Savage Cyclone - Or, I Don't Wanna Wait

Taking a moment to post something non-D&D before jumping back into D&D And Me.

Savage Worlds Adventure Edition (SWADE) is here, as is Savage Robotech (Macross) and I couldn't be happier.  Thing is, while I love Macross, one of my favorite RPG settings is the Sentinels or Invid Invasion period of Robotech, largely for the inclusion of the Cyclone.  For the uninitiated in Robotech lore, the Cyclone is a single-pilot powered armor suit that can be reconfigured into a motorcycle (or is that the other way around) to provide mobility, protection and a weapon platform.  According to the lore, the Cyclone was also used as a survival package for downed pilots, as one is carried in a storage mode behind the cockpit of a Veritech Alpha Fighter.  We see LCDR Scott Bernard make use of the Cyclone in just this capacity in the first episode of the New Generation/Invid Invasion series.  If you've never seen a Cyclone in action, here's our first look at it from the TV series.

As a Game Master, the Cyclone was the perfect toy for my players.  It had the Rule of Cool, who doesn't want a badass motorcycle that transforms into a powered armor suit?  But it had a few things that were a gift to a Game Master.  First, the fuel supply was finite, but not too finite.  A single Protoculture Cell would last about a month, according to the RPG.  This verges on the "cinematic ammo" rule where it only matters when it's dramatic for it to matter.  When the GM feels it's time to be short on Protoculture, it comes into the plot.  Next, the Cyclone had various weapon systems available that were pretty effective- but not too effective.  The Alpha Fighter had SIXTY missiles, plus a gun pod.  The VR-052 standard configuration had four missiles, and the ability to use a handheld weapon.  The VR-041 had twelve missiles that seemed to be fired in volleys and about as individually effective as launched grenades, plus the vibro-sabers that were there, but never actually used in the cartoon.  The VR-038 had no internal weapons, but a hardpoint for an RL-6 rocket launcher used to effect by Rook Bartley.  So, you get heavy weapons, but not the overwhelming amount of them that come with full-sized Veritech mecha.  Last, but not least, the Cyclone was tough- but again- not TOO tough.  Well, if you were using Palladium rules, this last bit was kind of a lie.  You had 200MDC for the Cyclone (in first edition) and another 50 for your CVR-3 body armor.  This put you in the range of quite a bit of the full-sized mecha, and was far too butch against the Invid weapons that should have put fear into PCs the way it did to Scott, Lancer, Rook and Rand in the show.  So, gotta fix that.

Which brings me to the point of this post.  Right now, there is only the Robotech Macross book available for SWADE, so Cyclones have no official stats.  I'm going to create my own stats by taking a look at SWADE, SW Robotech, Savage RIFTS, and the great "Savaging Your Favorite RIFTS Ideas" PDF from Sean Patrick Fannon and Clint Black.  Now, a wonderful piece of advice Big Irish and Clint Black give in this document is to go for the feel of the gear, not a precise number-crunch from one system to another.  This was how Palladium System RIFTS became Savage RIFTS, and seems like a pretty good guiding star.

So, first things first.  The Cyclone requires a suit of body armor, the CVR-3 Armor, to work properly.  The Cycle part of the system uses the rigid CVR-3 Armor to lock on and create the powered armor configuration, without the armor, the conversion to powered armor mode would be impossible.  This gives me two tasks - One, create the CVR-3 Armor.  Two- Create the earlier CVR armor from the Expeditionary Force Marines sourcebook, since I intend to use both the production model cyclones and the prototypes and early -10 series models from that sourcebook.

So, let's see what we can find out about armor in SWADE, SW Robotech, and Savage RIFTS.

