Adaptaing Galactic Heroes - Starfighters: A Fistful of Mecha

[Maniac]

I know the Baron is working on a suite of rules for mecha, but I thought about adapting Starfighters for Battletech and wanted to get some 3rd party thoughts on proposed changes.  Recently playing MW5 on my Xbox has me interested in dusting off my old Battletech minis and playing with my kids.

1. Movement:
     Light Mecha - Move as normal, but get the Fast upgrade free (can remove the Fast upgrade to gain an extra slot)
     Medium Mecha - Move as normal
     Heavy/Assault - Have the Slow Penalty, but gain the Rugged System (debate on having this work until down to 1 or 2 health?)

2. Arc of Fire:
      At the end of a move, a mech can torso twist either left or right to shift it's arc of fire by 45 degrees.  Use a counter to show arc of fire (I will have hex bases, so movement won't need to be marked)

3.  Weapons:
     Laser - Short: 8  Long: 16 - 1D10 - 1 Slot (Small lasers, short range weapons)
     Med. Laser - Short: 10 Long: 20 - 2D10 - 2 Slot (medium lasers, medium cannons)
     Heavy Laser - Short: 12 Long: 24 - 3D10 - 3 Slots - Overheats (i.e. must cool down after every shot)
     Pulse Laser - Short: 10 Long: 20 - 2D10 - 2 Slots - May re-roll a failed shot, Overheats if you re-roll (high cycle rate weapons that you can hold the trigger down on, but can jam or overheat)
     PPC - Short: 12 Long: 24 - 2D10 - 2 Slots - +1 Shock on a hit on top of other effects, Overheats (something to mimic the electrical disruption of man made lightning hitting you)
     Rifle - Short: 12  Long: 36 - 2D10+1 - 2 Slots, Limited Ammo (Gauss Rifle, Auto Cannons, Bazooka's from Heavy Gear)
     SRM - Short: 8  Long: 16 - 2D10 - 5" Burst Template, Limited Ammo (Short Range missiles, perhaps flamers, etc)
     LRM - Short: 12  Long: 36 - 2D10 - Lock on (if you spend the first action to aim, you may re-roll a failed to hit roll), Limited Ammo (long range missles with minimal targeting)
     Guided Missile - Short: 12  Long 36 - 2D10 - 5" Burst Template, normal missile rules, overheats, limited ammo (Arrow IV type weapon, retains the fire and mark it as it moves from the normal missiles in Starfighters)

3.  Systems:
     Cooling System/Ammo Feeder - 2 Slots - Ignore 1 Overheated Weapon fired each turn (Can be taken multiple times)
     Extra Ammo - Double the ammo for a Limited Ammo Weapon, must specify weapon
     Command Computer - Draw an extra card at the start of the round, then discard one card

4.  Cooling/Shutdown - Optional Action taken at the start of the models turn - clear all Overheats on a unit.  Unit may not move and may not defend in a 'Dogfight'.

5. Alpha Strike - May fire all weapons on the mech, immediately shut down following and are shut down during the following round.

For Limited Ammo weapons, I've thought of starting with some value of shots based on the weapon (SRM - 4, LRM - 2, Rifle - 3, Guided Missile - 1, or something like that).  Would that get too tedious?

Then some minor naming tweaks such as ECM for Countermeasures, PDC for Defense Drones (Point Defense Cannon), CCW for Dogfighter, etc.

Any constructive feedback I can consider?

[BaronVonJ]

Are you wanting to hear from me? 

[Maniac]

Going to get an earful am I?    Yes, but also other folks who have played it.  I love your stuff for the small model counts and flexibility in adapting to various periods.

I've adapted plenty of scenarios or written my own, but I haven't tried much monkeying with rules before.  So I'm not sure if I've intrinsically broken things or if these seem reasonable.  It may just be that I have to try them and see how good/bad they work out.

[BaronVonJ]

I'll wait and see if anyone else responds then I'll give my two cents.

[Maniac]

I will say, I don't intend for a full load out, but something like this for a Battlemaster:

Mech:  Battlemaster
Weight/Class: Heavy
Shoot: D12
Close Assault (Dogfight): D12
Pilot Traits:  Leader, Ace
Systems:  Command Computer, Advanced Targeting, ECM, Targeting Computer (Co-pilot Pilot skill)
Shock:  TBD
Damage: 7
Rockets/Missiles: 4
Weapons:  PPC, Med. Laser, SRM

or

Mech:  Commando
Weight/Class: Light
Shoot: D10
Close Assault: D10
Pilot Traits:  Agile, Slippery
Systems:  Nimble, Ammo Feeder
Shock: TBD
Damage:  3
Rockets/Missiles: 4
Weapons:  SRM

[Maniac]

Well, I'm determined to make a go of it and bought several buildings from the Phalanx Consortium on Etsy (great stuff for anyone playing in this scale, really well done) and have started printing up an op-for for my Black Sheep mercs to fight.

