Giant Mechs are always the best? (Interest/Sign-Up)

[Geminex]

I haven't roleplayed in ages, but this might be interesting. So sure.
Though if this does end up being PVP, I probably won't join.

Out of curiosity, how historical are you gonna make this? You described a vauge setting, will that become more concrete? With specific conflicts, armies and weapons? Or will be it be more along of the lines of BUDF (Big, Undifferentiated Defense Force) fighting against the GBGA (Generic Bad Guy Army?), ourselves aligned with the latter?

Edit: Or maybe the former. Put that down to a freudian slip.

[DanteFalcon]

Home, eating, will be writing character gen in a bit.

I'm not entirely sure yet. I don't want to do "America is good guys" because I don't believe that in the slightest. If it goes historical I'll make the heroes some country that gets villainized too often.

Doesn't appear to be PvP at this point.

[Aldurin]

So, we're going to be representing Soviet GermanChina?

[Geminex]

To offer a suggestion, why have villains at all?

I don't think we need to have good guys or bad guys on the battlefield. When a country deploys an army, it's always going to be out of self-interest. If villains exist, they're the people in charge, who decide to employ military force out of national self-interest. The army just does its job in the belief that they're right to do so.

The heroes are generally just as bad as the people they're shooting. So why try to categorize things?

Edit: Also, in regards to a setting, maybe something Tom-Clancy-ish?
Even without nuclear weapons, the ideological divide between the West and the Soviet would've been enough to foster a cold war, particularly since Biological or chemical weapons are also pretty good at mass destruction. Cheaper too, if you don't take delivery vehicles into account.

Anyway, we could stay pretty close to standard history. If we started in, say, 1990, the Soviet union would be gradually losing integrity, with the US already expecting the end to come. Amid the chaos of collapse, some sort of conflict could spring forth, be it a revolution in the soviet union or a territorial struggle in western Europe. That's pretty much the best opportunity for an epic warlike setting I can think of.

This has been Geminex, with historical advice you didn't ask for.
Thank you and good night.

Edit:

So, we're going to be representing Soviet GermanChina?

How about Islamic Communist Nazi Korea?

[DanteFalcon]

Still tossing a few ideas around before settling on something for group your working for, just getting to the meat of the character gen first. Number time go.


As mentioned before, every character has 6 stats for themselves, which, for ease of use I'll seperate into 3 categories; Combat, Industry and Logistics.

Combat's two stats are Reflex and Accuracy which are fairly self explanatory in their roles. Accuracy is a bit of an oddball though because mech's do have an auto targetting function. Its just really -really- bad and can't always distinguish friend from foe, not to mention it can be completely disabled if your scanners get jammed. The specialties these affect are primarily about weapon specializing, with one exception which we'll get to.

Industry is represented by Economy and Engineering (Yes I know Engineering is a broad term that covers far more than this. Call it Mechanized Combatant Engineering if your really that technical). Economy is merely your ability to understand value and supply your mech with non-standard issue gear to improve performance. Its also key if you intend to make use of EMP ammunition as that is almost never offered from the military. Engineering is simply an understanding of the machines you all are using from a technical standpoint, and how particular functions can be repaired, bypassed or utilized.

Logistics is represented by Focus and Computers. Focus is simply your ability to keep yourself on the task at hand and handling multiple tasks at once, or just one task really well. Computers is your skill at computers and how capable you are at decoding anything the programs spit out at you.

So your given 18 total points to put into your 6 stats (all start at 0) with a maximum of 6 in any one stat (but not group of stats) at this point.

Example A:
Reflex: 2
Accuracy: 2
Economy: 1
Engineering: 6
Focus: 3
Computers: 4

So why the grouping? That becomes important when we talk about specialties. Onto Mech Stats!

Mech's have no grouping and 5 fairly simple stats with only one that has any special rule. Additionally mechs begin with 1 in Armor, Speed and Generator Output. The 5 stats are:

Payload
Armor
Speed
Generator Output
Back-up systems

Payload: How much your mech can carry. Every point put into payload counts for two (so if you put 2 points into Payload, your Payload total is 4). It prevents Payload from being a necessary stat dump for heavier weapons or heavy armor. When I bring up weapon specialties they'll have a payload score (Ex: Pistols have 1 payload requirement) which accounts for the gun and nigh on unlimited ammo.

Armor: How hard you are to destroy. Armor slows your movement by 10% per point (and is perfectly balanced by speed so if you have equal armor and speed your movement isn't affected by either). Your Armor can't exceed your payload score (with the exception of level 1 armor which doesn't count as any appreciable weight)

Speed: How fast you are. Increases your movement by 10% per point.

