that I love is the crab mech. This is essentially a replacement for tanks and other tracked vehicles by giving them rows of legs rather than tracks. They could have heavily armored legs or they could tuck their legs under themselves when hunkering down. Two possible advantages over normal tank would be being able to take on even more rough terrain and possibly climbing steeper slopes and being able to move in any direction without rotating the body.Just my thoughts.
>>96964695You literally posted a whataboutism to that question. One that is overused and boring. Everyone knows mechs are unrealistic, we don't care. In another thread we have people talking about killing dragons (without complaining about how unrealistic it would be) and dungeon diving (without arguing about the economic viability of the venture). No one here actually cares about or is interested in realism. The question was what bullshit you used to justify mechs. You gave your piece, don't act like your solution is better than the unrealistic, fantastic ones.Hell I'd justify mechs with actual fucking magic if I did worldbuilding.
>>96964791This is one reason I tend to like the Tau battlesuits or Exalted warstriders more than something like Battletech mechs. I personally find that, the more you try to justify your mechs as being 'realistic', the more questions it brings, and it rarely ever results in satisfying answers. The best answer really is just 'don't think too hard about it', and that answer tends to work best in settings that were never trying to be grounded or realistic in the first place.
>>96964846>You gave your piece, don't act like your solution is better than the unrealistic, fantastic ones.Holy projection batman, I never said mine was better than anyone else's. Are you really THAT insecure that the second anyone gives a suggestion that isn't yours, you instantly pop a lid and think they're trying to one-up you? Look, it's none of my business, but you might want to see a therapist, you have some major insecurities you need to deal with.
>>96964868So you aren't this fag? >>96963734
>>96964944Are you not THIS fag?>>96961011Because if not, it wasn't directed at you. If you come to the mecha thread just to shit on mecha, then don't be surprised when people don't act nice to you dumbass.
>>96965039Nah. I'm cool with G Gundam but I don't think it is better than the OG Gundam
>>96965080I like G Gundam a bit more but the others are still really good.
>>96959074I've been particularly obsessed with the idea of consciousness transference. It was originally born out of the idea of having some kind of horror adventure where you explore some mech-sized environment so even if you were "killed" you could go back but every death/injury would add up on your actual body and mind.It was also a way of getting around the going into space type deal allowing space exploration and exploitation while still living on Earth
>>96965811I've always thought Eclipse Phase had good bones for a mech game.
>>96966023I don't know why I didn't think of that sooner. It literally does all that right out of the box while I was obsessing over WoD/CofD because I liked the mood of it. Hell, EP even has psychic powers built into it.
>>96966023IMO, that's the best way to go. Introduce mechs to a solid scifi game and you'll have a much better mech game.
In the system I'm working on to make camp and fully rest you need to succeed on a check everyone contributes to and every race gains a bonus if they are in a environment that suits them. So everyone essentially gains a bonus for being in a place that's similar to their home, except for humans, humans gain that bonus if they have access to a mecha cockpit.
>>96965811Eclipse Phase, or similar?
>>96966400Oops, page had not updated. Didn't see that it was already discussed.>>96966057Ah, though I could see ways to do it with WoD. Demon: the Fallen even had some use of the idea, since demons can find new hosts.
>>96966400Originally wanted to use WoD/CofD but now I realize how much of an idiot I was for ignoring EP.
>>96965039I am that fag and your idea is gay and your taste is indicative of molestation.
>>96966414We all have those moments.
>>96959074>What thoughts do you have on fancy/special technologies that make mecha possible?A pair of gloves where you bump your knuckles together and then turn into the head of the mecha.
>>96959074Here's the thing I figure.Tanks are already largely obsolete in the modern day. Why? Drones and long range missiles. It's too easy to penetrate a mechs armor and it's too vulnerable and visibleBut a mech would actually excel in these combat conditions. Why? Because you can't hit it in the first place. If you shoot a missile at a mech, it can sidestep and dodge the missile. If you try to hit it with a drone, it will just fly away from it. If you fire a tank shell at it, it can dodge.This is what makes battlemechs so good. The rules of warfare are this: You have layers of defense, and the outer layers are better than the inner layers. The first layer of defense is not being seen. The second layer of defense if not being hit. The third layer of defense is surviving the damage if you are hit.A tank might be better at the third layer than a mech...but it's worse at the 2nd layer because it's unable to dodge out of the way of incoming shots. This is why battlemechs are so much more survivable.
>>96968708>Tanks are already largely obsolete in the modern day. Why? Drones and long range missiles.please tell me you don't actually believe this in real lifebecause you've phrased it as if you actually believe this in real life
>>96968708>Tanks are already largely obsolete in the modern day. Why? Drones and long range missiles.Anon…
Are there Mekton 2 stats for Heavy Gear?Was thinking about using Cyberpunk 2020 for a campaign set on Terra Nova. And sincec Jovian Chronicles started as Mekton 2/Interlock system.
>>96968937>>96969057How is a tank supposed to survive against a Javelin missile? A mech can just dodge out of the way, that's not an option for a tank.
>>96969086>How is a tank supposed to survive against a Javelin missile?APS systems (hard-kill or soft-kill) first and foremosttop-attack missiles have been in use since the late 80's, you'd think if it was the death knell of the tank that we'd have ditched them by the turn of the milleniumbut we didn't, because every new "paradigm-setting" weapon is highly effective until the (very literal) arms race of military development catches up and subsequent countermeasures blunt the effectiveness of your on-paper wunderwaffen
>>96969123Sure but at the end of the day, being able to dodge hits is better than trying to intercept them. It's why a fighter jet's main defense isn't its flares or chaff, but rather its maneuverability. Besides, tanks themselves are pretty obsolete when their survivability comes from literally not getting hit. What's the point of having an armored bunker if it's easy to penetrate?
>>96969140>It's why a fighter jet's main defense isn't its flares or chaff, but rather its maneuverability.Completely and utterly wrong. A fighter’s main defense is to not be in a position to be seen or targeted. That’s why BVR and stealth is the trend for every air engagement now and why dogfights are exceptionally rare.
>>96959503>eff ornley yeur kneur hou baed fings rearry arre!
>>96969140>It's why a fighter jet's main defense isn't its flares or chaff, but rather its maneuverability.no, a modern fighter jet's main defense is for the most part stealth and distance (and electronic countermeasures but now we're getting into the weeds)maneuverability only applies when the enemy launches a missile towards you in the first place (you mentioned the layers of defense before, and the catch with that is that to dodge a hit, you have to put yourself in the position of allowing the enemy to attempt to hit you in the first place), and (insofar as western doctrine is concerned) maneuverability has not been the main focus of aircraft design ever since A2A missile tech has developed to a degree that they easily outmaneuver aircraftthe logical conclusion would be that in this hypothetical where the mech is mobile enough to dodge ATGMs (a premise that I think is a bit insane but I'll roll with it), ATGMs would then further develop to outmaneuver mechsand then, hypothetically, mechs would develop countermeasures such as APS now that they cannot feasibly dodge missiles, and now we're back at square one>tanks themselves are pretty obsolete when their survivability comes from literally not getting hit. What's the point of having an armored bunker if it's easy to penetrate?once again referring back to the layers of defense you mentioned:you characterized the layers as a "the outer layers are better than the inner layers" type deal when that is not trueyou ought to look at it as a swiss cheese type deal: when your outer layers are defeated, your inner layers are there to save youevery layer works together to cumulatively maximize your survivability(also before you get the wrong idea since I'm running a lot of defense for the muh tanks muh realism crowd right now, I like mechs a lot, I lurk here a lot too, I just also happen to have the type of autism that makes me enjoy shit like this)
>>96969140>Besides, tanks themselves are pretty obsolete when their survivability comes from literally not getting hit. What's the point of having an armored bunker if it's easy to penetrate?Direct and mobile fire support while also maintaining a presence on the ground. Do note that the tanks you’ve been seeing get whacked by drones are either immobilized because the crew abandoned them long ago, or it ran over a mine, or have their hatches open because of the aforementioned things. Also note that 99% of the tanks you see getting droned is Soviet-era slavshit, tanks already notoriously known for having poor defenses/optics/ammunition storage.Drones didn’t make tanks obsolete. The exact same shit was run into by the Iraqis when they were liberating Mosul from ISIS. They just figured out how to counter them and were working with better equipment.
>>96969252>>96969230>>96969256Sure but all of those technologies and defenses that you're applying to a tank can also be applied to a mech and will make it perform even better.
>>96969311the only advantage you posited in your hypothetical scenario that mechs have over tanks (the ability to physically dodge ATGMs) is theoretically nullified by the simple development of more maneuverable ATGMs (I'd even argue that when we're this deep into the weeds of real-contemporary-world talk where Javelins are a thing and there's no supertech, a mech just plain and simply would not be capable of dodging an ATGM period; no amount of bloodborne sidestepping will fool infrared guidance)so now that mechs can't dodge missiles, we might as well make them more low-profile so they're harder to hit in general, and we can make them even smaller and reduce our maintenance costs and points of failure by replacing the legs with a traditional drivetrain and- oh fuck we've just made tanks againand now that we're here, I REALLY don't want to get into arguing that mechs as you see them just cannot exist in the real world because from what I can remember those arguments have been done to death here and mentions of muh realism tend to evoke some bitterness - I enjoy mech media in spite of their infeasibility, I accept the rationalizations that settings provide no matter where on the grounded-to-handwavey spectrum they lie, but your initial statement - the claim about drones and missiles and the obsolescence of tanks in modern warfare, and the fact that you presented it as something that you genuinely believe is true in the real world - ticked me off because that exits the realm of fun rationalization and into just plain misunderstanding/misinformation.
