Part of developing the backstory for the Starship Texas and her Dragoons requires us to take a look at the United Earth Army. According to the documents the STARFLEET Marine Corps has published, the SFMC was founded in 2161 with the birth of the Federation, and followed a "Colonial Marine Corps" that was part of the "United Nations Peace Force." As much as I'd like to make sure my work doesn't overwrite some of the history already established for the SFMC, United Earth is established canon, there would not have been a UNPF. As my friends and I have worked on this project, we've been asked why we don't simply go as MACOs. Our response to that is that we feel MACOs are something between Special Forces and Marines, and like Special Forces Operators there simply aren't enough of them to fight a full-fledged war. When United Earth needed warm bodies, they called up the United Earth Army.
In ENT 3x01 "The Xindi" ENS Sato has an exchange with MAJ Hayes in which she says "Military Assault Command..." and Hayes responds "Captain Archer said he wanted the best." If the MACOs aren't the only option, then who are the other option(s)?
So here we go, with a rough sketch of what I hope to develop into a nice document for gaming purposes, and also to be used as part of our SFMC qualifications in a historical context.
INTRODUCTION
The United Earth Army as it exists today has been derided as a vestigal organ of a bygone time. Earth herself has been at peace since the founding of the Federation in 2161, a fact which doves and progressives in the United Earth government use to justify semi-regular legistlative attempts to dismantle the service as antiquated an unnecessary. As it is with many recurrent political arguments, a look at history might give insight into the direction of the present. At the outbreak of the Romulan War, the same discussions on the necessity of a United Earth Army were taking place as the final holdouts in 2150. While the nation-states that constituted the membership of United Earth still maintained their own militaries for traditional or security reasons, the United Earth Army had been founded in 2113 in the hopes that an official force representing all of Earth would encourage membership in the new world government. Once this goal was accomplished, the UE Army faced immediate calls for its dismemberment on the grounds that it had never been needed as a combatant force. United Earth had the Military Assault Command Operations (MACO) organization to serve as its military, these pundits argued, and a standing United Earth Army was a waste of resources.
This wisdom was beginning to sway many UE lawmakers when the Xindi attack on Earth in March of 2153. Humans in places of influence had been mildly alarmed at the reception Humanity's first forays into deep space had generated, as already the list of civilizations unfriendly to Earth had become much longer than just the Nausicaans and a few others that existed before the introduction of high-warp travel by the Starship Enterprise (NX-01.) Starfleet had quietly begun a rapid construction program using Mars and Jupiter Station consisting of hastily uprated Intrepid- and Delta-type vessels. The New York-class vessels, originally intended to be exploration cruisers as a follow-on and improvement to the NX-class were prioritized in a secret project to serve as Earth's power projection capability, but the ill-fated Starship New York (NY-34) would not see service, leaving her sister ship the Starship Texas (NY-35) the only vessel of the class to see completion, as production changed over to the prolific Daedalus-class vessels that would be the backbone of the Federation Starfleet after the birth of the United Federation of Planets in 2161.
This same spirit of defensive buildup drove the reaffirmation of the United Earth Army's mandate, as it was realized that the highly trained MACO forces would be excellent in small-unit roles but lacked the weight of numbers that would be needed if actual invasions of Earth or her colonies was to occur. The devastating attack on Earth soil by the Xindi prototype touched off the same type of "war fever" and paranoia Humanity often experienced after events similar to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, or the terrorist attacks on New York in 2001. The UE Army was once again relevant and prioritized, but the logistics of taking it from a peactime army to a modernized war footing were daunting.
THE UE ARMY IN 2153
At the time of the Xindi attack, the United Earth Army resembled nothing more than the support elements of the armies that had come before it. With no actual wars to fight, the UE Army specialized in disaster response, civil affairs and engineering endeavors. Earth had largely recovered from the post-atomic turmoil that preceeded First Contact with the Vulcans in 2063, but that recovery came at a price. The establishment of the European Hegemony had long ago moved social and political tides toward unification. This momentum quickened with concrete proof from the Vulcans that humanity was not alone in the galaxy. The fledgling United Earth Army was composed in large part of recruits from North America - the United States and Canada - as the energy and excitement of First Contact took hold like ripples from a stone dropped in Bozeman, Montana. These initial units had a fresh infusion of pioneer spirit and leadership that were veterans of the recent and continuing conflicts that were United Earth's birthing pains. The UE Army was forged in this crucible, adopting many of the customs and traditions of the United States Army whose veterans populated the first units of the new organization. Peacekeeping and minor combat operations with the belligerent nations that held out against UE membership quickly changed to infrastructure creation and civilian assistance. The UE Army became an expert organization at civil engineering projects, repairing damaged levees, water purification systems, food distribution, constructing temporary and permanent shelter complexes and many other tasks. As the twenty-second century matured, the UE Army found itself less and less of a combatant force. Arms and combat equipment were allowed to remain stagnant in favor of more mission-critical gear and technologies focused on the Army's current role. As the Xindi Incident approached, the UE Army had become a much leaner organization than the Western-style armies that created it. Many changes in basic organizations and structures had occurred to facilitate the mission of the peacetime Army that would differentiate it from the Armies of the past.
