Has Anyone Ever Given Their Players The Construction Rules In A Mecha Game?
 

So the bug to run, or at least work how the details on how to run, a Virtual Mekton game in GURPS. Virtual Mekton for those who don't know is a fan setting for the very old Mekton Zeta RPG that applied the Yu-Gi-Oh Serious Business formula to piloting Mechs in online multiplayer, and allowed players to customize their Mechs.

As GURPS Mecha is naturally one of my options for actually designing the Mechs I need to know people experiences with it, particularly with the construction rules in players hands.

Re: Has Anyone Ever Given Their Players The Construction Rules In A Mecha Game?
 

I've gamed with people who know Vehicles 2 better than I do, and I've given players construction options in mecha games, but I've never said "here's Vehicles 2, get back to me with your designs." That way seems like it would lead to madness.

Instead, what I've done is create a reasonable range of chassis, weapons, and other vehicle equipment, and set out guidelines for modifying things. So a scout mech chassis has so much speed and armor and can carry 1 light and 1 medium gun, and you can increase speed by X by reducing armor by Y or reduce speed by Z to add another medium gun.

If I had players that were more interested in vehicle design and we had a common set of tools like Vehicle Designer, I might be willing to collaborate on designs. But I wouldn't do that for everyone, only the most avid designers, and everyone else would get the pre-approved designs and guidelines for modification.

Re: Has Anyone Ever Given Their Players The Construction Rules In A Mecha Game?
 

Honestly, I don't think using vehicle construction rules does a good job of emulating the mecha genre -- better to just treat it as a supers genre using character creation rules.

Re: Has Anyone Ever Given Their Players The Construction Rules In A Mecha Game?
 

It depends on the mecha genre in question. It suits something like Mechwarrior.

Re: Has Anyone Ever Given Their Players The Construction Rules In A Mecha Game?
 

That's heavily dependent on what flavor of the genre you're trying to emulate. Something that's more Super Robots - Gundam Wing, Voltron, etc - is probably going to be more appropriate to handle as Supers. But I've played several mecha-based video games where customization of your mecha is a pretty big part of it - different motive systems, weapons, subsystems, etc. Sure, those don't let you build your mecha quite from scratch (all the parts - including the base chassis - need to be picked from a premade list), but there's a substantial level of customization.

That said, I do think essentially making a simplified design system for your players to interact with, rather than having them build things themselves in Vehicles, is likely to be a good idea. Particularly if not all of your players are hardcore gearheads.

Re: Has Anyone Ever Given Their Players The Construction Rules In A Mecha Game?
 

Given that the 3e Vehicles rules were allegedly based on real physics, there would also be a significant risk of your players discovering that the best mech design for any given task is unlikely to be a humanoid mecha and thus wondering if every NPC engineer in the campaign setting is bad at their job, while they design vehicles that kill tall and easily targeted, as well as comparatively lightly armoured, mecha at ranges where the mecha pilot can't see a tank that is much closer to the ground.

Re: Has Anyone Ever Given Their Players The Construction Rules In A Mecha Game?
 

GURPS Mecha includes a subset of the Vehicles rules tweaked for the genre along with a lot of genre specific design options of it's own. That said, I wouldn't completely turn the players loose to design their own mechs. If a player wants to do it let him but tell him you have to approve anything before it goes into play, and you reserve the right to put it in the enemies hands instead of his character. If you have a PC who bought enough wealth to bankroll his own custom design for his machine you can always let him do it but give it all the problems prototypes are prone to.

Re: Has Anyone Ever Given Their Players The Construction Rules In A Mecha Game?
 

As I'm usually the rules guru for most of my group, when I gamemastered GURPS Mecha! I didn't gave the full rules to the players, I did allowed them to upgrade but I asked what they wanted to do and I suggested some solutions.

In that particular campaign none of the player characters where engineers nor anything similar, so it was mostly roleplayed with the engineer and technical NPCs, a good attitude and I influence roles allowed for more changes to the original chassis.

On of the players was a bit of a programmer and battlesuit nuts, inspired a bit by Chirico from AT-VOTOMS and I allowed him to fine tune the different control programs in his battlesuit to get some bonuses, but was not really any change in the construction process...it was more like downtime investment to get some bonuses during the next mission type of upgrades.