>>96961614Lancer is all combat, Battletech is garbage, GURPS no one plays.
>>96969423Lancer is 90% buildcrafting. Not in a cool mech garage sense, but in an endless ability stacking and buff optimization, so that you can efficiently kill people who aren't paying for gay marriages with taxes.It's not like people talk about their cool lancer games where they do cool things using complex in and out of mech decisions. They talk about how the myrmidon core skill can be used with a tier 3 green rarity blaze effect to dot stack multiple minor class enemies per turn. Frankly it belongs on /v/.
>>96969409Different anon - thought hit my head. Would the advantage of a bipedal weapons platform then be the ability to handle rocket boosters? Like how Armored Core in 4 and on has quick boosting and shit.
>>96969469also NTA, but yeah the core concept of a lot of mech settings isn't bipedal walking being super good. It's that legs make for great running starts and landing gear for hopping motions, and you can zoom and bounce low to the ground. This is pretty much directly from Starship Troopers.It's basically the dream of an attack helicopter that can land and keep fighting, and both honestly seem to exist equally in spite of physics. Helicopters are barely restrained from tearing themselves apart at all times and desire to kill all their occupants.So yeah, it's a cool alternative take. No one's making them either way though. We need a weeb occupied government so we can stop making whatever dumb shit we overpay for and lose wars with anyway and make some mechs.
>>96961614Avoid Lancer like the plague. Even if it's combat WASN'T just a cheap ripoff of D&D 4e's combat with mech paint, the fanbase for that game are some of the most deranged /pol/-rotted delusional snowflakes I have ever seen. People make jokes about how bad the modern D&D 5e audience is, but Lancer's audience is at least 10 times worse, and I am not exaggerating. Nobody who is a fan of this game is worth playing with or befriending. These people can't go more than 30 seconds without making a topic about themselves or their mental disabilities.
>>96969423Battletech is a wargame, not an RPG. And Mechwarrior is either "Play the wargame to use the mechs," "use this very complicated RPG ruleset to handle the mechs," or "wave your hands and say what happens" depending on which edition. But none of that makes it garbage.Similarly, Lancer is not all combat, and... well, no one plays GURPS, that part is true.>>96969466We've had a couple Lancer games get storytimed in previous threads. Some cool stories about blue-collar miners, mercenaries, pirate hunters.
Holy shit, the various schizos are all turning up all at once.>>96969511Should also mention that legged locomotion interacts differently with the ground compared to wheeled or treaded locomotion, such that ground pressure and bellying-out isn't as serious a concern.
>>96968708If this was true infantry would be invincible because they can just dodge bullets
>>96971667Infantry don't have jump jets attached to their body or extra-strength servos.
>>96968708This is the most retarded post I have seen on /tg/ in a looong time, holy shit. Yes, just sidestep the thing that probably has a guidance-system and explodes with a fuckhuge radius. Brilliant plan. Actual invincibility, bro. Fuckdamn, I've seen alot of retards on /tg/, but just like... damn.
>>96971951He probably plays a Lancer, a game where you can a Evasion score of 20 on a game where attack rolls are 1d20. The brain-rot is so deep it leads people to believe that something as large as a mech can anime-dodge bullets and explosions. Some of the stuff in Lancer is even more retarded than stuff in D&D 5e, if you can believe it.
>>96971951>Yes, just sidestep the thing that probably has a guidance-system and explodes with a fuckhuge radiusThe radius of the explosion itself doesn't matter since anti-armor weapons pretty much always rely on direct hits to penetrate.
>>96962664>my VTT makes it easy to just take chunks out of objects and terrain in gamewhich is that?
>>96968708>Tanks are already largely obsolete in the modern day. Why? Drones and long range missiles. It's too easy to penetrate a mechs armor and it's too vulnerable and visibleFirst, tanks are a long ways away from being obsolete. Russian tanks are obsolete. Second, drones are very new to warfare and doctrine around deploying them and defending from them is still in it's infancy. They have been vgreat in the past couple of years at exploiting a vector that had been largely unexplored until now but neither you nor I can know what will shake out in the next 5-10 years. I suspect that EMP weapons are going to become very common. I also expect combat vehicles will start wearing protective hats, maybe plastic domes, to make the small explosives that drones carry a lot less effective .Third, I love mechs but I know damn well that they are way more vulnerable than tanks as armor. anyone that actually does any mechanical work at all finches at the thought of a fully articulated humanoid skyscraper taking small arms fire, let alone explosives. There's no way that their maneuverability will compensate for their vulnerabilities. Shit, an air burst concussion to bend and stress joints would be a viable attack strategy. (Any magical nu-tech armor to protect them would still work better on a tank than mech.)Finally, anti-tank missiles work but they are special, low volume, expensive tools that aren't foolproof. If they were as big a threat as you think they are, there would be some really different combat stories about tanks over the past 20 years. Yeah, a TOW can kill a tank but there's a lot to deploying them. The main gun on a A-10 was designed as a tank killer but modern armor has rendered it useless for that. The next gen tank defense is already in development.
>>96972331Talespire, I got roped into buying it to play a 5e game and decided to use it for Lancer, worked out better than I thought, I like it much more than Tabletop Sim for 3D stuff. Pricing is a bit jewish though.
>>96972002I mean that's how it is in many mecha anime, so it's not unfounded for that sort of fictional environment.
>>96972373>I suspect that EMP weapons are going to become very commonCoincidentally, battlemechs are chock full of EMP and thus would be better than tanks for countering drones.
>>96972811Are you seriously making a 1 to 1 comparison between current real tanks and whatever flavor make-believe stompy robots you have in your head?For that matter, do you even know what EMP means?
>>96972871Yes I do. Also Battletech is one of the most popular and realistic mech settings out there so using its mechs for comparison is valid.
>>96960581The difference is that jousting is based on actually effective and useful skills and equipment, and it was used to train and maintain your fighting skulls. Lances are lances even if tournament ones are blunt tipped and break more easily. Skill in horse riding translates to the battlefield, and so on.Making mechs completely cerimonial because no one fights is shit, because even the highly structured cerimonial duels of the late medieval period still required skills and training that was then used in actual war
>>96972952And as we all know, nobody would EVER engage in a form of combat that serves no purpose in modern combat.
>>96969123I don't agree with him but still, the reason is that there hasn't been a peer to peer war and that's why. Look at the Ukraine war, with AFVs littering the battlefields and drones being responsible for a significant portion of the kills and, yes, Russians being unable to counter javelins without turning the tank into more of a death trap
>>96972977The difference is that fencing doesn't replace war. It's around because it's entertaining, but there are still conventional wars and fights. You're hamfisting in a "everyone just demilitarized and abandoned war and they just do WWE battles".
>>96972885>Battletech is one of the most popular and realistic mech settings out thereSure, but that's like pointing to the patient in the corner and saying he's the most talkative one in the coma ward. You're fucking retarded if you think that a 40yo cardboard robot game is in any way reflective of reality.It's a game cooked up by a couple of guys in a library in the 1980s with no understanding of either the military of physics. It's a good game and I've had lots of fun with it over the years but it's just a game. It doesn't adhere to physics, materials science, or even basic engineering concepts.When you compare the M1A3 Abrams to Battletech tanks, it absolutely mogs them. It's more survivable to fire and other elemental hazards, faster, and more accurate than what Battletech tanks are written as. If there were zero technical improvements except to be able to adapt armor and ammo from the BT universe, it would be the most dominant fighting unit in the war against the Clans.
>>96973090Sounds like you're projecting. I never said anything about anyone being 'demoralized', humanity has always had a fascination with duels between kings resolving things instead of armies duking it out. Hell, even when we did have armies that would fight each other en masse, we still had personal duels between people to settle grudges. There's plenty of historical examples of duels being used to resolve greater conflicts without the need for massed armies. Besides, modern armies are far too destructive. By the time you take a planet, most of what you were there to claim in the first place is blown up.
>>96972557Oh neat, I thought it looked vaguely familiar. My Conan GM used it to render some of the locations we visited.
>>96972977>>96973151Exactly. This is why we should have regular combat mechs, and then also mechs optimized for dueling (also secretly good at combat).>>96973149Battletech as the muh realism serious military strategy game completely killed its actual appeal as the dying world mad max mech game.
>>96974161I mean, at some point in Battletech's universe there had to be a reason for the mechs to be built in the first place that would make sense in a context other than just some feudal post-apocalyptic warlord setting. And we get to see why with how the Mackie turned out and how it was able to utterly curbstomp combined arms conventional forces all by itself.
>>96974161>Battletech as the muh realism serious military strategy game completely killed its actual appeal as the dying world mad max mech gameI enjoy Battletech in multiple forms as a form of fiction unto itself. I don't need it to be realistic, I just want it to be fun and cool. Giant stompy robots are fun and I don't need them justified.If I wanted to explore how we would make real mechs and how would we make them useful, then I drop Battletech completely and pivot to exploring other ideas. Hells bells, I wouldn't even focus on too many mechs if I wanted to capitalize on the full effect of combined arms warfare in the Battletech universe. But one doesn't mean the other.
Mechs already have some minor but obvious advantages over tanks. For example, a mech can use its hands to lift a boulder, or climb on a steep surface. If you really want to justify mechs, rather than coming up with new advantages like being able to dodgeroll though missiles, you should come up with ways to decrease the advantages that tanks have. Then, with all else being equal, mechs can become preferable for the flexibility or even just for style points.I guess the main advantage of a tank is that it's a much simpler design with less moving parts. This makes it more effective to mass-produce in an assembly line, and more resistant, because it has less moving parts that can be destroyed or impaired, more weak spots, is easier to cover in armor, etc.For ease of production, you can even it out with 3d-printer-like technology that can churn out mechs with highly complex joints, internal structure, systems, etc, without the cost and the duration of the process scaling directly with the complexity of the product.For durabiliy, you have to assume that a mech's survivability is not strongly tied to how much physical damage the physical structure can take. It's common in sci-fi to have deflector shields that are basically just magic, so this isn't hard. Just assume that as soon as a projectile pierces the deflector shield and hits the metal, it's usually game over anyway, so layering the mech's weak spots in physical armor efficiently isn't very relevant.