THE TECHNICIAN GRADES
One development that seems to be a throwback to the World War II or Vietnam-era of the United States Army was the re-adoption of multiple technical grades within the UE Army. While the US Army had, and indeed still has in its role as a ceremonial organization for the US as a member state of United Earth, the rank of Specialist, it had long ago done away with multiple grades of specialist or with cumbersome titles like Quartermaster Sergeant, Saddler Sergeant and the like. With the return of the UE Army to a largely technical role, the need for specialized soldiers was such that the non-commissioned officer (NCO) grades became overfull with soldiers who had stripes, and thus authority, based on technical expertise rather than leadership prowess or the need for small-unit leaders. This prompted the UE Army command to adopt the ranks of Technician-4, Technician-5 and Technician-6 as extensions of the three enlisted ranks of Recruit, Private and Private First Class. These soldiers carried grades E-4 through E-6 and were paid at that grade, but carried no official NCO status for those grades. The insignia for these grades were inverted chevrons with a "T" device inside the angle of the innermost chevron. In practice, these soldiers were often pressed into service as ersatz-NCOs or placed in charge of special details that usually - but not always - reflected the technical specialty of the soldier. In most units, a TN4, TN5 or TN6 filled the same billet as a PVT or PFC.
ORGANIZATION
The Infantry Platoon (Light) - 1 Officer, 13 Enlisted
The standard Light Infantry Platoon in the United Earth Army was composed of only fourteen individuals - scarcely more than a squad from the previous century's military formations. The change in mission and focus had yielded a much smaller necessary force for most applications, and infantry were more often employed as laborers and engineers.
Platoon Leader - O1 or O2
Platoon Sergeant - E6 (Staff Sergeant) or E7 (Sergeant First Class)
Two Infantry Squads
Squad Leader - E5 (Sergeant) or E6 (Staff Sergeant)
Assistant Squad Leader - E4 (Corporal) or E5 (Sergeant)
4 Soldiers of grades E1-E3
The infantry squads themselves were enumerated First Squad and Second Squad, and were broken down into A and B Fire Teams. Each Fire Team had a single NCO, the Squad Leader lead A Team, with the Assistant Squad Leader leading B Team. Each team had two soldiers in addition to the NCO leader. On paper, all members of a light infantry squad were armed with the EM-23 plasma rifle, although EM-19 plasma carbines and EM-17 plasma support weapons were also commonly seen.
<<THIS POST TO BE ADDED TO AT A LATER DATE>>
16 April 2013
08 April 2013
Total System Kitbash : Robotech
I am a big fan of the Robotech franchise. Oddly, I'm much more a fan of the novels, comic and the roleplaying games than I am of the actual anime series. Aside from nostalgia for the voices of Tony Oliver, Cam Clarke, Dan Woren and the rest, as I continue in my life journey as an adult I find myself preferring the original Macross series over Robotech when I'm watching it for me - I am trying to invest my son in Robotech, as it will work well for him until he's old enough to know the difference.
As most folks are aware, Carl Macek fused three Japanese television series together to make Robotech, as the Japanese shows were narratives shown once a week until the story was told and the longest of the three, Macross, was only 36 episodes. American syndication required 65 episodes - that is, a new episode every afternoon Mon-Fri for thirteen weeks. Macross was a masterpeice - think Japan's version of Star Trek. Even now, three decades later it's still wildly popular and has spawned games, sequels and feature films. This was NOT a "cartoon" made for "children." I recently had to beat my head against the wall of a very good friend who "just does not like anime." I've got some GREAT plot ideas for a Robotech game, but alas, with my current group of players I'll probably never get to run it.
OK, back to the kitbash. Macek took the three shows and rewrote the dailogue to make three previously unrelated shows a single narrative. It was messy, and sometimes not done as elegantly as it could have been. But there it was. 85 episodes of Robotech. And when I discovered this show in 1985... it was the most incredible thing I'd ever seen. All the cartoons I watched up until that point were relentlessly episodic save the big 5-parters that were usually stand-alone miniseries or introductions to a longers series - "GI JOE : A Real American Hero" or "More Than Meets the Eye" for Transformers. You could show a lot of the episodes in any order and not really mess much up - until the new wave of action figures hit and new characters popped up.
So Robotech was a kitbash of a television series, for better or worse. The first RPG I ever purchased with my own money was Palladium Books' Robotech RPG. I loved that game. I played the hell out of that game. I noticed the inconsistencies with the series even in my early teens. Don't get me wrong, I've had a lot of fun with Palladium's games. I'm not one who will sit here and tell you how truly terrible and unplayable they are - because I don't believe it. A little rusty, maybe. In need of a tweak here and there, sure. But unplayable? No.
So I watched as much of Robotech as I had avaialble. At the time I was really running the game a lot, Robotech did not (and hadn't ever) run in the Austin TV market. There were some episodes out on VHS one could rent, but initially they were one episode per tape. Later, you could get Macross at one Blockbuster 30 minutes from my house on several casettes that each had about six episodes on them. The problem there is they edited the hell out of those tapes to cut out all the superfluous character scenes and stuff. Just get to the fighting already! So those weren't that great from a fan perspective, but it did allow us to check out the mecha battles. And they did NOT play like the RPG.
