Warwalker: Genesis - Discussion

/Sudden Tangental Remark/

You know, I can't help but imagine a Mech using the Grappling Hook to swing around.

Spider-Mech~ Spider-Mech~

Another question: have EGE and TELM stopped hating each other, and if not, why are they giving orders to the same PMC? And if that's the case, how does Parcel Delivery deal with conflicting orders?

Whatcha gonna do, little buckaroo? | i be pimpin' madoka fics

Don't take my version as canon just yet since I'm not the GM, but my impression was that Global Parcel Delivery doesn't work for EGE or TELM, but instead just uses equipment from each and does their own thing for whoever contracts them.

You are reading this.

It's not that it would be overpowered or anything, but rather that every other player would hate that player. The mech would only be good for a diversion, since the second it fires all those rocket pods, you better believe that it becomes the enemy's top priority.*

And after that, the pilot has to eject from the cockpit, and everyone feels obligated to rescue them. Plus, the rockets don't - to borrow a term here- resolve until the end of the enemy's turn, so if they shot the drone first, it's a volley that's wasted, and their next turn they would shoot the mech.

Well, it would have to be a little more complex than a simple laser pointer, copying the laser's specific deviations, but yeah.

That's more or less how it works. "Blowing shit up" is government work; they sell information and tech to the two corporation. Also, most conflicting interests between them would involve corporate espionage or trade, neither of which is within the scope of this game. Yet.

And I'll put up a sample combat thing tomorrow. I'll do a lot of stuff, like character signups, tomorrow since it's getting late.

Oh, but Chu, your character looks good, I'll just go over it with a fine toothed comb tomorrow to make sure you don't have a line in there about your character being a vampire or something

And I forgot to ask - Wysp, you want the railgun to be the BFG, right? It's unlikely you want it on the flamethrower, but hey, might as well check.

edited 9th Jul '12 11:31:25 PM by nman

Huh. We have two close range specialists, and exactly one non-close/melee weapon between all three mechs, so I guess if anyone decides to take cover 1000 feet away from our team, we're...fucked?

EDIT: Tiny's shoulder gun is now a machine gun. I should probably stop giving the GM ideas.

edited 10th Jul '12 12:54:02 AM by Chubert

Whatcha gonna do, little buckaroo? | i be pimpin' madoka fics

It's not like you can't use medium-range weapon at long range. For a machinegun, it would be less accurate, and the extra distance means the bullets wouldn't penetrate as much, but you could still try using it. The only weapons you can't do that with are the melee/close range ones, since you can't exactly snipe someone with a sword or flamethrower.

And don't worry about not choosing the right weapons/mods in the signup, since you can change them whenever you want, except on a mission. That's the beauty of them being swappable - just shove them in the right slots and call it a day.

Whats the benefit of "Worth the Weight" then? Ammo and a reload time for one more rocket?

My mech is also built for closer range but the advantage of those big Gatling bullets is that they still carry a lot of power out to a long range. He just needs to shoot a lot of them. Thats what the ammo pod and weapons platform perk are for.

Actually...since that perk represents swapping armor for harpoints, does that mean that mean I could toggle that off anytime we get extended downtime to mess with the mechs?

edited 10th Jul '12 9:01:08 AM by Stormthorn

While the breath's in his mouth, he must bear without fail, / In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail.

@ Nman: Yes, the railgun is the BFG.

"Your mission is not to nuke the squid god." —Faramir

It makes all ammo-based weapons deal more damage. The rockets/missiles is just how it gets Hand Waved for those weapons, since they don't really use barrels and powder in the same way as the other guns. And it might not be a good perk if you want to be the DPS mech. In fact, if you want a mech that can unload all of its weaponry as quickly as possible, it's a bad choice. But if you want a mech that can make the most of its limited ammunition, then it's a better choice.

edited 10th Jul '12 5:23:58 PM by nman

I'm assuming that this version of the USSR was not foresighted enough to put tac-nukes on Cuba? Otherwise we might as well kiss this RPG goodbye—there's a reason the saying "one flies, they all fly" exists.

P.S. How's that combat example coming?

edited 10th Jul '12 5:43:32 PM by Wysp

"Your mission is not to nuke the squid god." —Faramir

I think that if we've got laser guns, then missile shields would make nuclear Armageddon somewhat unlikely for the superpowers. This is a bit like an exaggerated version the real Cold War where almost all the military actions and political maneuvers are just attempts by each nation to say "HA!" at the others. It's almost like a game to them.

The main concern would more likely be a country in South America, the Middle East, or Latin America getting a leg up on one of the banana republics or puppet dictators that they've spent so long covertly manipulating.