>>96974161>dying world mad max mech game.Frankly that wasn't all too great itself since it fell to the same problems as the Fallout series.BT would be best as a mech game with ever evolving tech where succwars has the bare bones slow mechs we know and love, while the latest era would have absolutely insane machines like combiners, hovermechs, treadmechs, space battleship transformers, etc.
>>96974324The thing is, tanks aren't even a simple design. If anything, they're far more complex than mechs. Treads are literally thousands of tiny little metallic parts and if any one of those parts breaks the tank is immobilized.
>>96974351Now you're just trolling.There's no fucking way you think a row of wheels is more complicated than a series of ball and socket joints.
>>96974468There's a hell of a lot more going on here than just 'wheels'
>>96974474Ohhh.... You're brain damaged... I get it now. I'm sorry for your medical conditions.Have you looked at the complexity of what the joints would be for a fully articulated humanoid robot? And you think the independent suspension system for a tracked vehicle more complicated?
>>96974511Or you can just use artificial muscles like Battlemech and make it much simpler than wheels
>>96974619>muscles>no bones or jointsI do respect your commitment to stupidity...
>>96974655Okay smartass, if wheels and treads are so brilliantly simple why didn’t nature ever invent them?
>>96974336All the other eras suck dick and mostly only add "laser but mathematically better/worse". If they went all out with LAMs and direct neural interfaces and shit, sure. Instead they cucked out and none of it's good, only laser+. Also the clans are retarded and the second they show up they steal the entire show, and this happened really early.
>>96974696Isn’t everything in Battlemech direct neural interface? You literally need to be able to connect to a neurohelm to pilot a mech at all, and only a select few bloodlines are capable of that
>>96959074>What thoughts do you have on fancy/special technologies that make mecha possible?Instead of technology, try biology.Consider Blindsight's "vampires". They are a carnivorous human subspecies, Homo sapiens vampiris, that went extinct after Homo sapiens sapiens civilization emerged because a "crucifix glitch" in their brains caused them to suffer epileptic seizures upon seeing right angles (such as buildings).In our hypothetical mecha setting, then, humans are just inherently incompetent at piloting anything that doesn't have at least two arms and two legs. Maybe their proprioception gets confused by the lack of limbs. Whatever the justification is, all the way back to prehistory, humans use wheels rarely or never. Wagons ride on skis or reinforced flat bottoms. Railroads and caterpillar tracks are never invented. Canals dominate inland transport until around 1900, when legged machines begin to enter the picture.As a competing technology to mecha, you can have monkeys, dolphins, and octopuses trained (or even "uplifted") to pilot vehicles that do not have arms and legs--and maybe the rare "Newtype" mutated human who can do so as well.
>>96974670Tracks are nothing more than wheels that bring their own rolling surface. It's weird to think of them that way but that is what it is.Wheels are objects that roll and there are several creatures the move by rolling. So yes, there is wheels in nature. The axle joint is what isn't found in nature. This isn't strictly true as there are micro organisms that have axle joints used in locomotion (cilia) but there's a problem for more complex multicellular organisms. Things like capillary tubes, blood vessels, nerve threads, and muscle tissue cannot carry over the joint. Then there's the fact that protecting the joint would be an issue. Skin, scales, and the like wold have an issue with essentially having an open wound just to let it turn. The weaknesses for biological organisms exist also in man made machines but can be mitigated in ways that nature would find difficult. Since there's no need to worry about cell and tissue structure, nerves, or blood, they can spin freely. Finally, axle joints, bearings, and seals are wear items that are replaced in machines; improvements in design and materials development have reduced the frequency of maintenance though. Still, no one expects a wheel bearing to last 70+ years.Now, for further reading I recommend pic rel
>>96974696>All the other eras suck dickEh, I don't really care for Succession Wars and my favorite era is FCCW as it really comes into its own as a setting focused on both the battle and the tech parts of its name. Instead of just one or the other. But I agree, they should've went harder on LAMs and DNI instead of trying to relive the glory days of muh myad myax shitmechs with Dark Age.
>>96973027>there hasn't been a peer to peer war and that's whyi have no clue what you mean by that>AFVs littering the battlefields and drones being responsible for a significant portion of the killsAFVs aren't tanks and both sides are fielding dated equipment (either obsolete hand-me-downs for the prior or whatever the fuck they could raise from the stockpiles for the latter) with flaws that modern tank design has moved past; ukrainian losses are predominantly dated designs from the cold war, russian losses are predominantly dated designs with the ring magazine of megadeath.i mean for fucks sake, of the modern western tanks on the ukrainian side, leopards have taken dozens of FPV strikes to the chin and kept rolling, the sole claimed challenger drone kill only became a drone kill when russia changed the story now that lancets were the propaganda fad of the week, and they are still fielding abrams despite every single dubiously sourced news article headline desperately wanting you to believe that drones are somehow obliterating modern tanks en masse>Russians being unable to counter javelins without turning the tank into more of a death trapif you're referring to cope cages, cope cages are nothing for javelins, but are verifiably effective against dronesrussians made improvised comedy cages that worked, ukrainians adopted that for their arty, rocket systems, draped over trenches, etc., and now you see israel using the cope cage in gaza and both brits and japan are now preemptively fitting and testing their shit with cope cages toothere's a reason why the lancet had to upgrade to tandem charges; because the funny meme cages actually worked to counteract drones.we have swerved quite a bit off the topic of mechs here though so i'll just leave it off here, I don't wanna shit up a thread I like any more than I inadvertently already have
>>96974722Neurohelms are funky. They continuously war over just how much control they actually give you, and so they're either mind interfaces or just balancing systems depending on what you read. You send commands with your mind, but you don't control it with your mind. Take from that what you will.DNI and enhanced imaging control are supposed to be pure mindjacked body control. No need to touch the sticks. They make you go nuts and die though, and they're heavily related to protomechs, which totally bombed as a sales pitch.>>96974973It's kind of weird seeing him say this theme is a problem when yeah, you got a story set in the collapse and then found it hard to continue the narrative. No shit? If mad max finds all this water and everyone shaves their mohawks off and starts planting crops you just get a normal setting. You get rational max. Not every setting prompt is designed for endless "and then what happens?".
>>96975225I like that cope cage was clearly a mocking term but then it worked good enough that literally everyone is testing it out now. Perhaps we'll have people in five hundred years saying cope double-ironic because it'll go down as something that turns out good in the end. The respectable, iconic, reliable cope cage.
>>96972079>anti-armor weapons pretty much always rely on direct hits to penetrate.
>>96972079Somehow you're managing to get even more retarded as time goes on. The sad part is, I don't even think you're trolling, I think you're generally this stupid.
>>96975535Those are not anti-armor weapons
>>96975488>Not every setting prompt is designed for endless "and then what happens?".Yeah but for franchises it's an absolute death knell which is what FASA intended for BT since day one. And for there to be no mechs in your purported mech game...Anyway there's a massive amount of concessions one has to make when playing BattleTech in general. It's why I hope HG3 does well as Heavy Gear does a better job across the board doing what BT tried to do since day one. Want Angry Andrew? You've got Leagueless. Want Knights in Space? Eden. Want advancing tech and a true blue /m/ech faction? Peace River.
>>96975670>I hope HG3 does wellHow'd your Y2K party go?
>>96975680Dunno what you mean.You know of the Heavy Gear 3 announcement, right?
>>96975578You dumb motherfucker. You absolute cretin. You bumbling buffoon.
>the guy who’s arguing for the practicality of mechs vs. tanks is completely illiterate in the basics of military and weaponry knowledgePar for the course.
>>96975766HG3e came out in 2003, but I misremembered and though it was a few years earlier. That's the attempted joke.
>fictional scientists invent teleportation and mecha, fight cool wars with nice soundtracks>real life scientists invent the iphone, everyone wants to shoot themselvesMaybe real life scientists are just stupid. Who keeps asking them to make an even more unhealthy soda instead of mechs? Why do they keep making robots and then putting disgusting flesh faces on them? Maybe we'll never figure it out.
>>96974670Nature doesn't invent simple things. It invents what works, and what works stays like it does until it doesn't work or someone else mutates something that just the same. Your hand has tendons that start outside the hand, even so far as the elbow and have to trail all the way to the fingers. Your body is constantly unbalanced forward because otherwise the brain can't tell without a constant force. Your eye's receptors are at the very back and in front of your eyes are all the supporting cells to keep the receptors alive, which inevitably block some of the light and reduce the vision quality. And so on.
>>96976292>Your body is constantly unbalanced forward because otherwise the brain can't tell without a constant forcePretty sure this one actually saves us a bunch of energy on walking. For all our flaws, there's function behind a lot of them and if we tried to change it we might find there's also some drawbacks.
>>96976830I don't doubt it does, but the way my physiology professor explained, the main function is to have a frame of reference of our own balance. Obviously being unbalanced forward is better than backwards or to the sides. After all, our eyes can't see still objects because the photoreceptors would saturate,nand therefore constantly perform microscopic movements
>>96976292So the only ''realistic'' outcome here is that machas are living creatures and have evolved to be this way. Or just go the Transformers route and make them turn into something useful when not in the ''human'' mode.