The main problem was MDC. For those of you who aren't in the know, regular humans and stuff like your car, your PC, your front door- these things have Hit Points or Structural Damage Capacity. SDC. An untrained human punch does 1d4 SDC. Most humans have around 10-15 hit points without special training. A regular gun, say, a 9mm pistol, does 2d6. With me so far? OK. Mega-Damage, or MDC, is what really tough things like tanks and mecha have. 1 MDC = 100 SDC or HP. If your weapon is not rated to do MDC, however, it is explicitly prevented from doing MDC damage even if you can generate over 100 SDC on a damage roll. So, mecha etc. are effectively immune to small arms. Mostly OK. The problem then comes with the way the numbers work.
The "typical tank" in the Robotech RPG has 200 MDC in its main body. The main cannon of the tank does 2D8 MDC per shot. So... The typical tank has to shoot another typical tank an average of 22 times to destroy it? Now, 2D8 MDC is a LOT of damage. A semi truck has 600 SDC, or 6 MDC equivalent. It would be blown to smithereens by such a cannon. As it should be. Thing is... it's impossible to one-shot a tank with a tank's main gun. You can't even mobility kill one if you use the straight up rules for MDC. The maximum damage of 16 points won't destroy a single tread, it would still have 9 MDC left! Later in the book you find out a LAW does 1D6 MDC, and a 90mm recoilless does 1D10. Neither of these weapons could achieve any kind of useful effect against a "typical tank."
This just gets wonkier as the game line goes on. By the time of the Invid Invasion book, a man-sized suit of personal armor has 50 MDC. This means if you discount the impact and shock effects, which aren't part of the core rules (just part of GM common sense) a PC wearing CVR-3 armor could eat an average of 5 shots from a "typical tank" before the sixth shot wasted 'em. Strager still, the Gallant H-90 rifle does more damage with a single shot, 4d6 MDC, than the four head-mounted lasers on Roy Fokker's VF-1S Veritech (4d4 MDC.) We clearly see Fokker's Veritech take out a Zentraedi Battlepod with those lasers, too - and those pods have 50 MDC! Even with rolling a crit for double-damage and rolling max damage on the lasers, that's only 32 MDC, so what we see in the show would be impossible in the game... And wait a minute... an armored human has as much MDC as a Zentraedi Battlepod?
So we've established MDC numbers are broken somewhere. At best, MDC vehicles have too much MDC. At worst, both the armor and weapons values are borked. We went so far as to divide all MDC by 10 for non-PCs or important enemies, and 5 for all PCs and important enemies. It just emulated the show better. In a strange twist, we inadvertently invented the "mook rules" we're all so fond of nowadays from Savage Worlds and other games.
How would I deal with this now? Well, Palladium has revised the Robotech RPG. It's better in a lot of ways, but still has a frustrating MDC imbalance. The numbers just don't make sense in places. I got some inspiration one day a few years back reading the excellent Robotech Reference Guide. This amazing site has a lot of information on mecha presented in a real-world format, much like reading a Jane's briefing on something. I decided that I would use that information to create a combat system. Actually, it's not a full combat system, but rather a patch you can use with any combat system that replaces the damage resolution mechanic for the mecha.
The articles on the RRG refer to armor by how well it does against benchmark weapons. Here's an excerpt from the file on the VF-1 Valkyrie:
VIII. Armor:
The armor of the standard Valkyrie is composed of an advanced titanium-steel alloy. The armor stops all small arms fire, provides good protection against heavier infantry weapons, such as a 12.7mm machinegun round, and fair resistance to light mecha-mounted weaponry, such as the Zentraedi 22.3mm HE autocannon round.
The additional armor on the reinforced sections of the Super Valkyrie stops all small arms and heavy infantry weapons fire, provides good resistance to light mecha-mounted weaponry, such as the Zentraedi 22.3mm HE autocannon round, and poor resistance to medium mecha-mounted weaponry, such as the Valkyrie's 55mm APFSDS round.
The additional armor on the Armored Valkyrie is composed of a standard Chobam laminar developed in the late 20th century and improved with the materials science advances made during the Robotech era. This armor was mainly designed to defeat projectiles and other kinetic weapons. The armor stops all small arms, heavy infantry weapons fire, and light mecha-mounted weaponry, and provides fair to good resistance to medium mecha-mounted weaponry, such as the Valkyrie's 55mm APFSDS round.
The Valkyrie provides full protection from nuclear, biological, and chemical hazards, using an overpressure cockpit environment activated by radiation and hazardous chemical sensors, or manually when biological warfare conditions are anticipated. The internal consumables supplies can provide atmosphere for two days maximum.
So all this "good protection" "fair resistence" and "stops all small arms, heavy infantry weapons fire..." reminds me of something. Oh, yeah, the table on the back of all my Marvel Superheroes books! You know, FASERIP Marvel where your ability scores are rated not in numbers, but in adjectives. Spider-Man didn't have a 22 Agility, he had an Amazing one. So I started thinking... what about a chart like that to determine how much damage mecha might take from a weapon?
Reading through the files, I came up with the following scale:
No Resistance
Poor Resistance
Poor to Fair
Fair Resistance
Fair to Good
Good Resistance
Good to Excellent
Excellent Resistance
Stops
Now, I originally married this scale to the 10-block Shadowrun damage track and a D100 chart. For this article, I believe I am going to keep the Shadowrun-esque damage track and instead go with a 2d6 chart. The reason for this is that I like the way a bell curve concentrates results on the most likely outcome (7 in this case) so as to model what would "normally" happen in the game world.
