Cath - Alienmech Mass Suppressor Pattern Destroyer

[Twin]

Third of my Alienmechs, this is supposed to be a walking artillery bombardment platform. Every weapon has indirect fire, atleast 72" range, with max 144" for indirect fire. Thus this thing can clamp down behind or inside a terrain piece, and sit there happily bringing doomsday and destruction to two targets a turn, thanks to the Targeting Designator. With Tsuki's Assault mech running up front tooting a Data Node and a Spotter, even the secondary shots pumped out by Caths' computer, Joy, will strike home with pinpoint precision.

The Alientechers believe in singularity through duality or something like that, yin yang and balance, so they will often 'balance' their mechs weapons on either side. Not only does it look cool, it's more powerful than pairing, it grants a very graceful balance point and if a mechpilot believes he has come up with the perfect weapon.... why not make two!?

The image is a huched down alienmech, kneeling down and bracing itself on it's knucles, with sharp blades dug into the ground to reduce recoil, with three fricking gigantic guns on it's two arms and back, all accompaigned by massive missile batteries. The Tracer Pattern Missiles go first, Seeking onto the two different targets, and once the victim has been locked onto, all hell breaks loose.

So, here we go:

Cath - Alienmech Mass Suppressor Pattern Destroyer[/b][/u]

Body[/b][/u]

Chassis	Sp	As	Rn	Pr	Ar	Ht	Re	At	Ps
Super-Heavy	4	4	7	6	10	200	2	1	9

Chassis: Super-Heavy [165 cogs]

Characteristic upgrades: 19x; [170 cogs]

Locomotion: Multipedal (Count-as Gun platform literally bolted to the ground) [50 cogs]

Reactor: Xenocore [25 cogs]

Upgrades: [120 cogs]
Data Node
Armoured Head
Smoke Emitters
Engineer
Scrambler
Target Designator
Advanced Sensors
Directional Shoulder-Mounts

Total body cost: [521 cogs]

Weapons:[/b][/u] (Names definitely subject to change...)

Right Arm:

Cataclysm Pattern Mega-Destroyer A - [231 cogs]

Class	Range	Strength	AP	Shots	Type
Giga-Ordnance	72"	5D6	7	1	Ordnance, Giga, Giant Killer, Indirect Fire

Left Arm:

Cataclysmic Pattern Mega-Destroyer B - [231 cogs]

Class	Range	Strength	AP	Shots	Type
Giga-Ordnance	72"	5D6	7	1	Ordnance, Giga, Giant Killer, Indirect Fire

Right Arm

Heavy-duty Tracer Missile Launcher A - [131 cogs]

Class	Range	Strength	AP	Shots	Type
Missile	36"	2D10	5	2	Heavy, Salvo, Seeker, Indirect Fire

Left Arm

Heavy-Duty Tracer Missile Launcher B - [131 cogs]

Class	Range	Strength	AP	Shots	Type
Missile	36"	2D10	5	2	Heavy, Salvo, Seeker, Indirect Fire

Shoulder:

Hellstorm Pattern Missile Battery A - [134 cogs]

Class	Range	Strength	AP	Shots	Type
Missiles	36"	2D10	5	3(4+reroll)	Heavy, Salvo, Paired, Indirect Fire

Destroyer Pattern Missiles B - [134 cogs]

Class	Range	Strength	AP	Shots	Type
Missiles	36"	2D10	5	3(4+reroll)	Heavy, Salvo, Paired, Indirect Fire

Body:

Apocalypse Pattern Mega-Destroyer - [96 cogs]

Class	Range	Strength	AP	Shots	Type
Ordnance	48"	3D6	7	1	Heavy, Ordnance, Indirect Fire

Body Mounted Alientech Shield Generator - [Estimated: 150 cogs]
Special Rules: Soon to come

Total weapons cost - [1238 cogs][/u]

Total COGs = 1759[/b][/u]

[Adam]

It's a Robot Exocrine. I love it. Nuff said.

Edit... 'cos I might as well write something... I came up with something like this myself a while ago. It cost about a third of the cogs, and was a medium-weight, but the principle was the same. Called Fourth In The Trilogy (because it supported the team's three other mediums) it used its friends' spotters to bombard two different targets with its ordnance weapons and threw in its missile battery at the enemy it most needed to kill.