• SWADE has "Futuristic Infantry Battle Armor" with an Armor of +6, D6 Minimum Strength, and the armor resists bullet damage by 4.
• SWADE defines modern Kevlar-style armor with trauma plates as being +4 Armor (with 4 points of bullet resistance) and a Minimum Strength of d8.
• Robotech Macross defines the predecessor to CVR armor, the CHR HARD suit, as +10 Armor, and a Min Str of d8.  A Tactical Vest and Tactical Armor both appear on this chart at a value of +4, which jives with the Kevlar armor above.  The text notes that these early suits were extremely bulky and hard to move in.
• Savage RIFTS has a lot of armor.  AND an extra wildcard- the technology in RIFTS allows for armor to add to base Toughness in a way that cannot be negated by the Armor Piercing ability.  So let's look at a couple of offerings to compare to the others:
• Old surplus pre-RIFTS armor has an Armor of +5, +1 Toughness, and a D6 Min Str.  This falls into line with the SWADE Futuristic Armor total mod of +6, albeit with one of those points being Toughness.
• Bushman medium armor has a +6, with +2 to Toughness.  This brings it close to the +10 total of the Macross CHR HARD Armor, with a lower Min Str.
• Triax Heavy body armor has a +7 Armor and +3 Toughness, making it  the equal of the Macross HARD, with the same Min Str and no harsh activity rules like the HARD Armor.

Given all these data points, what do we want the CVR-3 Armor to be able to do?  I'd like to think that in the mad rush of technology between the First Robotech War and the Pioneer Mission, the old HARD Armor would have given way to the more technologically advanced armors that we see in RIFTS, that is, be able to provide modest Toughness bonuses, though perhaps not as much as RIFTS armors and certainly not up to the level of the Triax armor.  The Savaging doc also recommends restraint in this department.  So that makes me want to look at CVR-3 as a Medium armor.  Partially because that's how it looks on screen, and partially because it leaves room for a slightly less effective version to stand in for the older CVR models, and a slightly beefier version if I decide later to put the VR-055 into my games- which I'm not at all sure I want to do, but I like my options open.  It is fair to note that the original guidelines in the Savaging document are broken by a couple of the armors in the revised for SWADE RIFTS player's book.  The Savaging Doc says RIFTS has a hard limit of +8 Armor and +2 Toughness, while the revised Tomorrow Legion gear sections has the Triax Medium and Heavy armors among others sneak in a +3 Toughness.

It appears the -4 AP versus bullets in the SWADE core book and Robotech are absent in RIFTS.  This leaves me with something of a conundrum- Robotech doesn't (yet) allow embedded Toughness, and RIFTS ditches the -4 AP of the SWADE core rules.  So... Here's how I'll resolve that in my games for now.  The -4 AP stands for any modern armor designed by a culture that has extensive recent reason to create ballistic-proof armors.  Like, say, humans.  We love guns.  We were still issuing projectile firearms as late as the Pioneer Mission and the Second Robotech War.  So, that attribute will still be there, albeit not used much, I'd wager, since most enemy weapons and standard issue Exepeditionary Force weapons will tend to be energy based after a certain point.  Toughness will be a thing for my games, since RIFTS is where most of my benchmark stats are coming from.

So, given those parameters and example armors, and extrapolating from the Macross setting's armors, let's see how this fits:

Early CVR Body Armor: Armor +5, Toughness +1, Min Str d6.  Bullets -4 AP
Standard CVR-3 Body Armor: Armor +6, Toughness +2, Min Str 6, Bullets -4 AP
Heavy CVR for VR-055: Armor +7, Toughness +2, Min Str d8, Bullets -4AP

So the Expeditionary Force leaves Earth with a suit of armor issued only to special troops and troops testing the new Walker Battloid and eventually the -10 series Cyclones.  It is superior to the Tactical armor of the First Robotech War, and easier to move in than the CHR HARD armor, but less protective overall.  Such is the price of mobility, but the resiliency of the armor is improving.  Later, the standard issue CVR-3 suit improves a bit on this armor, being just as easy to move in but harder to pierce, and represents the best the Expeditionary Force will get before returning to Earth as a mixture of agility and protective qualities.  The reinforced CVR developed for the VR-055 Devastator project offers more bulk and less freedom to movement, though not to the level of the old HARD suit, but offers protection in the form of Toughness embedded that the old HARD suit can't match.  A slightly lower protectiveness overall, but perhaps less brittle ceramic plating or something that explains the Toughness as opposed to standard armor.