So let's define each mecha as having ten structure blocks. If you want, you can use Shadowrun's method of -1 after a single block, -2 after three, -3 after six etc. to simulate performance degradation due to damage. The chart will give results in number of damage blocks to mark off.
So basically, I use whatever system I want and roll to resolve a hit. Say I'm a VF-1 Valkyrie firing the GU-11 gunpod at a Zentraedi battlepod. I hit, and roll 2d6. I get an 8. The Battlepod's resistence to medium mecha-mounted weapons is listed as "virtually none" so I'm going to use the "none" column. Hmmm... an 8 on the none column is a big badda boom. Wicked. In the old RPG, I would have done 3d6 damage to a 50 MDC battlepod...
The table above allows for instakills all the way up to "good" if you roll boxcars, but it also allows for total "PING!" armor shots at the higher levels.
So there's the bare bones of my Robotech kitbash to make mecha combat more like the show. It also reduces die rolls and math. What does the Internet think?
As most folks are aware, Carl Macek fused three Japanese television series together to make Robotech, as the Japanese shows were narratives shown once a week until the story was told and the longest of the three, Macross, was only 36 episodes. American syndication required 65 episodes - that is, a new episode every afternoon Mon-Fri for thirteen weeks. Macross was a masterpeice - think Japan's version of Star Trek. Even now, three decades later it's still wildly popular and has spawned games, sequels and feature films. This was NOT a "cartoon" made for "children." I recently had to beat my head against the wall of a very good friend who "just does not like anime." I've got some GREAT plot ideas for a Robotech game, but alas, with my current group of players I'll probably never get to run it.
OK, back to the kitbash. Macek took the three shows and rewrote the dailogue to make three previously unrelated shows a single narrative. It was messy, and sometimes not done as elegantly as it could have been. But there it was. 85 episodes of Robotech. And when I discovered this show in 1985... it was the most incredible thing I'd ever seen. All the cartoons I watched up until that point were relentlessly episodic save the big 5-parters that were usually stand-alone miniseries or introductions to a longers series - "GI JOE : A Real American Hero" or "More Than Meets the Eye" for Transformers. You could show a lot of the episodes in any order and not really mess much up - until the new wave of action figures hit and new characters popped up.
So Robotech was a kitbash of a television series, for better or worse. The first RPG I ever purchased with my own money was Palladium Books' Robotech RPG. I loved that game. I played the hell out of that game. I noticed the inconsistencies with the series even in my early teens. Don't get me wrong, I've had a lot of fun with Palladium's games. I'm not one who will sit here and tell you how truly terrible and unplayable they are - because I don't believe it. A little rusty, maybe. In need of a tweak here and there, sure. But unplayable? No.
So I watched as much of Robotech as I had avaialble. At the time I was really running the game a lot, Robotech did not (and hadn't ever) run in the Austin TV market. There were some episodes out on VHS one could rent, but initially they were one episode per tape. Later, you could get Macross at one Blockbuster 30 minutes from my house on several casettes that each had about six episodes on them. The problem there is they edited the hell out of those tapes to cut out all the superfluous character scenes and stuff. Just get to the fighting already! So those weren't that great from a fan perspective, but it did allow us to check out the mecha battles. And they did NOT play like the RPG.
The main problem was MDC. For those of you who aren't in the know, regular humans and stuff like your car, your PC, your front door- these things have Hit Points or Structural Damage Capacity. SDC. An untrained human punch does 1d4 SDC. Most humans have around 10-15 hit points without special training. A regular gun, say, a 9mm pistol, does 2d6. With me so far? OK. Mega-Damage, or MDC, is what really tough things like tanks and mecha have. 1 MDC = 100 SDC or HP. If your weapon is not rated to do MDC, however, it is explicitly prevented from doing MDC damage even if you can generate over 100 SDC on a damage roll. So, mecha etc. are effectively immune to small arms. Mostly OK. The problem then comes with the way the numbers work.
The "typical tank" in the Robotech RPG has 200 MDC in its main body. The main cannon of the tank does 2D8 MDC per shot. So... The typical tank has to shoot another typical tank an average of 22 times to destroy it? Now, 2D8 MDC is a LOT of damage. A semi truck has 600 SDC, or 6 MDC equivalent. It would be blown to smithereens by such a cannon. As it should be. Thing is... it's impossible to one-shot a tank with a tank's main gun. You can't even mobility kill one if you use the straight up rules for MDC. The maximum damage of 16 points won't destroy a single tread, it would still have 9 MDC left! Later in the book you find out a LAW does 1D6 MDC, and a 90mm recoilless does 1D10. Neither of these weapons could achieve any kind of useful effect against a "typical tank."
This just gets wonkier as the game line goes on. By the time of the Invid Invasion book, a man-sized suit of personal armor has 50 MDC. This means if you discount the impact and shock effects, which aren't part of the core rules (just part of GM common sense) a PC wearing CVR-3 armor could eat an average of 5 shots from a "typical tank" before the sixth shot wasted 'em. Strager still, the Gallant H-90 rifle does more damage with a single shot, 4d6 MDC, than the four head-mounted lasers on Roy Fokker's VF-1S Veritech (4d4 MDC.) We clearly see Fokker's Veritech take out a Zentraedi Battlepod with those lasers, too - and those pods have 50 MDC! Even with rolling a crit for double-damage and rolling max damage on the lasers, that's only 32 MDC, so what we see in the show would be impossible in the game... And wait a minute... an armored human has as much MDC as a Zentraedi Battlepod?