>>96975796Anti-tank mines are for blowing out tracks, not penetrating armor. This would be just as effective at knocking over a mech that steps on it as blowing out a tread. Knee joints on a mech would be far more vulnerable and easier to hit and would certainly be a target for infantry.Battletech mechs are not faster than modern combat vehicles, they are not more accurate, they are not more maneuverable, and they have larger profiles and have a whole lot more vulnerabilities.To let you know just how not realistic Battletech is,, the main gun on a Abrams tank is a 120mm cannon (it would be the equivalent of an AC 15), has a firing rate of 30 rounds a minute (5 shots a round), has a range of 2000m (66 hexes), has a 1 MOA accuracy (way more accurate than BT guns), and doesn't have to worry about heat buildup in combat. We're talking about doing 75 damage to the head of a mech at 50 hexes in a single round with a 98% accuracy.
>>96977333>Battletech mechs are not faster than modern combat vehiclesAn Atlas mech is faster than an Abrams tank off-road
>>96977383Atlas top speed 54km/hrAbrams top speed 72km/hrBoth of these are on relatively flat land. Both see a slow down in bad terrain. I have seen the Abrams run flat out on terrain that no commercial truck could handle. Now we get down to arguing "what is rough terrain?"
>>96977383https://www.youtube.com/shorts/H7iOGdRAWHw
>>96977409Abrams top speed is 40 km/hr off-road, it only gets that fast on roads
>>96977333tbf battletech does cater to half of these statements. A single autocannon attack can be either single larger rounds or multiple smaller rounds, it doesn't distinguish them ingame, hexes are abstract distances and there's rules for pure line of sight targeting, and battletech tanks don't build up heat either unless they have energy weapons. It's strictly the engine type that judges whether you have to watch out for heat and fusion is just really good as a tradeoff.Particularly range has a blurb at the start of every rulebook that says flatly that the ranges are nonsense and non-scale so that you can play the game on a few sheets of map paper and not on a basketball court. You can also just play it at different scale if you'd prefer.>We're talking about doing 75 damage That's one thing that's flat out 100% established as nuh uh. Primitive weapons (ours) do diddly against battletechs fancy armor. It's like firing a civil war cannon at an abrams. You don't have to find it reasonable but it's very plainly established.
>>96977518>hexes are abstract distancesIn the rule book it's 30m>That's one thing that's flat out 100% established as nuh uh. Primitive weapons (ours) do diddly against battletechs fancy armor. It's like firing a civil war cannon at an abrams. You don't have to find it reasonable but it's very plainly established.I made this statement with the concept that they would have access to in-verse ammo for the tank. Also, It's an easy jump to make that you could put in-verse armor plate on an Abrams as well which is 18t capacity.>>96977507>Abrams top speed is 40 km/hr off-road, it only gets that fast on roadsMiles an hour, not kilometers and hour. It's actually 42 miles an hour and only because it's governed. It's 60 miles an hour ungoverned. It also has a known 30 miles an hour speed over the roughest terrain it can cover. This is a converted speeds of 72K/h, 97k/h, and 48k/h.
>>96977547It’s only 25 mph off-road, this is on the Wikipedia page
>>96977551>sources Wikipedia and doesn't understand why everyone sees him as an idiotLook at Janes
>this whole threadIs the retard who argues for mech practicality on /k/ here as well?
>>96977547>In the rule book it's 30mThey acknowledge that. Weapon ranges are abstract and you don't have to use them. Frankly they never should've given a hex scale at all, the minis, map, terrain, etc don't even share a scale anyway.>in-verse ammo for the tank>in-verse armor plate on an Abrams That's just a battletech tank then. They're pretty good. They're way stronger than an abrams too. They don't suddenly do a thousand points of damage just because though. They might do ten damage to BAR10 armor.
Mechs are, in a way, an acknowledgement of nature’s superiority of form. Machines are generally associated with blocky stuff. Tanks are basically a rectangular bunker with a gun, borg cubes are literally giant blocks, cities are composed of endless rows of rectangles, etc.So by conforming the form of the machine to something we associate with nature, be it a humanoid or quadrupedal design, we are acknowledging the superiority of nature’s form, and using it to empower our own designs. This coincidentally is why you often see mechs associated with kaiju, another pinnacle of evolution and nature. Sometimes even combined, like Mechagodzilla.With all that in mind, what about dragon mechs? Peak nature combined with humanity’s technology.
>>96977648>They don't suddenly do a thousand points of damage just because though. They might do ten damage to BAR10 armor.Ok...When it comes to the 120mm gun on an Abrams is capable of throwing an 18 pound round down range for 2 miles at 1MOA every 2 seconds. That's 5 rounds a turn in a gun that would be about halfway between an AC10 and AC20 that's essentially the same tech with being able to hit a 2ft target consistently at max range. We have the data that says that the AC 20 is a 203mm gun and a AC 2 is a 25mm so we can extrapolate the M256 is about the size of a AC15 +/-. In the books, AC guns are described as cannons firing shells that are HEAP so there is no issue with it being an incompatible tech. We also have the data as to what the Battletech rounds are so we can pivot to those but there's no fucking way that you're shooting a 200lbs round out of a 100mm cannon as that round would weigh more than the same size shell made out of solid depleted uranium. (one more point that shows where BT isn't realistic but maybe that's the magazine and auto loader but that's still too heavy) We are talking 1970s tech absolutely outperforming all the comparable data. Every argument for "magic scifi tech" is stuf we don't have data for like the m/s, cal/gr, or kw/mm of blast force of the round nor the strength, elasticity, or absorption rates for BT armor. I'm 100% ok with Battletech being an abstraction, my issue is that it's not realistic despite the arguments made earlier and that the known and comparable data makes BT mechs superior to modern war machines. I like the game, I'm just not going to delude myself that it's "real" i n any meaningful way.
>>96977805>With all that in mind, what about dragon mechs? Peak nature combined with humanity’s technology.Show me a real life giant flying lizard.
>>96977853
>>96977846Woah slow down buddy, I'm not reading all of a post with that many numbers in it.>halfway between an AC10 and AC20 Primitive rifle.>we don't have data for like the m/s, cal/gr, or kw/mm of blast force of the round nor the strength, elasticity, or absorption rates for BT armorGod, I hope not. Fantasy always gets stupid when they throw out some half-baked stats in some crap info book. The numbers are gonna be dumb and wrong, so who cares? Fantasy doesn't care what reality has to say about it. You could say "well a dragon couldn't possibly support itself with its wings, and certainly couldn't breath fire!" and yet it goes on flapping and burning peasants regardless. They accidentally wrote that star wars blasters output more energy than hiroshima in the one cross sections book and those geeks ran with that for years. Is that what you want? Pistols that should punch through a modern tank?
Anyone wanna share this tool?https://interpoint-station.itch.io/lancer-map-creation-toolI've seen it uploaded in previous threads but the links were all dead.
>>96977547>In the rule book it's 30mAnd the rulebook says that weapon ranges are simplified and shortened compared to what they'd be capable of for gameplay reasons or you'd need a tennis field to be able to play
>>96977863It's not big enough. BIGGER!!!
>>96977905>They accidentally wrote that star wars blasters output more energy than hiroshima in the one cross sections book and those geeks ran with that for years. Is that what you want? Pistols that should punch through a modern tank?I admit I'm one of those guys that will get a little autistic when there's numbers up. Yeah, some of the RPG stuff gets a little out of hand when it's examined critically. Still, I can and am willing to say it's just a game so lets roll dice and have fun.However, the OTHER nutjob trying to convince me that somehow Battletech mechs are somehow realistic made me spurg in stats.
>>96979281Oh yeah, he's just trolling you. He does that.
>>96977805>Peak nature combined with humanity’s technology.Just go full pterodactyl
>>96979281He's a loser who constantly shits up the battletech threads
>>96978196Remind me tmorrow.
>>96983144That's literally most of the people IN the Battletech threads.
>>96986794The Battletech thread that just died was 200 posts about heat and how it effects the pilot. Very crunchy very nerdy but no one tried to say that was RL.
>>96986794Yes but this guy is worse, he constantly trolls about realism and mechs as a status symbols and all that other stupid shit. Only worse person is the combined arms hater. Fortunately we’re actual mecha fans in this thread so we shouldn’t count anything all be able to see how stupid his bait is
>>96986986I mean if I was going for a combined arms game I personally would avoid Battletech myself, the game doesn't really support it all that well, that's more of Heavy Gear's thing.
>>96987003Oh yeah I fully agree that Battletech doesn’t handle combined arms very well. But it doesn’t handle mechs very well either.
>>96977805
Where do these mecha realism guys keep coming from? I swear no matter where I go on 4chan be it /v/, /m/, /tg/, there's always at least one thread where it gets asked and the same conclusion happens everytime. I get that a giant robot would be cool irl (and one that's more like a scopedog and not whatever the fuck the megabot was) but it's just not gonna happen. Hell I'm not sure if there will really even be human soldiers in warfare much longer. If you can have a general just direct an operation via drones as if it were Supreme Commander then future war might just be drone swarms. That is of course if the technology actually keeps up and isn't just one big ad for OpenAI and weapons R&D.Anyways, any 3D mini line that would be good for something Fallout-ish but with giant robots?
>>96987350I like to imagine someone's idea of "realism" is highly dependent on which mecha media you first started with. You're either all in on Gundam or you came up with Battletech. Everything else is just autism to justify whose taste is better than the other.
>>96987372For me it was Grendaizer.
>>96987350>Anyways, any 3D mini line that would be good for something Fallout-ish but with giant robots?Take a look at Konflict '47.
>>96987459These look perfect Definetly anything with Raypunk-ish weapons is what I'm looking for. Thanks.