Now we have the suit.  What about the bike?  Let's take a look at our sources.

• SWADE lists a Dirt Bike as Size 0 and a Street Bike as Size 1.  Handling is +1 in both cases.  Toughness is 8 (Street Bike) or 7 (Dirt Bike) with no armor to speak of.
• Robotech lists the KX1300P Patrol Cycle as being Size: 1, Handling +2, and Toughness: 10(2)
•  RIFTS has the Highway-Man coming in at Size 1, +2 Handling, and a Toughness of 16(8), with the Wastelander being Size 3, much too big for a Cyclone.

OK, so it looks like we're going to go with Size 1, most example motorcycles work out this way.  Let's keep the handling of the beefier Cyclones, the -041 and -055, at +1 to match the less agile bikes and let the -038 have the +2 of the Patrol Cycle.  This will be compensated for in less armor and no integral weapons.  Hang on, though... powered armor works differently than vehicle armor, so now we have to come up with a simple hack to explain how we're going to deal with that.

By simple, I mean make sure the (N) after the Toughness in vehicle mode of the Cyclone needs to match the +N armor for the suit when in powered armor mode.  IE- the bike uses its' own Toughness when targeted as a motorcycle, and that of the rider and CVR Armor when targeted as a powered armor suit.  Easy peasy, but as I'm working this out I wonder if it will lead to problems down the road.  Namely, making the Cyclone tougher than it needs to be - I'm remembering the cyclones that could eat multiple missiles and keep trucking in the old Palladium game.  Well, I guess we'll see what we can come up with.  Reverse engineering the numbers above, it looks like most motorcycles have a a Toughness without armor of around 7-8.  This seems OK to me, so we'll go with 8 for the early Cyclones and the -038 model, and give a 9 to the beefier -041 and -055 models.

Now- to MDC or not to MDC?  In RIFTS, the SWADE Heavy tag is renamed MDC to go with the traditions of the Palladium RIFTS roleplaying game.  MDC stands for MegaDamage Capacity, and equates to the Heavy quality in Savage Worlds that means something is simply too tough for a regular sword, bullet or fist to damage.  A tank, for instance.  No matter how many dice Ace in a damage roll, a weapon without the Heavy/MDC quality simply can't hurt an object with the Heavy/MDC quality.  Savage RIFTS tries to take some of the MDC proliferation out of the game so that handheld weapons and personal armor are rarely MDC.  In Savage RIFTS, Power Armor confers MDC,  while the Highway-Man and Wastelander mototrcycles do not.  Larger APCs do, but most smaller vehicles don't.  For the purposes of making the Cyclone make sense, it kinda needs MDC to fit in with other Powered Armors, though it makes for a really hardy motorcycle!

Both example Power Armors in Savage RIFTS that are Size 1 give +8 MDC Armor and a +4 Toughness.  This appears to stack with worn armor, except our human-scale CVR-3 is not MDC in and of itself.  That means when the Cyclone is hit by MDC armor, we only care about the +MDC and +Toughness conferred by the powered armor, the CVR-3 becomes irrelevant.  If fired at by a weapon that doesn't to MDC, the CVR is still irrelevant as the MDC Armor renders any non-MDC attack moot.  This means someone in Cyclone powered armor is relatively immune to handheld weapons, but that is sort of borne out in the anime, so we'll go with it.

