Altered Time Rate and Vehicle Pilots

[ThomasSmith]

Originally Posted by Dustin

With energy swords and mecha using chambarra maneuvers (kicking someone and bounding off for another attack), the mecha is clearly a proxy for the pilot, and not any sort of realistic vehicle with controls. With that in mind, I would keep it simple and say that you can do anything that doesn't exceed the mecha's speed, acceleration, and handling profiles, or any of the weapons' listed Rates of Fire.

It's going to be heavily dependent on how the GM wants the game to look and work, really. ATR and Extra Attack fundamentally alter how combat feels, and if everyone isn't on the same page about what is allowable and how it carries through to mecha combat, someone could get very disappointed with their own character build.

Indeed, the mecha is built as a character, and the GM has me rolling against martial arts skills for some of those chambarra maneuvers. To be fair, I'm not sure what else you would roll against. If you're in a machine that has legs, and you try to kick someone, what skills could you be rolling against?

I could go into the campaign details, I could even go into the world physics on which these things are based. The quickest way to explain though is that this is over the top anime style mecha, not gritty mechwarrior style mecha.

EDIT: To clarify the 'built as a character' bit, the mecha is a non-sapient ally.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by David Johansen

Oddly enough this came up on ICE's Rolemaster forums last week. I don't think I've seen the basic question of haste and devices ever before in years on-line and then POW! Twice in a week!

Now in Champions increasing your SPD used to make your car go faster. GURPS not so much.

However, I think it would halve the G forces for turning. This is based on my understanding of crumple zones on cars and recoil shocks on cannon. These don't reduce the energy involved but they multiply the TIME over which it acts on the entire structure and thus reduce the force of impact.

So, while the plane doesn't go faster the pilot can take tighter turns and greater risks.

Some guy with a degree in physics or engineering will likely show up to tell me I'm wrong now.

It works out much simpler if you presume that inertia is altered inversely, otherwise you have to worry about redshifted vision and why you can push twice as fast but not twice as much and weird stuff like that.

[Mateus]

Are you trying to emulate the "trans-arm system" from Gundam 00?

[starslayer]

I would potentially allow someone with ATR to get a bonus on single skill rolls (perhaps+4, toal, not per level) when only one roll is possible but it is considered an extended fast response action.

For example while being tailed by a missile flying VERY close to a very narrow opening just before banking away to try and get the missile to crash into the opening; ATR= +4 to the final piloting roll.

[roguebfl]

My default ruling would be Muscle powered vehicles (e.g. Bicycles) can benefit from your ATR with having it itself, But self powered vehicles (e.g. Cars) will not with out ATR itself.

In your Mecha example especially given your comments about aerodynamics that in walk/running mode it would benefit from your ATR as it match the Genre convention of muscle powered, But in flight mode it would not.

[Mark Skarr]

It all depends on the genre conventions you’re using.

If this is actually an over-the-top Mecha game, then there’s no reason that your pilots ATR wouldn’t affect the Mecha. Alto and Brea we’re pretty much unstoppable at the end of Macross Frontier, and Alto was just in a VF-25. The newer GUNDAM stuff would fit in this as well: GUNDAM 00, GUNDAM Seed, GUDNAM Seed Destiny. Those Mecha are designed to work with their pilots special abilities. Oh, and remember to bring a singer, or you’re likely to get stomped.

If it’s something like BattleTech or Heavy Gear where the ‘Mechs are supposed to be nothing more than advanced machines, then no. They’re just machines, and your “magical” abilities are just too much for them.

Something in the middle, like older-school GUNDAM, then, it depends on the character. If you’re the New Type, then yes, your ATR works on the Mecha, if you’re not . . . well, it’s GUNDAM and you probably won’t make it through to the end.

At the end of the day, it’s really up to the feel the GM wants from the game.

[SuedodeuS]

A justification for ATR working through a vehicle is if said vehicle is actually capable of acting more quickly than a typical pilot can react. That is, the vehicle already has ATR, it's just that the pilot needs ATR to take advantage of it. For a mech built as a non-sapient ally, something like Altered Time Rate (Pilot must have ATR -20%, Cannot exceed Move -20%) [60] would be appropriate. Depending on the point total of your campaign, this might be cheaper (being on an ally and all) than ATR (Affects vehicles I'm piloting).

For unaugmented vehicles, ATR still gives some extra actions. For example, you can effective Move and Attack without taking the associated penalties of doing so - you take a Ready action to move the mech, and a Ready action (possibly following a Wait to get into range) to attack with it. Thus, you only suffer penalties for attacking from a moving vehicle, rather than penalties for attacking while making the vehicle move. You can engage one enemy with your beam sword and another with your shoulder cannon at the same time. You can combine an attack with All-Out Defense. And so forth.