>>96987372This is why I personally like mechs more in something like Warhammer 40k than in Battletech, because it's already not trying to be 'realistic' so there's less dissonance and questions involved. I know that Tau battlesuits are just a bunch of sci-fi geek-words mashed together and I am 100% okay with that cause they're cool as fuck.
>>96987545Eh, 40kfags can be annoying in their own way with needing to powerscale everything against it. But I agree that at least no one is claiming for it to be totally realistic.
>>96987445>GrendaizerSteel Jeeg for me
>>96987497Take a look at This is Not a Test minis too to round out the retro apocalypse. There's no mechs but there's robots and some cool not-Fallout wastelanders.
>>96987603Thanks, definitely helps out what I'm looking to do. I like some of the Wasteland Warfare stuff but it's not quite the vibe of the Fallout 1/2 stuff I like. But ultimately something like Wasteland 2 is what I'm going for. I want junker old war mechs salvaged by unga bunga tribals that warship them as a god. The retrofuturism adds to that flavor.
>>96987545There are real effort now to create power armor. IDK if DARPA has a unit that be fielded yet but there's been some interesting prototypes that have been showcased. There's two exoskeletons in pre-production now, SABER and HULC.
>>96987713I'm glad to help out. I'd love to see more about your project.
>>96987751I don't really put mecha in the same category as power armor personally. Power armor is essentially just Infantry+, it does all the same things infantry can do but better, while even the smaller mechs will usually at least fill a different role on account of the fact that they aren't small enough to fit inside of most buildings comfortably.
>>96987790In a lot of media that features mechs, power armor is often along side. Almost always, it's presented in a way that leads me to assume that they are related tech. Because of this, I tend to blend the two of them in my head as a single genre and discuss them in this way.That said, I appreciate your perspective as well. A fighting man in a high tech suit is something we can see coming in right around the corner where 30ft+ robots have both technical challenges and practicality aspects that are much further out.So, you you agree that I'm allowed to talk about power armor in the mech thread, I'll agree that they are two distinct things, and we both enjoy stomp robots.
>>96987924The primary reason I differentiate them is just on account of differing roles on the battlefield. We will always need infantry because we build our infrastructure, cities, and buildings for people, so having infantry will always be a thing we need. And since we're using them for urban conflict, we'll probably end up using them for rural conflict as well since they're still pretty good in woods and other rough terrain. Power armor changes very little about their role, it's essentially an upgrade to infantry.Mechs are different though. A mech as we typically understand it doesn't neatly fit into any one role we typically associate with other vehicles, so it can't really be a simple 'upgrade'. Likewise, we don't always agree on what a mech even should be in the first place, so what roles it would fill can differ.A Battletech mech for example, is fast, heavily armed, durable, easy on logistics, and able to traverse rough terrain. They essentially have the durability of a tank, the cross-terrain capacity of an infantryman, the weaponry of a small naval warship, the logistics requirements of a Toyota pickup, and the utility of a dozen different engineering vehicles. We have no analogue for this in real life.But other mechs like Armored Cores with their relative fragility but high speed and firepower are able to be compared a bit more, in this case something more like a fighter jet and a helicopter with legs seems appropriate.
Super robot system i'm working onhttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1caJu0EBGkkr40ObO82Qv_LF7GsmoQtOtbthrtYaokDs/edit?usp=sharingI'd be interested in hearing any thoughts or if people would want to play it.
>>96978196Here you go.As always, buy if you find it useful.https://filebin.net/ux7lxmjcdwsnwu6b
>>96991912Is that a mech on roller blades? Is that for the next The Fast and the Furious movie?
>>96992011Are you new to the concept?
>>96959074Whats this guy from? I like him.
>>96995410I think it's a fan thing
>>96965811The setting of Ember: Obsidian Protocol has at least two factions do that for mech piloting.
Hello, bleeding hussars anon, I've gotten over some lethargy to update the pdfs on my itch page for the "Lancer for AGE" stuff. you can just pick it up for free, right now.would like to have some feedback from people outside my little bubble.gist of it is is in the mission statement, I wanted to see how these systems would combine together and the project got a lot bigger than I thought it would. now there's various solutions to problems I ran into in translation, as well as... pilots directly influencing the effectiveness of a mech? how fun. armory is unfinished, so it's not included yet, but I'm working on that.friends compare it a bit to Code Geass and Armored Core if you sucked at piloting. I kinda agree.
>>97001223I AM THE WORST AT THIShttps://7thsealgames.itch.io/lancer-for-age
>>96982583Based Zoidsfag
>>97005835A cool setting that'd make for a great RPG/Wargame.They should bring back the battle card game.
>>96961614The Battletech RPGs/games are not autistic but they are badly presented and laid out. They are also designed around you picking and choosing how you want to use the rules and which rules from which system you want to use. It's like build-a-bear based on what scale and style of game you want.The simplest way to play BT RPGs is to play one of the many conversions or to play MW2e.
Will it be any good? I don't have high hopes, tie in games tend to be pretty shitty.There must be more than a fair few AC fan games at this point...
>>97008128I thought it came out ages ago. It's a very rules heavy encounter-focused game. It's more like a party combat simulator than an trpg. In fact I don't even know if I've seen it having rules for anything else.
Lancer players, I need your build advice. I've had an argument with the GM, nothing super serious but the smugness of it got me in the mood to prove a point, concerning the burn damage from Tokugawa. My GM basically shit all over it when I said I wanted to play one and wanked off their own favorites while insisting that bonus damage is inconsistent and everyone overhypes burn damage too much.Give me your most dastardly Tokugawa builds, anything that'll inflict tons and tons of Burn damage. I want to prove a point and dump as much burn damage as I possibly can onto enemies. Melee or ranged, doesn't matter, whatever seems most likely to make a smug GM eat their own words.
How do you feel about mechs having a sort of meta/spiritualistic side to them? Humanity has always been fascinated with the idea of mechs even from the ancient age, even if they're not strictly speaking practical, so what if human belief in mechs was what made them so powerful?
>>97010312>Lancer players, I need your build adviceDo you guys ever need anything else?>>97010389Depends on the execution.
>>96987372Strictly speaking, I think we're close to seeing a first "real" standpoint to how mechs work in the real world.I think we'll see a natural extension of remote controlled drone technology, and a gradual scaling up of said remote controlled systems. All it takes is some madman with enough budget to think "could I take ATLAS Spot, make it bigger and bolt a stabilized cannon onto it?" If we define mecha by strict criteria of having a human pilot, I don't think that's feasible considering what the machine needs to do to justify it's own existence (cheap, agile, quickly deployable).
>>97010389
>>97012039My beloved.
>>97010312Sorry to say but a lot of the original frames have gotten power-crept by some of the newer ones. Your GM's still a faggot, tho. You should start by telling him that.The issue with the Tokugawa is that its frame traits aren't great. LB requires you to be Exposed, 1 of the worst conditions to have in the game as all damage coming your way is gonna be doubled. Then, plasma sheath. To reiterate, your GM is a faggot. Burn is cool. Anything to do with the danger zone and being in it. Is cool. But I'm not gonna deny that it WILL suck when you've stacked up all this burn on 1 guy, and then it just negates it by succeeding on the 10 up Eng save. It's already a 50/50 shot, and any high priority targets you go for will probably have a bonus to it. Finally, it's unfortunate that the core power Superheated Reactor Feed is just a facilitator for LB and a general stat improvement, but only for your range and threat, no extra damage.I love the Tokugawa license line. It's goal of trying to do the whole beserker/push the limit phase shift is awesome. I'm a sucker for heat builds and cannot resist the Torch and Deep Well Heat Sink (4 GOD DAMNED SYSTEM POINTS FML), but the frame itself IS lacking with its traits and core power. I think there was a reason it was one of the first frames to get an alt via the Enkidu.Regardless, if you're looking for something to lay on the burn, look at the Genghis license/frames. I mentioned that it'd suck if you focus on a single target for them to just clear the burn since it's a 10 up Eng save, so the better solution to spite your GM is to apply as much burn in as wide an area as possible. You'd be able to clear out chaff thanks to the cone attacks of the flamethrowers, apply burn to as many targets as possible, and if you pick the alt Genghis frame, even if your GM starts throwing enemies resistant to Burn, you have a trait that quite literally tells them to fuck off.Also, you should state what lvl for the build.
>>97009429Yeah I looked it up after making the post and apparently it was a jap only release? Weird.
>>96959074>What thoughts do you have on fancy/special technologies that make mecha possible?There should be only one superduperspecial thing that makes mecha possible, or a couple of more mundane things. That means that the special thing itself can be placed under threat, either tactically or globally which makes for great plot hooks and possible Oh Fuck moments in combat.>t. always stay strapped and vested in your mech
>>96969469>the ability to handle rocket boosters? Like how Armored Core in 4 and on has quick boosting and shit.Why couldn't a tank or other armored vehicle do the same thing? I should think it would be easier.And personally, I hate seeing mecha boosting/dashing around all the time. It's fine sometimes -- like, it was a cool schtick for the Dom -- but mecha should run more. I actually think mecha use boost/dash movement so much simply because it's much easier to animate.One of the many things I like about Dougram and about Full Metal Panic is seeing the mecha RUN. So badass!
>>96959239So, Robot Jox?
>>96973149>a game cooked up by a couple of guys in a library in the 1980s with no understanding of either the military of physics.Don't forget, as well, no understanding of anime.
>>96974351So... the Guntank is the most complex mech ever conceived. Got it.
>>96975488>rational max
>>96977436There's "Sora" stamped all over that video. AI video tool. Bad example. I mean, it's not a wildly inaccurate depiction of what modern tanks can do, but man... Use real video instead of AI BS.