So we've established MDC numbers are broken somewhere. At best, MDC vehicles have too much MDC. At worst, both the armor and weapons values are borked. We went so far as to divide all MDC by 10 for non-PCs or important enemies, and 5 for all PCs and important enemies. It just emulated the show better. In a strange twist, we inadvertently invented the "mook rules" we're all so fond of nowadays from Savage Worlds and other games.
How would I deal with this now? Well, Palladium has revised the Robotech RPG. It's better in a lot of ways, but still has a frustrating MDC imbalance. The numbers just don't make sense in places. I got some inspiration one day a few years back reading the excellent Robotech Reference Guide. This amazing site has a lot of information on mecha presented in a real-world format, much like reading a Jane's briefing on something. I decided that I would use that information to create a combat system. Actually, it's not a full combat system, but rather a patch you can use with any combat system that replaces the damage resolution mechanic for the mecha.
The articles on the RRG refer to armor by how well it does against benchmark weapons. Here's an excerpt from the file on the VF-1 Valkyrie:
VIII. Armor:
The armor of the standard Valkyrie is composed of an advanced titanium-steel alloy. The armor stops all small arms fire, provides good protection against heavier infantry weapons, such as a 12.7mm machinegun round, and fair resistance to light mecha-mounted weaponry, such as the Zentraedi 22.3mm HE autocannon round.
The additional armor on the reinforced sections of the Super Valkyrie stops all small arms and heavy infantry weapons fire, provides good resistance to light mecha-mounted weaponry, such as the Zentraedi 22.3mm HE autocannon round, and poor resistance to medium mecha-mounted weaponry, such as the Valkyrie's 55mm APFSDS round.
The additional armor on the Armored Valkyrie is composed of a standard Chobam laminar developed in the late 20th century and improved with the materials science advances made during the Robotech era. This armor was mainly designed to defeat projectiles and other kinetic weapons. The armor stops all small arms, heavy infantry weapons fire, and light mecha-mounted weaponry, and provides fair to good resistance to medium mecha-mounted weaponry, such as the Valkyrie's 55mm APFSDS round.
The Valkyrie provides full protection from nuclear, biological, and chemical hazards, using an overpressure cockpit environment activated by radiation and hazardous chemical sensors, or manually when biological warfare conditions are anticipated. The internal consumables supplies can provide atmosphere for two days maximum.
So all this "good protection" "fair resistence" and "stops all small arms, heavy infantry weapons fire..." reminds me of something. Oh, yeah, the table on the back of all my Marvel Superheroes books! You know, FASERIP Marvel where your ability scores are rated not in numbers, but in adjectives. Spider-Man didn't have a 22 Agility, he had an Amazing one. So I started thinking... what about a chart like that to determine how much damage mecha might take from a weapon?
Reading through the files, I came up with the following scale:
No Resistance
Poor Resistance
Poor to Fair
Fair Resistance
Fair to Good
Good Resistance
Good to Excellent
Excellent Resistance
Stops
Now, I originally married this scale to the 10-block Shadowrun damage track and a D100 chart. For this article, I believe I am going to keep the Shadowrun-esque damage track and instead go with a 2d6 chart. The reason for this is that I like the way a bell curve concentrates results on the most likely outcome (7 in this case) so as to model what would "normally" happen in the game world.
So let's define each mecha as having ten structure blocks. If you want, you can use Shadowrun's method of -1 after a single block, -2 after three, -3 after six etc. to simulate performance degradation due to damage. The chart will give results in number of damage blocks to mark off.
|
ROLL
|
NONE
|
POOR
|
P2F
|
FAIR
|
F2G
|
GOOD
|
G2E
|
EXC
|
STOPS
|
|
2
|
5
|
5
|
3
|
2
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
|
3
|
6
|
6
|
4
|
2
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
|
4
|
7
|
6
|
5
|
2
|
2
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
|
5
|
8
|
7
|
5
|
3
|
2
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
|
6
|
DEST
|
7
|
6
|
3
|
3
|
2
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
|
7
|
DEST
|
8
|
6
|
4
|
3
|
2
|
1
|
1
|
0
|
|
8
|
DEST
|
DEST
|
7
|
5
|
4
|
3
|
2
|
1
|
0
|
|
9
|
DEST
|
DEST
|
8
|
6
|
5
|
4
|
3
|
2
|
0
|
|
10
|
DEST
|
DEST
|
DEST
|
7
|
6
|
6
|
4
|
2
|
0
|
|
11
|
DEST
|
DEST
|
DEST
|
8
|
8
|
8
|
5
|
3
|
0
|
|
12
|
DEST
|
DEST
|
DEST
|
DEST
|
DEST
|
DEST
|
6
|
3
|
1
|
So basically, I use whatever system I want and roll to resolve a hit. Say I'm a VF-1 Valkyrie firing the GU-11 gunpod at a Zentraedi battlepod. I hit, and roll 2d6. I get an 8. The Battlepod's resistence to medium mecha-mounted weapons is listed as "virtually none" so I'm going to use the "none" column. Hmmm... an 8 on the none column is a big badda boom. Wicked. In the old RPG, I would have done 3d6 damage to a 50 MDC battlepod...