Re: Has Anyone Ever Given Their Players The Construction Rules In A Mecha Game?
 

Well, it has some very generous rules for arms that make them generally less punishing than they should be, but that has the weird effect that your optimal design winds up being a tank except instead of a turret it has an arm on the top :)

Re: Has Anyone Ever Given Their Players The Construction Rules In A Mecha Game?
 

Due to armor weapon mounts instead of arms is better.

To help with the absurdity of mecha in my setting I made all mechas TL9, meanwhile most vehicles were TL8 and spaceships TL9 with some TL10 components.

So mechas are advanced tech that don't translate to other vehicles...because of some advanced physics concepts that work in a mecha universe.

Even then vehicles where not pushovers, all my players feared the big tanks, land frotresses and swarms of cheap vehicles or infantry when they dealt with them. I designed it that way to have the right feel of the setting for me.

If you allow players to create things with no constrains you risk them breaking the setting, not just because of abuse of the rules but because some things will stop making sense if allowing some options.

Ultra tech settings are a delicate and balanced echosystem. Specially mecha and space opera types.

Re: Has Anyone Ever Given Their Players The Construction Rules In A Mecha Game?
 

I'm undecided if the mechas will be retained, but the intent for my Harpyias setting is that most high-performance and/or combat vehicles use a combination of manual controls and a neural interface. The neural interface is necessary for the shields to work properly, and also allows for human intuition to be used to potentially bypass enemy shields, both of these being functions of the pilot's operation skill - typically Piloting*. As it turns out, the neural interface works a lot better for something with a similar body plan to the character than with something like a tank, giving a bonus to Piloting skill - or at least a bonus for purposes of operating or bypassing a shield. So it's harder to get past a humanoid mecha's shield, while a mecha has an easier time getting past an enemy shield.

*Roughly speaking, after the target attempts their Dodge, if the ship is still hit then the shield gets a defense equal to 10+Piloting/2 (plus any bonus for Combat Reflexes), except 17 and 18 aren't automatic fails (so having Shield Defense of 18+ means no roll is necessary - but shields can be depleted from multiple hits) and Deceptive Attack doesn't necessarily have any impact. On the side of offense, if Piloting exceeds your attack skill (or attack skill after accounting for Deceptive Attack), you impose a -1 to the target's Shield Defense for every 2 points Piloting is in excess... but if you're using Rapid Fire, whatever bonus you're getting to attack also applies to the target's Shield Defense. Additionally, only if you fail the Shield Defense outright will any of the potential hits get past the shield, and at a rate of only 1 per MoF. Rapid Fire often needs to rely on depleting a shield rather than bypassing it.


For other options from fiction, in Neon Genesis Evangelion the mecha were actually living creatures bound in metal, while in Gasaraki they were made from alien-tech synthetic muscle that could "learn" and worked a lot more effectively in a humanoid form; they were also rather low-density and could scale buildings to fire off rooftops, making them a lot harder to fight in an urban environment... although a lot of their success came from the fact they were brand new and OpFor had no idea what they were dealing with.

Re: Has Anyone Ever Given Their Players The Construction Rules In A Mecha Game?
 

Mecha always require something to justify their use. Whether it be a neural interface system that works best with machines that are the same shape as the pilot or some rule of cool effect that allows them to deflect incoming fire with their built in melee weapons. They need something or more conventional military vehicles will easily take them apart.

Re: Has Anyone Ever Given Their Players The Construction Rules In A Mecha Game?
 

I'm no great expert, but I don't recall a setting in which Mechwarriors are also Mech designers - customising and tinkering are common, but a full design and build not so much. Makes sense for the players - like their characters - to get the mechs they are issued with (or otherwise obtain) and then do the best they can with them.
Sort of like driving a fighter plane is exciting, being an aerospace design engineer has much less gamability. Of course, being a test pilot - which lies between the two - is well known to be exciting, but often for the wrong reasons. So is being issued a design that wasn't tested properly...

Re: Has Anyone Ever Given Their Players The Construction Rules In A Mecha Game?
 