>>96977805>what about dragon mechs?Oh HELL YEAH
>>96987713>Fallout 1/2Ranma emerges from the shelter, immediately bumps into post-apocalypse Ryoga, who asks "where am I?"
>>97010312Proving >>96969466's point
>>96995410The artist goes by "Fana." They sure likes their giant robits to have huuuuuge legs!https://x.com/FANA37150837https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/710508
>>96959074>What thoughts do you have on fancy/special technologies that make mecha possible?>>96959186>I mean, the classic is some kind of neural interface that requires the mentally-interfaced machine to be shaped like a person...>Super-awesome alloys are also a good one.Well let's see... What elements do giant robots need in order to function?A power sourceMobility architectureControl systemsArmor or some other kind of protectionAll of those elements are things we already have. But in order for a giant robot to be functionally practical, at least one of those elements (potentially all of them) will need to be better than what we have now.What could make all those element really super-duper? And, more difficult question: what could do so, but only for giant robots?
>>97011835>If we define mecha by strict criteria of having a human pilot, I don't think that's feasible considering what the machine needs to do to justify it's own existence (cheap, agile, quickly deployable).Also, the pilot of a Gundam-sized robot robot would be subjected to brutal G-forces just from the robot walking and moving around. (To say nothing of "sidestepping anti-tank missiles"!)(pic not related)
>>97017955>humans aren't smart enough to invent mechs>and they're too weak to pilot themFrankly just sounds like we don't deserve them.
Imma just run ace combat 5 as a mech ttrpg and no one can stop me.
>>96959239The issue is that anything competitive will have pressures that optimize away romantic elements for performance. Look at how professional sports evolve, e.g. increasing rates of 3-pointers in basketball.Mechs are a nonstarter if you are trying to capture any sense of realism/meta-realism because of how maladapted they are. They only work in a world which is intrinsically fantastical or as themselves being larps in-universe
>>97017955In a way Gundams are sensible designs, in that mobile suits are mostly used in 0 G environments. It's a great form for navigating manmade environments in space, the ability to operate on the ground is just a bonus.
>>97019052Five Star Stories gets this. It's a completely wacked out science-fantasy setting with space dragons and gods and wizards and shit, but they still go out of their way to point out that mechs are hilariously impractical weapons that are only used by the knightly social class for a lot of weird sociopolitical reasons and they could use orbital fighter bombers to fight wars, except they're too good and nobody wants to blow up all the habitable planets because there's only like five or six left.
>>97019747>hilariously impractical weapons that are only used by the knightly social class for a lot of weird sociopolitical reasons and they could use orbital fighter bombers to fight warsThey also completely dominate literally every other form of combat vehicle that isn't a space jet with nuclear bombs or a glassing from space. The agreement is to not spacenuke every planet into inhospitable conditions, not fight with funny robots for fun.They still fight open conflict with hover tanks and power armored infantry and they can barely operate within a few kilometers of the mechs without getting nuked with point defence lasers. The only things more powerful than the high end ones are dragons, satan, and potentially cheetahmen from the other dimension, I can't remember that bit so good.
>>97018731explain
I don't post as often as I used to, but I've been following these threads for a long time. I've noticed some trends when it comes to what people talk about.Generic "mecha" questions are the bread-and-butter, because everyone has an opinion, whether it is informed by the tabletop, or just by whatever mecha media they tend to like. Oftentimes these conversations are entirely divorced from anyone's actual games. Or tangentially related, if someone is noodling over a custom setting.Build-crafting for a system is fairly easy to talk about and get feedback on, because anyone playing a given game has the necessary context to understand the pieces involved. This might be Lancer build-crafting, or Heavy Gear force composition, or the vanishingly rare discussion of what people are using in their Battle Century game.Sharing stories will take more time and effort for the poster to explain, more context for readers to process, and rarely gets follow-up questions or responses. After-action reports tend to get more feedback than RPG session recaps (with the exception of that one AdEva series), due to the aforementioned factors of context. Rarely does someone ask "but WHY was Wing Gundam fighting against the 00 Qan[T]?" because in a wargame it isn't necessary information.Game development and homebrewing like >>96990067 and >>97001223 are doing is even more thankless. Readers will glance over the post, maybe a few will look at the linked document, and a vanishingly small number (possibly zero) will actually give any feedback, constructive or otherwise. I'm guilty of this myself; I used to try and at least skim through the poster's work, but these days I forget to come back and read it.Anyway, my point here is that we should be more encouraging of those who make an effort to post. And if we don't care for what they post, we can at least rein in our desire to shit on them.>>97018731>Imma just run ace combat 5 as a mech ttrpgDamn right, anon. Maybe this .png helps.
>>97020918Run the events of the circum pacific war as mech focused combat and plot instead of jet focused.I already have 5 idiot pcs. It'll just be a more linear narrative.
>>97021370P.S. it might diverge from the canonical events but so far we played the first set of missions to a T.
I will say it is stupid as fuck that people think the "Western vs Eastern" mech divide is an actual thing and not just something some retards came up with in their heads because they never only have surface-level understanding of Battletech.
>>97021370Ah I see. I'm not an Ace Combat or Armored Core fag but I had a similar thought. Ace has a much better presented setting that's easier to run a game in.I am currently trying to find a ruleset for running an Armored style setting but I am not sure what rules to run. If I can't find anything that suits me I am going to default to Battletech/MW and heavily house rule the combat.I'm also on the lookout for some lore books I can yarr. Some shmups have similar settings too but those are even more niche and more Jap than the AC's.
>>97022399Thanks for the 20 years late insight anon. To improve on your post, outside of Battletech and VOTOMS, what other things are even in the "real robot" subgenre? It does seem heavily underrated. I can barely think of 5 but I am no weeb.
>>97022773Macross, Gundam, Obsolete, Armored Core, Patlabor, Knights of Sidonia, Code Geass, etc.There's others but I won't comment on them without having seen them personally.
Trying to find a big japanese robot on modern day google is murder. Has anyone seen this image? Its a traditional piece with a blue and white mecha that has antennae and absurdly large thighs, one of which is pocked with bulletholes. Its standing in front of a destroyed apc/tank in a city.Looks a lot like the old Squalos from Infinity. Trying to see if I can get a 3d model or kit of it. I could ask /m/ but tg has better turnaround.
>>97023148I feel your pain anon
>>97023233huh, no ai. impressive.
>>97023321That's me asking AI
>>97023148illustration for power dolls 2 by yoshiyuki takani
>>97023148It's probably power dolls, the exact image is murky because they do that pose/composition pretty often. Blue and white with big thighs though? Gotta be power dolls.>>97022773Wait until you find out real/super is just as mostly fake.
>>96974722DNI is it's own thing which is like some cross between direct mental control and the mocap control system from robot jox. Neurohelms are a thing most people can use, the main feature is using the pilot's sense of balance to stabilize the mech. You still need to use sticks and levers and buttons to control the mech but iirc one of the advantages on higher end (read:lostech) models is they beam all the mech sensor information directly into your head, so you get this 360 view from the mech.
>>97023543>>97023593Fuck yeah, thanks guys. It was the first one.
>>97023593why he thigh so big?
>>97023593>>97023543damn I knew I recognized that fat fuckhttps://youtu.be/61aI7M10tFM>Wait until you find out real/super is just as mostly fake.idk what you're talking about
>>97010389>Humanity has always been fascinated with the idea of mechs even from the ancient ageuhyou gotta citation for that?
What do you guys think about the mecha hack? Was thinking of picking it up and trying to run it. From what I understand the system seems very simple and easy to set up and run, but I'm a fool so I could be wrong.
>>96969466Well for one, people talk a lot about Lancer builds because they're fun. Fundamentally it IS a game, so if the game parts are good and people enjoy talking about it, that's not really a bad thing.Also, people do talk about their campaigns, setting lore, characters, etc. You're not seeing it because you only browse 4chan, and the majority of people who enjoy Lancer don't typically post on 4chan. Even the ones that do probably don't enjoy talking about Lancer here, considering how many people sperg out about the politics surrounding it.
>>97024139Talos was an ancient Bronze man who supposedly protected the island of Crete from bandits
>>97024915>Fundamentally it IS a game, so if the game parts are good Big if.>considering how many people sperg out about the politics surrounding itYeah I wonder if marketing your game with gay communist propaganda and ranting about how playing it is anti-facist action would turn off people. Big surprise it wound up needing the worlds softest hugbox or people would ask "huh, why is this mech game mostly writing about gay utopia and irrelevant scifi worldbuilding fluff they ripped off from destiny?">>97024926tbf that's basically just golem mythos. It's connected but pretty distant.
>>97024971>Big ifI mean it's a popular system with plenty of sales and players, so as far as any metric can measure if something's fun, there's that.>Big surprise it wound up needing the worlds softest hugboxYou do realize people discuss Lancer on other sites, right? Like there's not really a specific place where all Lancer discussion is boxed up and hiding in, it's just wherever? Even here, ocassionally. A hugbox would imply otherwise. It sounds more to me like you got banned from their discord for being an asshole and took it personally.
>>97025018>I mean it's a popular system with plenty of sales and players, so as far as any metric can measure if something's fun, there's that.That's a terrible argument and you know it. Where's the transformers movie RPG book? It's the best setting so it should have one.>You do realize people discuss Lancer on other sites, right? Great, they can go to reddit or wherever that also bans any criticism.
>>97025038>That's a terrible argumentSure, it's not great, but how else do you quantify quality? It's a system. It's well known in the hobby. It has plenty of players. It sells plenty of copies despite the fact the mechanics are free. People who play it enjoy talking about the mechanics. What other metric do you need to say if a game is "good" or not?>"Great, they can go to reddit or wherever that also bans any criticism.">MfwOh you definitely got banned from their discord for being an asshole. Hilarious.