Generator output: How much energy your mech has. 1 point is sufficient for standard activities. A total score of 3 is needed to keep your mech running at maximum power without any problems coming from the mech itself at this stage in the game. It also is a partial counter to EMP weaponry.

Back-up Systems: How resilient your mech is to everything. Effectively Health. This won't stop say your mech losing an arm from a sword cutting through it but you can take more all around punishment.

Your given 10 points to put into your mech with armor and speed capped at 5 for this point in the game (the 1 points in Armor, Speed and Generator output do not count against your 10 point total).

Because I mentioned them a great deal here I'll put in a brief aside for how EMP weapons work. They don't do appreciable damage on their own but they attempt to overload the generator with power spikes so that it will shut itself down as a safety to prevent it from exploding. A generator with more output is also treated as having a larger power load it can handle without overloading, hence why it works as a partial counter.

Example A's Mech:

Payload: 6 (3 points put into it. Thus 3x2=6)
Armor: 3 (2 points put into it + the 1 it started with)
Speed: 3 (Same as armor)
Generator Output: 2 (1 base + 1 point invested)
Backup Systems: 2

Next post will be on specialties but I'll leave this to sit for an hour or two so people can read and ask questions before I throw in the last stuff.

[Arhra]

Question: What does the generator actually run on?

Petrol? Coal? Unobtainium?

[Geminex]

Wait, swords? I thought we were talking, like, walking tanks here. Cannons, guided missiles, that sort of thing. Wouldn't sword-wielders just kinda get blown apart? Edit: The rest looks cool, though. : D

[DanteFalcon]

Tempted to answer with Unobtanium but I'm honestly open to ideas cause I have none. I'm not an engineer in any sense of the word but I can appreciate the amount of power needed to make it work and the best that I can think of is basically along the lines of unobtainium.

In short: I have no clue.

And Gem melee isn't completely gone. There is a specialty for it as well. There's likely to be at least one person who'd argue that you can technically still have a sword with everything else and while I'm tempted to agree I'm hardly the master of all that is tactical. Also because I'm a stick in the mud I'll remind you that explosive weapons are generally frowned upon due to collateral damage. It gets expensive when your explosion has to be able to injure 40 ft tall mechs and that's a lot of collateral.

[Arhra]

Well, if we have a non-nuclear option of sufficient bang, I had a fun thought for a single-shot weapon.

Probably too advanced to start with and I don't think it works nearly as well in atmosphere as in space, buuuuuut:

Originally Posted by Atomic Rockets

Back in the 1960's, rocket scientist came up with the infamous "Orion Drive." This was basically a firecracker under a tin can. Except the tin can is a spacecraft, and the firecracker is a nuclear warhead.

Anyway, they realized that about 90% of the nuclear energy of an unmodified nuclear device would be wasted. The blast is radiated isotropically, only a small amount actually hits the pusher-plate and does useful work. So they tried to figure out how to channel all the blast in the desired direction. A nuclear shaped charge.

Remember that in the vacuum of space, most of the energy of a nuclear warhead is in the form of x-rays. The nuclear device is encased in a radiation case of x-ray opaque material (uranium) with a hole in the top. This forces the x-rays to to exit only from the hole. Where they run full tilt into a large mass of beryllium oxide (channel filler). The beryllium transforms the nuclear fury of x-rays into a nuclear fury of heat. Perched on top of the beryllium is the propellant: a thick plate of tungsten. The blast of heat turns the tungsten plate into a star-core-hot spindle-shaped-plume of ionized tungsten plasma. The x-ray opaque material and the beryllium oxide also vaporize a few microseconds later, but that's OK, their job is done. The tungsten plasma jet hits square on the Orion drive pusher plate. With the reference design of nuclear pulse unit, the plume is confined to a cone of about 22.5 degrees. About 85% of the nuclear devices's energy is directed into the desired direction, which I think you'd agree is a vast improvement over 10%.

About this time the representatatives of the military (who were funding this project) noticed that if you could make the plume a little faster and with a narrower cone, it would no longer be a propulsion system component. It would be a directed energy weapon. Thus was born project Casaba-Howitzer.

Details are scarce since the project is still classified after all these years. Tungsten has an atomic number (Z) of 74. When the tungsten plate is vaporized, the resulting plasma jet has a relatively low velocity and diverges at a wide angle (22.5 degrees). Now, if you replace the tungsten with a material with a low Z, the plasma jet will instead have a high velocity at a narrow angle. The jet angle also grows narrower as the thickness of the plate is reduced. This is undesirable for a propulsion system component, but just perfect for a weapon.

[DanteFalcon]

I.....no. Going to exercise a GM power and veto that so hard.

Now I have even more reason to be afraid.