Normally that would be the case, but GURPS Vehicles had some fairly peculiar rules for turrets and arms that meant that an arm containing a weapon mount consumed less volume and surface area than a turret with exactly the same weapon.

Re: Has Anyone Ever Given Their Players The Construction Rules In A Mecha Game?
 

Instead of using the full GURPS Vehicles and GURPS Mecha rules from 3E that are really complicated for anyone who doesn't like a lot of math and spreadsheets, you can use the much simpler rules from 4E's GURPS Spaceships. Those rules are much easier for players to use.

You'll want GURPS Spaceships, GURPS Spaceships 4: Fighters, Carriers and Mecha (which introduces Mecha), Pyramid #3/40 - Vehicles article Mecha Operations which gives more mecha options and examples, and possibly useful but not needed Pyramid #3/34 Alternate GURPS article Alternate Vehicles which has a few more drivetrains and ground performance rules.

That I wouldn't mind giving to players to customize as it wouldn't drive me insane trying to proof read/approve the design, unlike trying to do so for something built with vehicles. I'd reserve 3E's GURPS Vehicles for things I built myself only, which defeats the purpose of sharing with the players.

Re: Has Anyone Ever Given Their Players The Construction Rules In A Mecha Game?
 

I considered designing a campaign roughly based on Vision of Escaflowne and made the start of a design system for Guymelefs (the mechs in that setting) using Spaceships. I'm pretty certain that text file no longer exists, but going off memory, I started with a basic, bare-bones design - an SM+5 vehicle with a Control Room, two Robot Legs, two Robot Arms, I think 3 Armor Systems (Iron, with the option to upgrade), and a power plant of some flavor (in the case of the guymelefs, this was an Energist, with multiple grades available). The armor was treated as Streamlined on account of being on a humanoid form (and indeed, targeting a mech from above should probably be at a penalty to hit, as they present a smaller target that way). With only 9 systems, and four of these being high-density (I treated Energists as high-density, just like armor), this made the 'melefs smaller, lighter, and faster than a default mech, as well as getting more DR per armor system (following the rules from the Pyramid article); I think I made them around twice as fast as what you normally get for two legs. Having additional Leg and Arm systems didn't actually increase the number of limbs the vehicle had - rather, they made the existing limbs beefier. For legs, this boosted their ST a bit (a total of 6 leg systems would have resulted in two legs of SM+1, for +1 SSR to ST - thus each additional system up to a total of 6 is +1/4 this amount) and also boosted Move as per normal; for arms, this simply boosted their ST in the same way as for legs. Having additional systems reduced speed based on how much heavier the vehicle was from the default; also, additional systems other than armor and energists required recalculating DR, as they made the mecha larger (thus a given mass of armor had to cover more surface area). Worn armor (as opposed to that which is built-in), weapons, etc simply counted as encumbrance.

If something like that sounds interesting to OP, I might be able to recreate at least a rough draft of that system. Note the relevant Spaceships books would be necessary to use it. I'd also need to know what sort of power plants your campaign will be using - high-density energists simplified things for my purposes, but those may not be appropriate for you.

Re: Has Anyone Ever Given Their Players The Construction Rules In A Mecha Game?
 

Many times, when the designers/engineers are major characters (whether they are also the pilots/operators or not), the designs tend to play very loose with physics. The designers are often Tony Stark/John Henry Irons types.

Re: Has Anyone Ever Given Their Players The Construction Rules In A Mecha Game?
 

So you can read up on Virtual Mekton here: virtualmekton.tripod.com but the TL;DR is that PvP Mech game that uses MechWarrior style piloting pods goes Yu-Gi-Oh big, at least among children. As in-universe PvP is the majority of the fights, customization is important because otherwise fights are going very samey and any option available to whatever Op forces I create must also be available to the players.

That said customization options will be locked until after the first tournament or two, and even thenthey only be able to change a Mechs loadout at fist, not full design rules, they come later.

Re: Has Anyone Ever Given Their Players The Construction Rules In A Mecha Game?
 

It sounds like you have your answer: stock designs at first, then weapon loadout changes, then possibly more extensive redesigns.

You may want to recruit an avid player or two as a vehicle designer to reduce your work load, but there's no need to go full on design sequence for everyone.