The table above allows for instakills all the way up to "good" if you roll boxcars, but it also allows for total "PING!" armor shots at the higher levels.
So there's the bare bones of my Robotech kitbash to make mecha combat more like the show. It also reduces die rolls and math. What does the Internet think?
29 March 2013
Savage Worlds and Savage Pizzas...
Good morning, readers. This week finds me as many do at the crossroads of excitement and frustration. Excited because we now have an adoption date for our kiddos - see the video...
So... that part of my life? Absolutely happy about. K said "Star Wars" for the first time, and I was extremely proud. Z and I hit two Game Overs and a Half Price on our trip out to the park with Trenton last weekend, and had a great time. I'm really digging the Daddy gig more and more.
As followers of the exploits of the Royal Dragoons gaming club are no doubt aware, we've decided to leave A Time of War behind and use Savage Worlds as our RPG system of choice for our Battletech campaign. One of the things in the increasingly tardy Interstellar Operations book that our group was looking forward to when we were using AToW was faction rules. Since our previous campaign had noble houses as a feature of the campaign, we had hoped to have the advertised faction rules to play with. Such was not to be. What we ended up doing was kitbashing a system from MechWarrior 1st Edition, A Song of Ice and Fire, and Traveller Book 12 : Dynasty.
Now that we're using Savage Worlds, I've been looking at doing a Savage version of faction rules. One of the things in SW that I loved was the treatment of cyber hacking in the old Savage Worlds Sci-Fi Toolkit. It basically treated a Cyberdeck more or less like a character. Programs and defenses we treated like attributes and skills. Not only was this intuitive, it was SIMPLE. Simple is something Shadowrun and Cyberpunk could never really say about their hacking rules.
What I'm looking at now is establishing a factions ssytem for Savage Worlds Battletech that we can use for our campaign. Here's some of my ideas:
Houses will have attributes representing military strength, wealth, tech level, etc. They will have skills like Diplomacy, etc. representing the agents of that faction. I'll probably crib heavily from the Traveller : Dynasty rules for this.
Houses will have advancements and rank like characters. Rank will correspond to the tier of the faction. Non-peerage noble houses would be Novice. Seasoned would be peers on a planetary scale. Veteran would be rulers of planets. Heroic factions would hold a march, Periphery state, etc. and Legendary would be the House Lords themselves.
Edges for Houses would include things to beef up their performance socially, technologically, economically, etc.
I had an idea that a 'scale' would be attacked to each rank. F'Rex, here's some numbers I came up with off the top of my head.
RANK Military Force
Novice Single 'Mech
Seasoned Lance
Veteran Company
Heroic Battalion
Legendary Regiment
Legendary Regiment
So say you had to roll "Military" to see what kind of forces you could muster for an operation. If you were a Novice House (like a MechWarrior holding or a Knight Bachelor) with a D8 in Military and roll a success, you'd have a single 'Mech to throw at the problem. On a raise, you could muster a Lance. On two raises, you could gather a Company (perhaps of allies or kinsmen.) If you were a House Lord, and another House Lord attacked your nation, you'd roll Military. On a success, you could throw a BattleMech Regiment into the fray. On a raise, you'd have an RCT, and on two raises a Brigade.
The same thing could be done for money and other resources. Bonuses and penalties could be worked in the way they work in Savage Worlds. For instance, a Trick or Feint against the Intelligence of an enemy House might place a negative modifier on their Military roll as available troops are moved to counter a fake assault...
There's a lot of potential here, I think. Edges, Hindrances, skills... handling Houses like characters.
What say you guys?
19 March 2013
Good news, Mediochre News, and Savage Worlds...
Well, dear readers, we're back after taking a week off for Spring Break. That means two posts this week to catch up. The Battle of the Bulge continues - last week an encouraging loss of 6lbs, but it looks like 3 of those have come back this week to haunt me. I took the Z-Man to East Texas to see my grandmother and her husband, and I should have predicted a complete and total lack of anything that resembled MediFast's concept of "Lean and Green." Boudin. Fried chicken. At least when we had BBQ I could do the BBQ chicken - but no green sides. Not one. Potato Salad? Check. BBQ Beans with sausage and ground meat in them? Check. A.... salad? Nope. Green beans? Negative. I did the best I could, and avoided totally killing my diet (or so I thought) and still somehow ended up putting back 5lbs, which is down to 3 as of this morning.