>>97024445It is indeed simple, but I personally don't love that the GM doesn't roll -- Players roll under their attack ability to hit enemies, players roll under their defense ability in order to not get hit. Enemies (and the GM) don't roll. This bothers me for two reasons: 1. A GM is also a player, dammit. And rolling dice is fun. The GM should get to have fun playing the game just like the rest.2. Since enemies don't get to roll, the formidability of enemies is less palpable. Mecha combat isn't like baseball or golf (where you're in no small part playing against yourself, trying to attain perfect form). Hard to have an enemy ace when enemies's abilities don't factor into things.In fairness, IIRC there's some kind of penalty to players' rolls if the enemy is a badass, but I dunno... just seems not-right to me.
>>97025070>Sure, it's not great, but how else do you quantify quality?I just check if it has a large reddit community, since that means lots of people like it. Everyone knows a horde of redditors are the best evaluation for quality. I giggle and clap my feet and spend money on whatever is the featured subreddit of the day.
>>97024926That's such a flimsy connection. Golems and possessed armor aren't mechs.
>>97023687They have to match the pilots.
>>97023543Shawty got a BBL.
>>97025502>Golems and possessed armor aren't mechs.It's pretty close though. It's a big guy made of metal who beats shit up. It took us a bit of work to get to the fantasy of getting into/becoming the big guy made of metal, but that's not a great leap.
>>97029323If you simplify it that much, everything can be anything. A sauropod is a horse because both are big herbivores with four legs.
>>97029602a horse is a mech.
>>97029602a sauropod can be a steed like a horse.
>>97023543the proportions on this is so fucked lmao, GIANT thunderthighs but nearly human sized shotgun?
>>97024971>>97025502that is neither a golem nor a possessed armor. Jew golems were clay that needed strands of human elements in them and sometimes metal to keep them intact and possessed armor was human sized armor that has a form of sentience. This is a metal man granted motion and complex actions by a god of the forge. greek mythology had clockwork robots for fuck's sake, how more blatant does it have to be? Stratos in a large metal facsimile of a hoplitai gripping onto joysticks? semantic bullshit. You can see the similarity.
>>97030161GATTAI!
>>97031519>Jew golems were clay that needed strands of human elements in them >possessed armor was human sized armor that has a form of sentience>This is a metal man granted motion and complex actions by a god of the forge>semantic bullshit
>>97030161Does this mean the horse of Troy was a mech?
>>97024915Nobody ever talks about playing Lancer, they only talk about builds. There's a Lancer general up most of the time and they only ever talk about buildfag stuff. RP and agency seems like a tertiary part of it, just like a videogame.>>97024926That's an automata.>>97024445I thought it was whack. The mech flavor seemed like window dressing. I didn't really see the point in the class system and I think being classless would have been better. FWIW I am not really sure what I was expecting from it, I guess something that was more about piloting mechs than a simple "scaling up" of B/X.I mostly play simple systems too, so it's not like I am some sort of fiend for crunch.
Biological motion is an interesting topic for mech design.Apparently animals use the maintained distance between moving joints to quickly determine if something is alive or not. Actual movement is disregarded and you can jumble up all the joints and lines and we'd still process it as being alive.Which has me wondering how many mechs have non-biological movement, like joints on sliding rails and such.
>>96977310>Or just go the Transformers route and make them turn into something useful when not in the ''human'' mode.T. a poster that's never fixed a machine in his life.
Anyone got girl frame?One of my players been pestering me about it, but I am not going to spend money on what I've heard is just fetish slop. I would love to steal any of the frames if they are cool tho
>>97033668It got shared a few days ago on the share thread. I didn't grab it because I had no interest in it but you should ask in the next one.
>>97033668I don't think any are cool, they're extremely abstract and generic. Plus it's PbtA slop, so awful rules and you'd have no mechanic that's easily ported over to any real game system
>>96959074>What thoughts do you have on fancy/special technologies that make mecha possible?The entire crux of my setting is that it takes place in a world with technology somewhat equal to ours, but the mechs were "created" by having a magical telekinetic control system that works more efficiently with humanoid body formats, as it comes from essentially "draining" and copying the pilot. This means that everything else in the setting is extremely practical including the mechs themselves. Also there was a huge war and there are monsters everywhere so the government lets civilians build mechs to fight monsters on their own, which led to civilian monster hunter corps (though they have tons of restrictions, like being unable to using anti-tank weaponry).The mechs are powered by car batteries. Their displays are LCDs with 3D eye tracking. They are controlled with pedals and joysticks (and are in fact quite easy to learn how to control (but not how to *FIGHT* well) to the point you can put anyone in one and they'd figure it out). Their parts and ammo are cheap due to the worldwide industry of mechs which are used practically everywhere due to how efficient the control system tech is and how it easily fits with modular partsThe monsters rinsed most military vehicles through numbers and agility, so the mechs are perfect to match them in combat too. A Tank can kill a mech with one shot but 20 monsters will zerg rush a tank platoon easily. A mech will summersault and fight them like mosntersmy players love it. It feels like the setting is plausible enough due to everything else being completely reasonable, and all you need to "suspend your disbelief" for is this magic telekinetic control system that just so happens to be perfect for 5-10m tall mecha and it makes them move like TTRPG PCs. Also they're usually fighting monsters hellbent on killing people, instead of other pilots and vehicles, so it's actually quite reasonable for them to not feel like war criminals 24/7
I am trying to find some hex compatible ship tokens, like big ones to have mecha walk over for a space combat But it sucks that most are very alien like, when I want some more classical, industrial looking stuff, not pointy slop
>>97034339Why don't build one out of hex tokens?
>>97034339How "hex compatible" do you need them to be?I've got a couple big ships I've used in my games, but none of them were drawn with hexes in mind. You will have to adjust size, placement, and orientation to make it work.
>>97034339>>97035806I didn't mark the specific hexes on the big ship in this one, since this fight was a "historical simulation" (of a prior campaign) and only the turrets were mission-relevant. But you can see how I handled it with the smaller ship.
>>97034339When you say hex compatible tokens, what are you actually needing?If you're looking for maps of ships then the GURPS Traveller maps are probably what you need to take a look at.If you're talking spaceships to use on a hex field then it comes down to what size ships are you looking for. FASA did multiple IPs of spaceship combat that use hexes; Battletech Aerotech, Renegade Legion Leviathan, and a Star Trek game.That said, there's literally hundreds of hex-and-chit games for scfi warfare and at least half a dozen for any particular niche for play you're looking for.So, are you looking for capital ships, clippers and frigates, or fighters and shuttles?
>>97032614It was a wagon incapable of moving itself.
>>97032614Yes
>>96961011I mean G Gundam was pretty homoerotic
>>97038995sauce pleez
>>97040597Fate/Grand Order Odysseus. They made him a mech pilot that pilots the Trojan Horse in a Tokusatsu-esque powersuit that is the Aigis.
>>97038995https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC469_klkPwNot to be confused with Odyssea
>>97040689OK, that fuckin' rules.>>97040821Nice! I'm always pleased that there's a near-endless supply of SRW originals to check out.
I like mechs that have a mobility transformation mode.That is all.
>>97025070I've seen people get banned off the discord for just lurking, and what's worse is that the server goes out of it's way to broadcast every ban along with why they do it to the entire server.
On Lancer apparent 'hugbox' lore: It's important to remember that in Lancer your character is innately a political right-wing radical due to believing that (mecha) violence is an acceptable answer to at least one problem.Many people defending and attacking its setting forget that your PC is not actually meant to agree with the pacifists due to being a mecha combat TTRPG PC.On Lancer builds: stop asking questions just have fun or take what gives you more actions lmaoon getting people to play other games: obviously the fact that they're not playing dnd5e makes them innately more convinceable but not being a game that you rifle through pdf scans or spend 200 dollars on resold books is a big reason of why they don't. not sure how to solve that. also a lot of mech games have pretty badly laid out books.
Looking for Iphigenia at Midnight for Lancerhttps://ash-and-gold.itch.io/iphigenia
>>97047458They're not pacifists. That's what they say, sometimes, as a protection for when they attack you. It's like actually believing the religion of peace stuff.They don't even bother with it these days much anyway.
>>97015668Speaking of Full Metal Panic, author currently has 2 new works, one is an isekai where MC reincarnated into a mecha (probably follow the trend but very late into isekai game at this point), and another is FMP sequel, FMP Family, return of Sagara and Chidori.
>>97048773>high ranking brown woman front and center>pronouns next to character names>This Machine (Kills Fascists) prominently painted on a mech rifleLancer players not beating the allegations
>>97053456>>This Machine (Kills Fascists) prominently painted on a mech rifleWhat are tasteful references to put on a mech? I'm tempted by the idea of making one full green and dubbing it Green Machine as a Kyuss reference.
>>97055591>Not Weighed Down>Little by Little>Carry That WeightThe best three I could come up with off the top of my head.
>>97055591I'm a fan of simplicity.
>>97053456>This Machine (Kills Fascists)I mean, yeah considering it's lancer that's what it is, but one could use it like "this machine kills aliens" and it'd go hard as fuck
>>97056069How about>Reason
>>97055591>Iron Flower>Two-Hands>Mustn't Run Away>Rusted Pride>Tons'o'fun
>>97055591> this one punches back
>>97055591Referencing Woody Guthrie is no longer tasteful?!
bump
>>97056900tbf that one was always gay. "Machine" just goes hard in any use.A real connoisseur is going to put something like Mad Machine on.
>>97055591Wilhelm Scream.
