[Tzeentch]

Originally Posted by the adventurer

This might be a good place to ask this question. Reconfigurable Systems, if you have a robot arm that transforms into a missile battery, is it assumed that that battery can fire while in Arm mode? Or can it not? My understanding is the latter is true.

-- My understanding is that no, while in one form you cannot access the capabilities of the other. Now, strictly speaking you can transform that one system into the other (20 seconds in base Spaceships, quicker if you use the Fast Transformation switch). This leads to a bit of a grey area that all mecha design systems have - what components are accessible in which form? For mecha based on existing designs it's rather simple to consult the source material and rule, for example, that the Valkyrie has three distinct forms with some systems transformed and others not.

I think that's my only real hang up when it comes to reconfigurable systems, because, to use Macross as an example, Valkyries can fire their micro missile volleys while in jet, gerwalk, or battroid mode. But with GURPS spaceships rules its not possible to have an arm and fire a shoulder mounted missile at the same time (if they're part of the same reconfig system)

-- I don't believe that non-equipment pack Valkyries can fire missiles in battroid mode. This gets back to the issue of module accessibility too; consider that a Valkyrie in Spaceships will look strikingly similar to the Stormhawk (not surprisingly, as it's an expy). So the Robot Legs transform into thrusters, the arms holding a handheld battery fold away in jet mode. In Gerwalk mode the legs are technically not really fully transformed but they rarely function as actual legs in Spaceships terms (more like landing gear) so we can rule that they are still in thruster mode in the somewhat abstract Spaceships system. The arms are a bit more problematic, primarily because we are getting into the serious issue of "module scarcity" that hits many mecha designs. For a Valkyrie expy the arms are obviously not used in jet mode so they are reconfigurable, but into what? Well, the standard missile loadout is used only in jet mode most of the time, so it makes sense that we can sacrifice this to the reconfigurable gods. With Fast Transformation you can sort of canonically get around the issue of the arms being used in gerwalk mode and the missiles being usable (I don't believe most Valkyries can go into robot mode before firing their hardpoint missiles, will need to consult my artbooks again). The handheld issue is addressed in the article, as by base rules you cannot fire them without arms available (obviously contradictory to much source material)

PS: This thread is super useful for me, and the Pyramid: Vehicles article about Mecha was invaluable for my planned Macross campaign.

-- I had a few more Macross jokes in the article, but they got cut by editorial (BOO HISS), like a note in mook mecha regarding having a taste for pineapple salad. Obviously Macross and Gundam are the two BIG mecha genres the article tried to address, but I was also heavily influenced by Gasaraki (my favorite real robots genre show) and Transformers (especially regarding how I approached combiners and combiner expansion packs).