In Powered Armor Mode:
Size 1, Armor +8 MDC (+7 for the VR-038 and early Cyclones), Toughness +4 (+3 per Armor), STR d12+1 (d12 for early Cyclones and -038), Pace = Pilot's Pace (The Unofficial Robotech Reference Guide gives the cyclone's Battloid speed as the pilot's running speed)
Rudimentary flight system (Handling +0, +1 for the -038, hover to 120 MPH)

In Motorcycle Mode:
Size 1, Handling +1 (+2 to the -038), Top Speed 140 MPH, Toughness 17(8) or 15(7)

So, now we've got the bikes.  Let's look at the weapons.

The base VR-038 model has not built-in weapons, but it does have the RL-6 hardpoint.  The RL-6 fires rocket propelled grenades, with a six missile payload.  Taking a gander at example weapons to help us figure out what kind of damage the 76mm Tarantula rocket does, we find the following:

• SWADE Bazooka: 4d8 damage, AP 8
• RIFTS AP Grenade: 3d8, AP 16.  HE Grenade: 3d10, AP 4.  Plasma Grenade: 3d12, no AP.
• RIFTS AP Mini-Missile: 4d6, AP 20.  HE Mini-Missile: 5d6, AP 8.  Plasma Mini-Missile: 7d6, AP 0.
• Robotech Hydra 70 Rocket: 3d8+1, AP 8

All of these weapons are Heavy/MDC, so, big badda-boom.  We want effective, but not too effective.  The Hydra-70 is a modern 2.75" rocket used in great gobs from point-and-shoot launchers.  Unguided, air-to-ground, but a payload much like what we would expect from the 76mm Tarantula (the diameter comes from the Unofficial Robotech Reference Guide) but with less propellant.  IE, a launched grenade, not a true missile.  The anime shows that the Tarantula is at least semi-guided, as the RL-6 and the Cyclone both have targeting systems built-in, and we see dramatic views of the targeting reticle on the Cyclone shoulder coming up, gleaming in the sun, and then putting a round on target- usually an Invid sensor eye.

This data does give me a bit of pause, however- in the Palladium Robotech RPG, as well as the anime, it seems clear the plasma missiles from the GR-97 launchers on Scott's VR-052 Cyclone are more accurate and do nominally more damage than the Recluse missiles in Lancer's GR-103 shoulder mounts.  Scott normally fires one well-placed missile at a time, and Lancer often fires his in groups.  In the Palladium game, the Plasma/Napalm missiles did more damage than other mini-missiles, but in the Savage RIFTS conversion we see that Plasma does more damage, but has no armor-piercing capabilities.  This is a bit of a conundrum for the game modeling the show until one realizes that we see Invid sensor eyes popped by some weapons that probably aren't MDC.  Meaning that the sensor eye on an Invid mecha is probably NOT armored to MDC/Heavy standards.  Considering it's basically a ball turret sensor package behind which the pilot is housed, it conceptually can't be made of the same hard carapace armor, it's like saying you've got some armored camera lenses.  So, probably stout standard character scale Toughness, but NOT Heavy/MDC.  Once we decide that, the Plasma missile is still on top, leaving our translation still compatible with all our Savage sources.  Sure, we'll have to handwave and say that area effect MDC weapons still go up against the full overall armor of Invid mecha, but that's the way it works in the show.  Either hit them with overwhelming dakka, or hit them delicately in the eye.  One time with a Cyclone's foot.

Which gets me thinking about all the other missiles and rockets.  So I guess we can go ahead and make some determinations on all of them now.  We're looking at three distinct missile platforms: The RL-6 firing the 76x180mm Tarantula, the GR-103 firing the 60x160mm Recluse, and the arm-mounted GR-97 from the VR-052 firing the 45x260mm Scorpion missile.

The URRG description of the Tarantula makes it a small armor-piercing round, making up for the small warhead by driving the missile into the target for an attempt at penetration before detonation.  I'm going to call this identical to the RIFTS AP Grenade, which has great AP but lower damage than the Hydra 70 or the good old Bazooka. 