And yeah, I've got it in notepad*

right now, trying to make sure there isn't something stupid in there.

edited 10th Jul '12 5:49:50 PM by nman

Ah, so in this world SDI went through (early!) with no opposition. That being said, how are we on the ground going to deal with those tac-nukes (Would you believe people literally said "Don't do SDI—it'll destabilize MAD)?

I seriously doubt that the smaller nations have the clout to backstab the superpowers of the world—they'd be roflstomped if they did. Mechs are going to make hit-and-run ops much harder to make effective, esp. with things like FLIR that make it hard to hide in the jungle.

Alright, looking forward to it. Also, suggestions on where I can find maps of the Soviet SAM and missile bases in Cuba? I can't find the lat/long to plug into Google Maps and the famous U-2 pictures don't give me a wide enough view to plan a battle strategy.

edited 10th Jul '12 5:50:22 PM by Wysp

"Your mission is not to nuke the squid god." —Faramir

So here's a combat sample I whipped up. Not very fancy, and since it's a first turn, it makes units seem a bit stronger or weaker than normal, but it gets the job done. Cue the Pokemon battle music. Also, I apologize for the length, since this is basically supposed to be all of your posts rolled into one.

---

The setting right now features our two humble player characters, Bob and Alice. Alice's mech has Weapons Platform two times, giving it two missile batteries and a mortar, an ion machinegun, an artillery variant of the railgun, and a hunker shield. Bob's in a light mech with 1.21 Gigawatts, equipped with a grenade launcher, stealth system, laser, and impulse jets.

Anyway, through some set of circumstances, they find themselves ambushing a half-dozen outdated Bland Name X tanks (so a main gun - a cannon that takes a turn to reload, and a secondary machinegun) six-hundred feet ahead of them, driving in pairs fifty feet apart and two hundred feet behind each other. They are driving perpendicular to the mechs.

Alice gets to business, launching all weapons at once, even though some of them aren't designed for this distance. She targets multiple tanks (I'd expect people to be specific here, but I don't want to write things twice, so look below for specifics - if you want, I can assign a unique label to each enemy to make things clearer. So, T1-through T6. T1 is the furthest and leftmost tank, T3 the furthest in the central pair, and T6 is closest tank on the right and then activates the hunker shield. Bob fires his grenade at the closest pair and activates his stealth system, zig-zagging around.

So now I combine my 'reckonin what the odds are with running the odds.

Turn 1

• Alice
  • Mortar at T3 - miss
  • Railgun at T3 - hit
  • Missile at T6 - flying
  • Missile at T5 - flying
  • Ion machinegun at T1 - hit
  • Hunker shield activated

• Bob
  • Grenade at T2 - hit
  • Stealthed

Results (any effects. Otherwise, a unit is assumed to take non-critical and non-specific damage to their armor plating if it's hit - also, I'd normally write a more descriptive thing explaining why something happens, like "the tread is hit, making T1 stay still", or I'd mention that there's a "critical hit with the railgun, completely destroying T3." I don't have a lot of status effect to work with, so get ready to see a lot of immobilization and burning):

• T1 immobilized
• T3 destroyed

So I'd write what the enemy does, and next there'd be this:

Enemy's Turn 1:

• T1
  • Main gun at Bob - miss
  • Secondary gun at Bob - miss
• T2
  • Main gun at Bob - miss
  • Secondary gun at Bob - hit
• T4
  • Main gun at Alice - hit
  • Secondary gun at Alice - hit
• T5
  • Main gun at Alice - hit
  • Secondary gun at missiles - miss
• T6
  • Main gun at Alice - hit
  • Secondary gun at missiles - hit (2 - means it hit two of them)

Results:

• T5 destroyed
• T6 main gun disabled

I'd mention now that Bob's mech only sustains a teeny bit of damage from a machinegun, while Alice's mech has most of the damage absorbed by the hunker-shield, the mech only being hit by rounds that were drastically slowed down.

And then we'd have another turn.

edited 10th Jul '12 7:19:39 PM by nman

Iiiinteresting. The way you handle damage makes for a much more engaging system them the typical hit-points system. Everything else seems to work out just fine so I'll give me thoughts particularly on this.

Some things you could track damage-wise:

• Infantry injuries. In the event that players ever have to use sub-.50 caliber weapons or if we have crunchies on our side, you could track things like arm or leg damage, which would make it harder to hit or slow them down, respectively. Most things we're throwing around would likely be an OHKO, though.
• For air units, wings (determining whether it can fly, this'd be the same as engines for helis), engines (determining how fast it can fly), and fuselage for everything else. Obviously a cockpit hit would be an OHKO.
• For naval units...eergh, that's a lot of stuff to track. You'd pretty much have to treat every gun as its own unit, plus the armor integrity of the hull. There wouldn't really be an OHKO point unless someone with the biggest BFG I've ever seen can punch directly through the armor and hit an ammo store. You'd also have to track the bridge, plus damage-control crews. That'll be an...interesting battle.