I'm going to be honest - frustration and just plain fatigue with the situation has begun to set in. Every month I'm not at 217 is a month I watch my friends go to drill and learn and serve our great state in the Texas State Guard. Even with the hopefully temporary regain, I am 45lbs lighter than I was when I originally attempted to enlist - yet I am still worthless to the battalion until I lose another 25ish lbs and hit 217. In the meantime, there are a few members of the regiment who are quite a bit more overweight than I am, and they continue to serve under some unspoken grandfather clause. It's frustrating. If there's a standard, there's a standard. If not, then I would dearly prefer to be training and serving as the weight comes off rather than being permanently benched. I've even stopped going to drills because a lot of the training the unit is doing these days is of a nature that I cannot take part in until I'm sworn in for insurance reasons. It's frustrating, and borderline depressing. My son watches Thomas the Tank Engine, and I now totally understand the obsession Thomas and his friends have with being "Really useful." I know I'm a good dad, and I've been told that by folks from Arrow, CASA and CPS as well as friends and family. I know I'm a good student, I have my BA with honors to show me that. I know that I could be a "really useful" soldier, and an even more useful NCO, but every day I struggle with my weight makes me that much closer to just saying "screw it" since I watch the people around me happily eat what they want, and even a tiny deviation from my MediFast plan means no weight loss or even a small gain. I miss rice, gorramit. I miss being able to indulge in the kind of food my Mammaw serves. I miss going into a restaurant and not immediately looking at the salads and grilled chicken items. I realize I'm never going to be able to eat chicken fried steak or chinese food as regularly as I used to - but a once a week comfort meal would be nice, and I can't even allow myself that. Every ounce is that much longer my good friends wait for me to swear into the battalion with them, that much longer the officers and NCOs have to pass judgement on my lack of commitment to getting into the Guard, and that much longer I get to look at myself and see a goal that I just can't seem to reach because the Guard doesn't care if I've lost 45lbs, they will care when I hit 217. Do or do not, I suppose, there is no try.
So what's the good news? We have a tentative adoption date. As things firm up I'll post here what it is. This means we're counting it down, we have an actual goal date. Next week I have to go to a court hearing to see what's up with the case, but it's pretty certain at this time that Mary and I will be parents in the near future without the "foster-" prefix. This cheers me up some, but there are still the two hurdles of figuring out what the hell we're going to do about childcare once the state is no longer assisting us, and getting our fire marshal certification at our home. That's right, they found something else they didn't like - I have to move our friggin freezer because it uses an "extension cord." Ugh. Dammit. That's the mediochre news. At least Lt. Davis from RRFD is giving us the opportunity to correct the situation without getting charged again. He's a pretty awesome guy, and I appreciated his information and his honesty about stuff. It's nice that he took the time to explain *why* the FD is so concerned with extension cords, and how permanent use of one can screw the homeowner if there is a fire.
Now - on to the gaming part. SAVAGE WORLDS.
Readers who've tagged along for a while have noticed that we love us some Battletech, but the current RPG rules set leaves us a bit unsatisfied. It's more complex than it needs to be, and in trying to cover the entire Battletech timeline ends up containing none of the information you really need to do any one time period aside from the rapidly changing current one. We've looked at several other systems, including a homegrown one based on the older MechWarrior and MechWarrior 2nd Edition games. This past RDG meeting, we tried Savage Worlds for 'Mech combat on the heels of our previous test of Savage Worlds for characters and interpersonal combat.
It worked well. Very well. The folks at Dischord Company have done a Savage Worlds Fan conversion of Battletech to SW and it's pretty damn good. They've hit all the high points of Battletech while keeping the Fast! Furious! Fun! rules lightness of Savage Worlds. To take a look at what they've got going on, check out their latest version on the Pinnacle forums here. As of this writing, they're in Revision 12 of their rules.
Man, did they hit the high points. There are background packages for all the major (and some minor) factions currently extant, build with a zero-sum scheme so that they add to the characters without being a "race" and thereby losing the free Edge humans get. They have edges that work inside a BattleMech, like offsetting the penalty for indirect fire, or rapid movement. Their 'Mech rules use standard BTech ranges, 'Mech sheets, etc. but offer quicker combat resolution, fewer phases, and the ability to score crits on a Raise as opposed to just when armor is breached or snake-eyes is rolled on a location chart. We found that once we got the rules down it move a LOT faster than standard Battletech.
We decided to make a couple of modifications to the fine work the Dischord Company did. First, we eliminated measuring the distance a 'Mech travels during the movement phase and used a fixed value based on speed as is done in Quick Strike. This means that there's no more need for us to futz with movement dice as such, although we did keep glass beads so we'd know who had moved and fired at all. The reduction of phases to make move, fire and physical one phase is a mixed blessing. This makes the game run a LOT faster, but also makes some of the tactics of winning initiative a bit different. Players will have to learn to hold initiative if they want the advantage of moving last, but this will allow them to be shot at first unless they win the contest of Agility to interrupt an opponent's action...
We also decided that a raise when firing on a MechWarrior who is an Extra means an automatic single crit to a location rolled - the most damaging weapon in a weapon group. This will help Wild Cards stand out over Extras, and will also help keep tanks popping when compared to 'Mechs. Sadly, we forgot we wanted to try this rule and played a whole battle without it. The result was ridiculously tough tanks, as we were also using the OLD tank crit charts.
The folks present for this test-run voted unanimously to adopt Savage Worlds as our game system for our Battletech campaign, and we will be using Savage Battletech for combat. I look forward to seeing where all this goes. I can't wait for Saturday, when we'll be doing character creation for the new campaign...
Singing off, for the moment.