Y'know though, Tsuki, Soth and Cath between them hit nearly 5000 cogs. You'd best make a light mech...

(The most overexpensive mech I've ever made to date was a medium called Perihelion. It was a daemon mech that kicked absolute arse. The only thing I remember about it for certain now though, is that its right arm pumped out 15 shots. ;D)

[Twin]

Yup, the exocrine (Moloch/Mr. Pinks one) was what I thought of. Especially with the pose...

Yup, they are really expensive... I might tone them down a bit, I don't know. Originally I had actually intended to only field Tsuki and Soru That was before I knew the game mechanics though.

Maybe I'll drop some unecessary upgrades and add a few medium/light mechs. We'll see...

What do you think of the setup, is it any good, or is it way costly to be good?

[Adam]

Jun 23, 2008 10:29:11 GMT -5 Twin said:

Yup, they are really expensive... I might tone them down a bit, I don't know. Originally I had actually intended to only field Tsuki and Soru That was before I knew the game mechanics though.

No, no! That wasn't what I meant! I mean, the Etherium are an elite faction but they certainly don't have 1500+ cog superheavies as the basis of their entire team... (Well, their special character will probably tip 2000 unless I restrain myself, but hey.) This can be part of the alientechers' special-ness. Dunno how we'd get this across in the rules though. Each mech must take x amount of upgrades?

[Twin]

Hm, I guess the x amount of upgrades wouldn't really do much... if you're making just a few mechs, they're going to need those upgrades anyways, and if you want to mix a few smaller in there, they'll just be stacked with crappy 5point upgrades (unless it's x cogs ofc... but still). If we're going to have that kind of "big onlys" we would have to either limit the amounts of mechs allowed for a team, give a minimum cost for each of the chassises, limit the number of each chassis etc. If we could do it easily, fine. But I don't see why anyone would want to spam small mechs in an alienmech army, then you'll just pick a faction with special rules suited better to that kind of army.

I'm still wondering wether you think this setup could actually do well in a battle, or if the totally overexpensive issue will prove too much of a hindrance.

[Adam]

What I mean is that we'll need a way of MAKING them super expensive. Spam small mechs? What, on a faction that can take lots of alien weapons? Never, never... "What? Your army has 10 600-cog light mechs with 3-4 alien weapons each?!... Good game. See you next Tuesday."

I couldn't actually envisage a more min-max-suited faction.

Got one. Double the cost of a mech's chassis (or add +x to it), give some good special rules that make single mechs more effective (like EMP type attacks perhaps?) and able to take on multiple opponents, and make upgrades cheaper (like halving their cost). Thereby unless you take a ton of upgrades, you're paying way too much. But if you do, you get a really effective lone fighter.

Sticking tons of good weapons on will soon follow.

Whatcha think?

[Twin]

The first point is easily remedied by adding "heavy and super-heavy mechs are allowed to -" to the special rule. Actually, this will probably be included in a lot of the Alienmechs special rules, to further discourage abusing rules and massing Alien Light. So if you go for light mechs you miss out on all the good stuff; hence you should just pick another faction to min-max. Also, there could be a minimum limit of huge mechs required in the list, and a maximum number of mechs overall. Further a lot of the uniqe alien items (like the force field) will require large mechs and expensive reactors to work, so all in all, smaller mechs will have little to no benefit from faction rules in the alienmech camp.

I do love the effective loner special rules idea... I'll need to come up with a few of those. Actually, I was writing down some special rules today, had written about a page when the computer promptly rebooted >.> Maybe the gods were angry at me for wasting time at work, I don't know. I'll try and rewrite it one of these days though, and finish it so it can be revised.

[Adam]

Damn computer! Looking forward to seeing the rules someday though. Developing these factions is proving rather fun!

I don't know that it should be heavy-only. Because if anything, I think an army of six 1,000 cog light mechs would be just as cool and fun. Less effective than the giants perhaps, but eligible nonetheless. Maximum mechs is good, perhaps one per 1,000 cogs. And no juves.