I may have got a bit off track (aside from naval units...that's pretty much how you'd have to deal with them) but hopefully you can abstract some of my brainstorming into interesting status effects, since you mentioned you didn't have many.

P.S. How do you plan to deal with stuff like ack-ack or AP weapons?

edited 10th Jul '12 8:54:56 PM by Wysp

"Your mission is not to nuke the squid god." —Faramir

Hello? Is anyone here?

I really hope this didn't die in the bud.

"Your mission is not to nuke the squid god." —Faramir

Heh, don't worry, I'll always be here. Still waiting on Rabbit, Colonial, and SOCR to make their mechs - as well as anyone else who wants to join. But I think I can throw up the first post tomorrow, just a simple way to introduce characters, to give a little bit of extra time to stragglers.

It's up to you guys if you want your mercs to have been serving in the PMC for a while*

or if it's their first mission, or if you want your characters to know each other beforehand or whatever.

edited 11th Jul '12 6:28:43 PM by nman

@Wysp: My entire watchlist has been silent today. I'm guessing a lot of people are busy or otherwise preoccupied today.

Maybe there's some big sporting event going on somewhere?

@Nman: Well, I'd prefer this to be Bart's first op. I'm thinking he probably wouldn't really know any of the other characters, but he might've passed by them amongst the base by now or something.

edited 11th Jul '12 6:30:54 PM by FirockFinion

You are reading this.

Oh, also, answers to these: Basically, I wanted to have a game, and an RP. So it's not just a complex ruleset with tons of modifiers and hitpoints and people minmaxing left and right, but it's also not a full-on "do whatever you want and yell at the guy running it if things don't go your way" freeform deal - which is good, since I don't want to have to research armor for hours to figure out what happens. So, the result is more realistic than a "move five squares and use the missile launcher" tabletop system, but at the same time is gamey (read: less-realistic) enough that I don't have to worry about people calling "BULLSHIT!" if a tank ever shrugs off a railgun hit.

Yeah, it is pretty quiet today.

edited 11th Jul '12 6:40:27 PM by nman

• I support the "start the game" idea, since it lets us bored people do something rather than let our enthusiasm slowly strangle.
• Firock: As has mine, which is why I decided to see if I could stir something up.
• I'm thinking Robert will have worked with them for a while—he left the Army in 59 and signed up with the PMC shortly after. It's 62 now, so...
• Alright, that makes sense.

"Your mission is not to nuke the squid god." —Faramir

Where'd you get the 1962 from?

You mentioned the first mission involved Cuba, missiles, and a crisis. The extension of this to the Cuban Missile Crisis was natural.

If that's not where this starts, then I'm going to need to rejigger my guy's biography. The reason that he was an adviser in Vietnam and not serving there on actual combat duty was because, as far as I can tell, there were only American military advisers there before 1962, which was my assumed deadline for getting him into the PMC. If that's not my deadline, I have more flexibility.

"Your mission is not to nuke the squid god." —Faramir

If one was going to take weapons platform twice would you have to take two backs and two shoulders or could you take one back and THREE shoulders?

For my own mech I figured taking it once and then buffing all my projectile weapons would be a better way to dish out more damage but who knows if im right about that. I dont know how powerful the Kineticly trained perk is.

While the breath's in his mouth, he must bear without fail, / In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail.

Whatever way you want it, you're not forced to affect the same slot twice. And worry too much about comparing things. It's more like a general idea of your mech's role than a straight-up "Do x more damage" or "hit Y% more often" perk.

This is an AU though - timeline says that "now" is 1960. If you want advisers there before 1962, go for it. Hell, if you want a war there before 1955, go for it. Just try not to name names or dates very specifically, or this house of cards we call "canon" will topple on us

But anyway, your signup has 1959 as the latest date, not 1962, so it's not like you have to change anything.

edited 11th Jul '12 7:12:26 PM by nman

• I figured you meant it was the 1960s, not 1960 specifically.
• I try to be as accurate as possible and I figured that weapons aside, the politics of it would probably just keep chugging along...although I just realized that Vietnam was within the GEACPS and, due to the existence of Imperial Japan, probably still is. How would that work out, I wonder...

Side note: any idea on when we can expect the RP topic?

edited 11th Jul '12 7:42:11 PM by Wysp

"Your mission is not to nuke the squid god." —Faramir

23 hours from now. I really want to let a few more people in before starting - even if it's a soft start - just to make this thing able to withstand having a few people suddenly dispensary from the internet.*

Also, any political things I can't explain are the result of people having access to laser beams, computers, cell phones, and robots.

edited 11th Jul '12 7:51:08 PM by nman