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.