So I've been reading up on a few of the rpgs. I like the sound of lancer, mekton, and battle century G. But I can't make my players read 3 different rule books to decide which is their favorite, even I don't want to do that. How do you guys think i should get a bunch of illiterate idiots (myself included ofc) to decide on a system? From looking at lancer it seems pretty empty on the pilot side of things, by that i mean, they don't have much stats to use for out of cockpit situations. So that is a negative I'm not quite sure how to settle. (They want a campaign not a wargame)
>>97062363Just run some shit lol. If you're new to this and nobody wants to read the rules, it doesn't really matter what you choose.>Illiterate idiotsI recommend BCG because it's the simplest of the bunch.
Does anyone like the Redeyes manga?or the Front Mission Doglife manga?
>>97065795Doglife was awesome. I liked how it jumped between stories.
>>97062363You're not getting more pilot stuff that isn't beyond autistic or wargaming from anything beyond LANCER, unfortunately
I don't want to play dogshit woke gay lancer I want mecha games where I can punch women
>>97065804Hell yeah! Which one was your favorite?Mine was the Fruit of Eden, I like how the ending acknowledges that he will still one day die on the battlefield but at the very least he has his rape victim ptsd waifu by his side until the very end.Redeyes is very silly, like JoJos tier of sillyness but the its kind of endearing and they Jacket designs and weapons are all cool.I like the idea of a soldier in a powersuit still needing to using conventional weapons too.
>>97062363Lancer is the most dumbed down thing. No pilot rules, pretty anemic mecha rules, a lot of super soft tech and bullshit. AI overlords in background. Mekton is kinda autistic but does allow to tune up for your own tastes as much as you want. Core book is on the level of GURPS since it's basically a mecha setting constructor, but it does have some setting sourcebooks ready that you can use as is. Though those sourcebooks suffer from Reflex being an absolute godstat - it's initiative, attack, dodge and piloting, you either roll random stats or everyone gets 10 Ref. You can build a setting where Ref is not as good (though still very good), but it would take effort.BGC is somewhere in the middle between Lance and Mekton, but I don't really know much about it.Another option is Heavy Gear RPG, personally I'd recommend old second edition. The rules are solid, numbers don't go through the roof and it works plenty good in practice. It does have the rules for vehicle creation so technically with a decent amount of work you can even adapt it to other settings, but default one assumes that you running around with Gears and Striders are pretty rare.
I'm making (made, at this point, I'm 10+ sessions in) a PF2E hack that turns it into Armored Core do I have an audience with any interest or should I end myself?
>>97066076We are gonna be praying for your suffering? I just can't imagine doing it in PF with all of its bullshit. d20 Modern at least has limited amount of material that gets in the way.
>>97066076I would play the ever living fuck out of that
>>97055591>Two For FlinchingEspecially on heavy hitters>Kill Those Sunza Bitches>I have not yet begun to fight Bonus points if it's one of those mechs with a heavy-armored mode that it can cast off and this is written on the unarmored mode>Forklift Certified>Eureka don't surf>Most Dangerous>Big Ricky>Legs that make you go ZAM>>97056429>considering it's lancer that's what it isNot unless the machine self-destructs and kills the pilot
>>97066113It works surprisingly well so far. I had to homebrew some shit but we're having fun. Pilots and Mechs both have character sheets, with mechs using the level of their pilot, but being made out of parts. I removed the class system, and instead I use a modular Talent system for pilots (which grants stuff from both classes and feats) and the Mechs are "built" from parts, which adds in shit like HP, AC, and their feats. By default, mechs use the feats their parts have if they're built with a standard cockpit, but if they have a mental cockpit, the pilot can use their own feats with mech (but they're barred from using the mech's own parts feats). The game runs on my custom setting which can have powerful fighters, so pilots can gain combat feats too, but most will have "out of mech stuff" feats like hacking or social stuff.I removed MAP and added in Recoil. By default, attack traits don't actually gain MAP, only attack traits with Recoil, which comes in Agile (3-6), Standard(4-8) and Heavy(5-10). This means a light pistol has basically no recoil and you can do three attacks with no penalty, but a rifle will have recoil and you'll attack with -4 to -8 on your next attacks, even if you switch to the pistol. Huge fun comes from a basic mecha action called Boost. There's a G-Force mechanic PC mechs have, and most feats add Gs when activating them. Boost is special, as it gives you a bit of movement, an AC bonus per Boost, and an extra attack action. And it's a free action you can do multiple times in your turn. The catch? After a "tolerance", you need to roll for G-LOC, and if you fail, you're G-LOC'd, which means you're fucked. And there's a G limit too, where, if you hit it any time, you Blackout, which is even worse. Basically, players (tactically) gamble their G's by praying to god they won't G-LOC, or try and play it safe by using 1-2 boosts every once in a while which still lets them be under tolerance.we've been having fun. I want to translate it one day
>>96959503raine in g gundam is so god damn hot
>>96962664Lancer is even better when you play as a space pirate , steal the entire metavault full of offbook mecha and burn the union to the ground to free Ra
>>97066057How's the customization in heavy gear?Also on another, general note, to any of you that have played battletech, how does it play in tabletop?
>>96969466most games have character building, its nice when the genre actually allows you to build and play these characters. >>97010312i shot a kaiju for 76 damage with my tokugawa once. LMNT liscences and draco engines cracked this thing out. My DM banned the frame for awhile. I piloted the kaiju i killed the following week.
>>97068722In 4e it's pretty damn extensive. Your machine has several slot locations (arms, torso, etc) where you can staple stuff on. Combine that with pilot skills and it ends up with a whole buncha options
I'm working on a mech ttrpg, and I'm having some troubles deciding how to go with leveling up and improving your mechs and characters.For reference, I'm using SRW as inspiration on the mechanical side (not a 1:1, but you can see the paralels). The game is a d100 system, and when piloting something, you add somes of your stats to the machine's (IE: if you have 60 weapon skill and the machine has 40, you'll have a stat of 100).I'll start with the pilots, I think it will be simple. Pilots don't have any limits to stats (mechs do, more on that later), and have skills beyond pure numerical stats (like counterattaking, shooting several weapons at once, improving your stats when you have lower health, etc). You buy skill with pilot points, that you gain at level up, and may have some prerequisites (IE: shooting several weapons requirise having 80 ranged weapon skill or more). When you level up (either reaching X experience or via milestone), you gain pilot points to buy skills, but I don't know how to increase stats.I have 3 options:- On level up, you have X points to increase stats as you want. (Pure point buy)- On level up, your stats increase a fixed amount determined by your class (Like SRW Alpha Gaiden)- A middle point, you stats increase a fixed amout, but you have a small amount of points to customize your stat gains (like SRW W)I don't know what method to use, or if there's another that could work.The first method allows the most customizablity, but it needs more rules to avoid absurd minmaxing, and having to manage a pilot and mech (or several), I don't want to make it too crunchy.The second is the simplest and fastest, but it's much more limiting and doesn't allow for customization. And would require making stat increase arrays for most character archetypes.I don't know if the third option would fix the problems while keeping the advantages, trying to do everything tends to end with doing nothing.1/2
>>97069291For the mechs, they work similar to pilots, but with a bit more crunch. You start with a "frame", that determines it's base stats and some special systems (like it's size, a transformation system, movement type, it's generator, etc). You can make a custom frame (the better or more stuff, the more expensive it is), but there are several premade ones for streamlining. Among it's stats, you have space for systems (like weapons, tools, armor, inventory space, ammo...). And of course, you can improve this base stats, like more hp, better meele fighting, better evasion, more space for systems...My problem is how to make it. One thing for sure is that there is a limit to how much you can improve them, at least at the base. You can use systems to incrase them more if needed... but that takes space for other useful stuff, so you might want to get a new machine.My problem is on the details on how to do this, of course, I have some options.- My first option is a fixed amount of upgrades and how much those upgrades improve the machine. IE: There are 15 upgrades posible for each stat, and each upgrade gives 10 to the stat. (like most SRW)- The second one is that the improvment depends on the mech. One made for tanking improves it's defense by 15, but the sniper by 5 instead.- Another option is that the number of upgrades for a unit is not fixed, and some can be upgraded further. The tanky mech can increase it's hp a lot of times, the sniper can increase it's ranged attack more times than the tank.The first option is the easiest to implement, but it removes any base disctinction among mechs at least on base improvments. Second and third (specially if you combine them), allow for more distinction between mechs, but on the long term will create a very big bridge in the stats among mechs, and if you make a custom frame, it can lead to very disguisting minmaxing.What to I do?2/2
>>96991912Could anyone reupload it?
>>97069295Well do they have to be different options, sounds like you should use all or maybe 2? I'm thinking 1 though it doesn't need to be 15. The 2nd one works too since, you're playing srw, it's the same. Doesn't have to be 15 or 5 I'm sure you know too. But mechs on each upgrade should definitely get different increases, maybe some should even be limited to just a few pump ups. They should also be spending another resource other than money, i think.
>>97068722>How's the customization in heavy gear?Well outside of adding/removing weapons/ecm rigs/ablative armor plates and so on you do have a proper vehicle design guide. So you could always find a good enough mechanic and rework whatever you want - question is only how much will it cost.
>>97033668It's very much fetish slop. Your player is flirting with you, poorly.
>>97035856What program is that?
>>97069379Here you gohttps://filebin.net/2xjnz5gq2hugdzwd
>>97072848thanks for the mecha dolphin porn and viruses
>>97072848oh shit its made in godot I love godot
>>97074229>Vaporeon mech>no water jets or propellers
>>97072848Thanks anon>>97074229>>97074292With that pose, I think it's better without any kind of water jet
>>97072848>https://filebin.net/2xjnz5gq2hugdzwdhey this is pretty nice. are there more building options for it? can we recolor the buildings in the program?
>>97066251anyone can give some feedback on this?
>>97072848I've been meaning to watch big battle again
