Post by Adam on Jul 14, 2008 15:23:39 GMT -5
A new idea for the creation system. As you can guess it's about the amount of stuff you can fit on rather than how expensive it gets.
Each chassis type has a certain capacity that it can carry and support. This represents both the amount of mass it can pile on and the amount of energy its reactor puts out. Reactors will add to your capacity as well as your reactor points, which can allow fission reactors to have an advantage over fusion - less RP, but greater capacity. A mech's Mass obviously contributes towards its capacity limit. Not sure about its Armour; probably not. Speed has nothing to do with any of this - it just defines your straight-line speed, ie, how far you can move in a turn.
Ranged weapons have weight limits for light, heavy and ordnance versions. This will likely vary between mech types, representing how super-heavies can easily wield (as co-axials for their gigaweapons!) guns lights or even mediums would barely be able to lift. This system will replace the cogs limit on weapons, and will act similarly to the current CCW system, in a way, limiting the number of upgrades more than anything (or not - it depends how far you want to push the mech). Ordnance-weight weapons encumber you, although the only difference between light and heavy weapons is that lights are easier to fire. Range is pretty light, Impact Strength and AP not too bad, Shots heavy, special rules vary.
The ordnance weapon we have now as a category will be renamed as something else - Siege Cannon perhaps? (Yes, the name's derived out of Exteel. No it's not deliberate. Anyway, Giga Siege Cannon sounds utterly awesome...) Siege cannons are obviously heavier than other weapons, but don't encumber you, unless of course they too are pushed to ordnance limits. They may be slightly harder to fire though. Alien weapons will have low weight limits (so you can't push them very far before you tip over into heavy or ordnance) representing their high energy/resource drain and offsetting their high power, but these are raised if you have a xenocore mech (which have high energy modifiers anyway). Daemonhearts? Well they probably won't raise your alien energy limits, but their output's ridiculously high anyway, higher than xenocores probably. The gigaweapon upgrade, 0-1 on most mechs, 0-2 on superheavies, represents the mech being specifically built to accommodate this gigantic, oversized weapon and not only raises the maximum profile but allows you to do what you want without much fear of the overencumbrance of breaking the ordnance rules. Obviously the weapon will weigh a LOT, and be dead expensive to boot, but it won't encumber you except by forcing you to take fewer other weapons (and eating up weapon slots).
CCWs will follow a not-that-different system. Upgrades add weight. There may be more lists to choose from, or a system similar to what Twin offered where there's a statline type thing (the new damage system would probably make this easier to implement) and then 3 (or so) lists of special rules. Giga works for CCWs like it does for ranged weapons: allowing you to go nuts without fear of encumbrance, raising the maximums a bit, and perhaps adding a cool special rule or two. Light/heavy/ordnance CCWs isn't a bad idea either; ordnance CCWs encumber you, giving you -1 Attack or something, while the light ones get you a re-roll of one attack dice because they're light and nimble. The assault system will probably still be separate from the normal reactor-points (for moving and shooting) system, like it's currently separate from the movement points and move'n'fire table. Having said that it might take up 2-3 reactor points, but you still go further and do more than you normally would - the charge move represents power reserves being brought in and the mech sprinting to engage.
System upgrades all have a weight also, and if the total weight of a mech exceeds its capacity, it's encumbered, say by 1 reactor point per x points of exceeding mass. There's no set limits for any of this, which is rather cool. You *can* push beyond the maximum, if you want, but it'll slow your mech down and doing it too much will cripple it. It makes a lot more sense than limiting the amount you can *spend* on a weapon. Also it limits upgrade-spam on some mechs. Obviously upgrades will have to have a weight that'll fit them fluffwise as well as game-balance-wise, so open cockpit will be light - but superchargers will be pretty heavy, co-pilot will be *very* heavy (lots of extra equipment needed to keep two pilots alive, fairly comfortable and informed of what's going on). Actually, superchargers could provide their bonuses by giving you extra reactor points, 1-2 extra movement points and a +3 Speed rather than the current +1 Sp and may-move-beyond-its-Speed-characteristic (as Speed won't have any effect on how many reactor points a model gets, representing only its straight-line speed). That'll be a bit less cheesy. Regenamer too - it doesn't weigh much, probably less than normal armour in fact, but it drains retarded amounts of energy. Et cetera.
The numbers will have to be finely tuned and computed in order to get a balanced amount of firepower on a model. Well, lots of firepower isn't so much a problem, providing I can limit the time it takes to shoot the lot of it at some unfortunate victim and the sheer amount of dice rolled. Worth noting though, that massed missile firepower needs some kind of limiting. Not so much nerfing them, just ensuring that you can't chuck on 6 shots of 2D10+5 missiles on the spare shoulder slots of pretty much any mech. Missiles need lots of (large and weighty) ammo, so they'll be pretty heavy overall capacity-wise, although their limits won't be too restrictive as they need barely any energy or effort to shoot - but taking lots of them will encumber your mech like hell with all the ammo you have to make space for and carry around with you. Solid slug won't really suffer from the same problem; the weight it takes to carry the (much-smaller) ammo around is more or less equalled by the reactor energy drained by firing an energy or heat weapon.
A note on special characters. They too will suffer from this, but as reactor points are precalculated this can simply be added into their statlines (the encumbrance probably won't take effect mid-game [ie, it won't inflict any stat modifiers or special rules, I expect], but if it does, this'll have to be noted down). Of course, some characters (*cough*Opal*cough*) will have stupidly powerful reactors to feed their stupidly powerful guns anyway, and won't suffer from it.