I'm going to be honest - frustration and just plain fatigue with the situation has begun to set in. Every month I'm not at 217 is a month I watch my friends go to drill and learn and serve our great state in the Texas State Guard. Even with the hopefully temporary regain, I am 45lbs lighter than I was when I originally attempted to enlist - yet I am still worthless to the battalion until I lose another 25ish lbs and hit 217. In the meantime, there are a few members of the regiment who are quite a bit more overweight than I am, and they continue to serve under some unspoken grandfather clause. It's frustrating. If there's a standard, there's a standard. If not, then I would dearly prefer to be training and serving as the weight comes off rather than being permanently benched. I've even stopped going to drills because a lot of the training the unit is doing these days is of a nature that I cannot take part in until I'm sworn in for insurance reasons. It's frustrating, and borderline depressing. My son watches Thomas the Tank Engine, and I now totally understand the obsession Thomas and his friends have with being "Really useful." I know I'm a good dad, and I've been told that by folks from Arrow, CASA and CPS as well as friends and family. I know I'm a good student, I have my BA with honors to show me that. I know that I could be a "really useful" soldier, and an even more useful NCO, but every day I struggle with my weight makes me that much closer to just saying "screw it" since I watch the people around me happily eat what they want, and even a tiny deviation from my MediFast plan means no weight loss or even a small gain. I miss rice, gorramit. I miss being able to indulge in the kind of food my Mammaw serves. I miss going into a restaurant and not immediately looking at the salads and grilled chicken items. I realize I'm never going to be able to eat chicken fried steak or chinese food as regularly as I used to - but a once a week comfort meal would be nice, and I can't even allow myself that. Every ounce is that much longer my good friends wait for me to swear into the battalion with them, that much longer the officers and NCOs have to pass judgement on my lack of commitment to getting into the Guard, and that much longer I get to look at myself and see a goal that I just can't seem to reach because the Guard doesn't care if I've lost 45lbs, they will care when I hit 217. Do or do not, I suppose, there is no try.
So what's the good news? We have a tentative adoption date. As things firm up I'll post here what it is. This means we're counting it down, we have an actual goal date. Next week I have to go to a court hearing to see what's up with the case, but it's pretty certain at this time that Mary and I will be parents in the near future without the "foster-" prefix. This cheers me up some, but there are still the two hurdles of figuring out what the hell we're going to do about childcare once the state is no longer assisting us, and getting our fire marshal certification at our home. That's right, they found something else they didn't like - I have to move our friggin freezer because it uses an "extension cord." Ugh. Dammit. That's the mediochre news. At least Lt. Davis from RRFD is giving us the opportunity to correct the situation without getting charged again. He's a pretty awesome guy, and I appreciated his information and his honesty about stuff. It's nice that he took the time to explain *why* the FD is so concerned with extension cords, and how permanent use of one can screw the homeowner if there is a fire.
Now - on to the gaming part. SAVAGE WORLDS.
Readers who've tagged along for a while have noticed that we love us some Battletech, but the current RPG rules set leaves us a bit unsatisfied. It's more complex than it needs to be, and in trying to cover the entire Battletech timeline ends up containing none of the information you really need to do any one time period aside from the rapidly changing current one. We've looked at several other systems, including a homegrown one based on the older MechWarrior and MechWarrior 2nd Edition games. This past RDG meeting, we tried Savage Worlds for 'Mech combat on the heels of our previous test of Savage Worlds for characters and interpersonal combat.
It worked well. Very well. The folks at Dischord Company have done a Savage Worlds Fan conversion of Battletech to SW and it's pretty damn good. They've hit all the high points of Battletech while keeping the Fast! Furious! Fun! rules lightness of Savage Worlds. To take a look at what they've got going on, check out their latest version on the Pinnacle forums here. As of this writing, they're in Revision 12 of their rules.
Man, did they hit the high points. There are background packages for all the major (and some minor) factions currently extant, build with a zero-sum scheme so that they add to the characters without being a "race" and thereby losing the free Edge humans get. They have edges that work inside a BattleMech, like offsetting the penalty for indirect fire, or rapid movement. Their 'Mech rules use standard BTech ranges, 'Mech sheets, etc. but offer quicker combat resolution, fewer phases, and the ability to score crits on a Raise as opposed to just when armor is breached or snake-eyes is rolled on a location chart. We found that once we got the rules down it move a LOT faster than standard Battletech.
We decided to make a couple of modifications to the fine work the Dischord Company did. First, we eliminated measuring the distance a 'Mech travels during the movement phase and used a fixed value based on speed as is done in Quick Strike. This means that there's no more need for us to futz with movement dice as such, although we did keep glass beads so we'd know who had moved and fired at all. The reduction of phases to make move, fire and physical one phase is a mixed blessing. This makes the game run a LOT faster, but also makes some of the tactics of winning initiative a bit different. Players will have to learn to hold initiative if they want the advantage of moving last, but this will allow them to be shot at first unless they win the contest of Agility to interrupt an opponent's action...
We also decided that a raise when firing on a MechWarrior who is an Extra means an automatic single crit to a location rolled - the most damaging weapon in a weapon group. This will help Wild Cards stand out over Extras, and will also help keep tanks popping when compared to 'Mechs. Sadly, we forgot we wanted to try this rule and played a whole battle without it. The result was ridiculously tough tanks, as we were also using the OLD tank crit charts.
The folks present for this test-run voted unanimously to adopt Savage Worlds as our game system for our Battletech campaign, and we will be using Savage Battletech for combat. I look forward to seeing where all this goes. I can't wait for Saturday, when we'll be doing character creation for the new campaign...
Singing off, for the moment.
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