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

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Rolando

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.

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.