Each chassis type has a certain capacity that it can carry and support. This represents both the amount of mass it can pile on and the amount of energy its reactor puts out. Reactors will add to your capacity as well as your reactor points, which can allow fission reactors to have an advantage over fusion - less RP, but greater capacity. A mech's Mass obviously contributes towards its capacity limit. Not sure about its Armour; probably not. Speed has nothing to do with any of this - it just defines your straight-line speed, ie, how far you can move in a turn.
Ranged weapons have weight limits for light, heavy and ordnance versions. This will likely vary between mech types, representing how super-heavies can easily wield (as co-axials for their gigaweapons!) guns lights or even mediums would barely be able to lift. This system will replace the cogs limit on weapons, and will act similarly to the current CCW system, in a way, limiting the number of upgrades more than anything (or not - it depends how far you want to push the mech). Ordnance-weight weapons encumber you, although the only difference between light and heavy weapons is that lights are easier to fire. Range is pretty light, Impact Strength and AP not too bad, Shots heavy, special rules vary.
The ordnance weapon we have now as a category will be renamed as something else - Siege Cannon perhaps? (Yes, the name's derived out of Exteel. No it's not deliberate. Anyway, Giga Siege Cannon sounds utterly awesome...) Siege cannons are obviously heavier than other weapons, but don't encumber you, unless of course they too are pushed to ordnance limits. They may be slightly harder to fire though. Alien weapons will have low weight limits (so you can't push them very far before you tip over into heavy or ordnance) representing their high energy/resource drain and offsetting their high power, but these are raised if you have a xenocore mech (which have high energy modifiers anyway). Daemonhearts? Well they probably won't raise your alien energy limits, but their output's ridiculously high anyway, higher than xenocores probably. The gigaweapon upgrade, 0-1 on most mechs, 0-2 on superheavies, represents the mech being specifically built to accommodate this gigantic, oversized weapon and not only raises the maximum profile but allows you to do what you want without much fear of the overencumbrance of breaking the ordnance rules. Obviously the weapon will weigh a LOT, and be dead expensive to boot, but it won't encumber you except by forcing you to take fewer other weapons (and eating up weapon slots).
CCWs will follow a not-that-different system. Upgrades add weight. There may be more lists to choose from, or a system similar to what Twin offered where there's a statline type thing (the new damage system would probably make this easier to implement) and then 3 (or so) lists of special rules. Giga works for CCWs like it does for ranged weapons: allowing you to go nuts without fear of encumbrance, raising the maximums a bit, and perhaps adding a cool special rule or two. Light/heavy/ordnance CCWs isn't a bad idea either; ordnance CCWs encumber you, giving you -1 Attack or something, while the light ones get you a re-roll of one attack dice because they're light and nimble. The assault system will probably still be separate from the normal reactor-points (for moving and shooting) system, like it's currently separate from the movement points and move'n'fire table. Having said that it might take up 2-3 reactor points, but you still go further and do more than you normally would - the charge move represents power reserves being brought in and the mech sprinting to engage.
System upgrades all have a weight also, and if the total weight of a mech exceeds its capacity, it's encumbered, say by 1 reactor point per x points of exceeding mass. There's no set limits for any of this, which is rather cool. You *can* push beyond the maximum, if you want, but it'll slow your mech down and doing it too much will cripple it. It makes a lot more sense than limiting the amount you can *spend* on a weapon. Also it limits upgrade-spam on some mechs. Obviously upgrades will have to have a weight that'll fit them fluffwise as well as game-balance-wise, so open cockpit will be light - but superchargers will be pretty heavy, co-pilot will be *very* heavy (lots of extra equipment needed to keep two pilots alive, fairly comfortable and informed of what's going on). Actually, superchargers could provide their bonuses by giving you extra reactor points, 1-2 extra movement points and a +3 Speed rather than the current +1 Sp and may-move-beyond-its-Speed-characteristic (as Speed won't have any effect on how many reactor points a model gets, representing only its straight-line speed). That'll be a bit less cheesy. Regenamer too - it doesn't weigh much, probably less than normal armour in fact, but it drains retarded amounts of energy. Et cetera.
The numbers will have to be finely tuned and computed in order to get a balanced amount of firepower on a model. Well, lots of firepower isn't so much a problem, providing I can limit the time it takes to shoot the lot of it at some unfortunate victim and the sheer amount of dice rolled. Worth noting though, that massed missile firepower needs some kind of limiting. Not so much nerfing them, just ensuring that you can't chuck on 6 shots of 2D10+5 missiles on the spare shoulder slots of pretty much any mech. Missiles need lots of (large and weighty) ammo, so they'll be pretty heavy overall capacity-wise, although their limits won't be too restrictive as they need barely any energy or effort to shoot - but taking lots of them will encumber your mech like hell with all the ammo you have to make space for and carry around with you. Solid slug won't really suffer from the same problem; the weight it takes to carry the (much-smaller) ammo around is more or less equalled by the reactor energy drained by firing an energy or heat weapon.
A note on special characters. They too will suffer from this, but as reactor points are precalculated this can simply be added into their statlines (the encumbrance probably won't take effect mid-game [ie, it won't inflict any stat modifiers or special rules, I expect], but if it does, this'll have to be noted down). Of course, some characters (*cough*Opal*cough*) will have stupidly powerful reactors to feed their stupidly powerful guns anyway, and won't suffer from it.