Close Combat Weapons

[Twin]

Alright, the CCW rant returns... I'm still not able to come up with a close combat weapon I like. So instead of being a good citizen and adapt, I'm going to blame the system... again. As I've said before, I think the Ranged Weapon creation system is made of awesome. It's so customizable and flexible, and it really gives that optimized/finished feeling when I've made my perfectly fine-tuned weapons. With the CCW system however, I'm stuck with a feeling of "oh well, I guess this may be a good weapon..." It doesn't feel finished/optimized in the way that the Ranged weapons do; when you make CCWs you always have to make horrible compromises...

So, since this is not purely a rant, here's some constructive critiszm and ideas for how to amend this issue:

Giga-CCW took it in the right direction... but I think that the very list system has got to change a wee bit. Namely the mix of static stats and special rules. Since every list except list 1 contains several special rules, this shouldn't be too difficult. Now, if the "Lists" only contained the special rules (we'll have to make some more to fill them up, but that'll just be fun), there could be a separate system for defining the 'stats' of the weapon.

These stats would be:

+As (Attack Skill)
+Pw (Power)
+At (Attack)
+Re (Reflexes)

+Str (Strength)

The four first would be characteristic modifiers to the statline of the mech in close combat. The Strength is purely on the weapon.

It could be a similar system to the ranged weapon creation system. The ranged weapons have a base staline and a max statline, with a base cost and a max cost that you can't go over. The max point limit does, in the same way as on ranged weapons, limit the weapon to excel in one area, or go for a hybrid role. It's very customizable and flexible. Also, theres fees for certain point limits, on the total cost of both Stats and Special Rules. Upgrading the CCW to Giga let's it buy stats/upgrades above the normal points limit (just as with ranged weapons) although it still only get's to buy the same amount of special rules as the normal CCWs. In addition Giga weapons have the normal +1 strength dice and knockback.


So, weapon creation proccess would look like this:

Step 1. You pay 20 CoGs for the basic CCW.

Step 2. You've got a Base statline, max statline, and max cost, with a list of stats that you can upgrade for X cogs each point. Just like the ranged weapons. (Stats: +As/+Pw/+Re/+At//+Str)

Step 3. You add special rules, from the five lists, in the original way. Maybe less special rules, as three might be a bit much to track... not that you have to add three

Step 4. And you're done. Go bash some heads in ;D

Upgrading a CCW to Giga gives the +1 str dice, knockback and let's you max the stats above the Max CoG limit in Step 2, similar to the ranged weapons.

This would allow for the same kind of toying and perfecting/experimenting as Ranged weapons currently do, without being too restrictive/allowing.
You've got a great recipe with the Ranged weapon creation, don't fix something that isn't broken

Right... thoughts?

[Adam]

Er.

This isn't a bad idea by any stretch of the imagination, but it does have two big holes in it.

1. While you can get up to +6 Power with the current system, there are two As upgrades, one At upgrade and one Re upgrade. Mechs with As's so high that they literally can't lose combat, or some 10+ Attacks, are not what we need, so this stays. I mean, what did you do with Tsuki? That thing's got, what, 6 Attacks at As 7 (Combat Master = victory), with a 4D6+10 damage roll, or 4D6+16 when it charges. Ridiculously powerful... Oh yeah, AND it has knockdown. Seriously, how can't you like that?

2. I DARE you to balance it.

Balancing a system made like this would be nigh impossible and I don't really want to put cog cost limits on CCWs anyway. It's a good idea though, so if you come up with something, post it up and we'll refine it.

Not to mention... The five list system is just easy. Easy to learn, difficult to break, and piddlingly easy to balance by comparison. It also allows me to play around with the costs a bit more, like the massive disparity in price between the power upgrades ('cos who'd use +2 Power when you can get +4? when it's 15 cogs cheaper...), and mix differently costed upgrades together. As well as that it allows me to prohibit, say, combining the +6 Power with Lance, or whatever.

I never even saw CCWs as having 'stats' anyway...

Still. If you do come up with a decent such system, by all means we'll have a look at it.

[Twin]

Ar.

I guess you are mostly right. In my defence I wrote this in the middle of the night, at the worst moment when I was trying to come up with a good weapon for Tsuki and utterly failing. After I posted I made the Discs, which actually turned out pretty neat, but I still think it has a wee low As and At for a ~1500 super-heavy tooled mainly for CC... I mean, you can just as easily get a light mech with nearly those stats, for what, 1000 points less? I guess it's the 'Stealer vs Carnifex syndrome, but Tsuki is a giant Genestealer! ;D

I'll tinker around and see if I can come up with some less dramatic alterations, but I've guess you've got it figured out pretty decently after all...

[Adam]

Jun 23, 2008 10:46:34 GMT -5 Twin said:

I still think it has a wee low As and At for a ~1500 super-heavy tooled mainly for CC... I mean, you can just as easily get a light mech with nearly those stats, for what, 1000 points less? I guess it's the 'Stealer vs Carnifex syndrome, but Tsuki is a giant Genestealer! ;D

Yeah, perhaps if Genestealers had 8 Wounds, a 2+ invulnerable save and four venom cannons? Tsuki is one tough mother, 'specially with his super 150 cog shield to hide behind... Anyway, what's low about 6 As7 attacks?? With THAT damage?

PS. Light mechs can't have giga CCWs at all. Don't worry.

[Adam]

You know what? This is weird. I forgot almost entirely about this thread and, during the melee weapon rewrite I started a few days ago, decided to make them into a stat table similar to what the ranged weapons have. It has Reach (melee weapon range, essentially), Strength, AP (adds onto the mech's Power), Assault, Attacks, and Reflexes. Plus a big list of special rules. You're allowed 3 special rules, but only one rare one (the Rare WSRs are the ones from List 5, plus a couple more). Assault and Attacks upgrades also count towards the WSR limit. The cost and weight of each statline upgrade goes up every time you buy one.

AP is 1 to 5, Assault and Attacks are +0 to +2, and Reflexes is +0 to +3. Giga melee weapons have AP of up to 6, Attacks up to 3, and Reflexes up to 2. (As well as the extra dice of damage, critical knockdown, ignoring limits, et cetera).

Thereby, I take back all my criticism of the idea (which I'd also, obviously, forgotten about). You win, Twin