The Recluse is explicitly described as a guided rocket propelled grenade, and also has a warhead comparable to the Tarantula.  It is also described as AP and HE.  So let's make it the equivalent of the RIFTS AP Grenade, but with a +2 damage for the slightly heavier warhead.

The Scorpion is a faster, more accurate missile but with a smaller warhead, but also explicitly a plasma missile.  Let's go with the RIFTS Plasma Mini-Missile so that the 7d6 damage might help make up for the 0 AP, and make the missile as effective as it is in the show while maintaining compatibility with the other Savage games.

So now we have the following:

• RL-6 Rocket Launcher - As RIFTS AP Grenade (TLPG, pg 99) with a six-round magazine. +1 to hit at Short and Medium Range, +2 when Cyclone targeting reticle is deployed.
• GR-103 Launcher - As RIFTS AP Grenade (TLPG, pg 99) with +2 to damage.  Six grenades in each chest section for a total of twelve. May be fired by volley.  +1 to hit at Short and Medium Range when Cyclone targeting reticle is deployed.
• GR-97 Launcher - As RIFTS Plasma Mini-Missile (TLPG, pg 106) +2 to hit at Short and Medium Range when Cyclone targeting reticle is deployed.  Four missiles total, fired individually.

The CADS-1 system on the VR-041 Saber/Blowsperior Cyclone is an easy one- we'll use the Vibro-Longsword on page 97 of the Tomorrow Legion Player's Guide from Savage RIFTS.

That leaves us with two more cyclone weapons to look at.  The big rifle-like weapon Scott sometimes carries, the EP-37 60mm Particle Beam Gun, and Rand's arm-mounted EP-40 Pulse Particle Beam Gun.  For these, we will use the stats for the Northern Gun NG-45LP and NG-P7 on page 100 of the Savage Worlds TLPG.  These weapons are pretty close to exactly what the Robotech weapons are- the EP-37 will use the P7 stats, and the EP-40 will use the NG-45LP stats.  Both will get a bonus from the Cyclone's targeting system, and both can benefit from the Double Tap edge, but are not normally capable of auto-fire.

• EP-40 Pulse Particle Beam Gun: As NG-45LP Pistol (TLPG, pg 100) with a 45 round magazine.  +1 to hit at Short and Medium Range when Cyclone targeting reticle is deployed.
• EP-37 Particle Beam Gun: As NG-P7 Rifle (TLPG, pg100) with a 15 round magazine.

OK, so... now we have armor, Cyclones and their most common weapons.  Is there anything else?  Well, I can think of one thing as I type this and have episodes of Robotech running.  Agility.  The Cyclone has an incredible amount of agility unmatched by any other mecha humans pilot in the anime.  In the Palladium game this was modeled by giving the Cyclone battloid the rare Auto-Dodge ability, which allowed a defense roll without sacrificing an action during a turn.  Since SWADE does not have defense rolls as such, let's look at the Dodge and Improved Dodge Edges on SWADE page 41.  These Edges negate penalties and give bonuses to Evasion of area attacks.  This sounds about perfect for the jumping, flipping, hovering, and rocketing we see the Cyclones doing in the anime.  Watch how Scott hops, skips and jumps in his battles in the first two episodes of The New Generation.

So we will run with this rule:

EDGE:
CYCLONE RIDER
Requirements: Novice, Drive d6+

The hero is  fully trained in the use of the Cyclone powered armor system.  When using a Cyclone in Battloid Mode, the hero is treated as having the Dodge Edge regardless of any other requirments for that Edge.  A hero with this Edge piloting a VR-038 Cyclone in Battloid Mode receives the additional benefit of the Improved Dodge Edge.

That's about all I have to say about Cyclones for one sitting.  It's 0130 as I write this and I've been slamming out my Savage Robotech thoughts for a while now.  I hope this is useful to someone out there in TV-land.