I've chosen the Capellans for the op-for, and have a Cougar and Sun Spider done.  The Sun Spider had some printing errors and I had to rebuild it somewhat.  I plan on a lance of 2 light/2 medium and then 2 heavy/2 assault to go up against a like force from my mercs.

The Command Lance on the right are my older stuff, with the Shadow Hawk and Commando being minis I did in the spring of last year.  The two buildings on the left are Phalanx buildings from their 6 building sky-scraper set, then one 3D print that failed part way and had to be modified, then a Phalanx Neo Tyranis building painting in Capellan Combine colors as the regional governmental building.  I did the windows on 3 of the 4 using some great stuff from Michaels.



Two more buildings on the way (and I have a Comstar center in progress too).  I'll need to flesh out more residential/shop type buildings that only come about half way up a mech to count as cover during game play, and probably build a park as well with some trees.



The Phalanx kits are really nice, and go together very well.  I've got these guys still to go.





To round out the Mercs, I think I'll run up an Uziel and Raven.  Then for the Capellans an Assassin, Owens, maybe an Awesome and two other undecided heavies/assaults.

[Maniac]

Modifying the systems list to add some more unique items, and slot clarification:

3.  Systems:
     Cooling System/Ammo Feeder - 2 Slots - Ignore 1 Overheated Weapon fired each turn (Can be taken multiple times)
     Extra Ammo - 1 Slot - Double the ammo for a Limited Ammo Weapon, must specify weapon
     Command Computer - 2 Slots -Draw an extra card at the start of the round, then discard one card (max of one per lance)
     Designator - 1 Slots - 18/36 - On a successful hit, do not roll for damage.  Instead Friendly models  can ignore line of fire with LRM, SRM, and Guided missiles when targeting the unit hit by this attack
     Active Probe - 1 Slots - Light Mech Only.  When an enemy model crosses the arc of fire of a friendly model within 12" and within that model's firing range (any weapon), if it has not already activated it may immediately activate and fire a single weapon at the opposing figure before that figure's actions resolve.  Discard a card as normal, this counts as the firing model's activation for the turn.

The Designator will hopefully add to some forward scouting activity, beyond trying to slug it out.

The Active Probe acts sort of like an Overwatch ability.  It halts the enemy model as soon as it crosses the line of fire of the friendly model, it take's it's shot, and then if the target survives it continues it's actions.  Again, intended to encourage active scouting vs slugging it out.  I will have to try this one out, 12" may be too much or too little.

[beefcake]

I've not played a fistful of lead before but I like how you are taking into consideration the overheating by forcing the weapon to cool down for a turn.

[Maniac]

First Lance of St. Ives Compact Capellan mechs plus the city to be:



I'll be adding some parks to give open space with a little bit of partial cover in the form of some trees on them.  The buildings are a mix of various 3d prints (including the Lazy Forger's stuff), some MDF, and some scratch builds.  I did buy some play tape road stuff, and while a little big, it may work well enough. 

Some of the Lazy Forger stuff printed on a Creality Ender at 0.2mm layer height (which prints super slow).  They are a good mix of heights, from full mech height to half or less, letting them act as blocking or partial cover.



Then some other 3D prints.  The Lyran Lube I printed a second time and will be carving it down to make a fire station.

[BaronVonJ]

And here I blew my Lazy Forger stuff 250% to make it 15mm scale.

[sespe]

I've been printing some generic files I found.  I gotta try this game...

[Maniac]

Played my first game with this, and my son smoked me.  He downed all four of my mechs with 10s to wound (hit the cockpit and caused an ejection), while I only managed to take down 2 (one due to finally coring his mech, i.e. all wounds, and one I overheated with my Warhammer's PPCs).  Lousy Capellans!  I will have my revenge.

He had the following Mechs:  Annihilator, Sun Cobra, Archer, Black Knight (all Heavy/Assault)
I had the following Mechs:  Battlemaster, Warhammer, Crusader, Fafnir (all Heavy/Assault)

Everything had at least 1 energy weapon, though several had multiple ammo based systems.  I did forget the extra card for the Annihilator and Battlemaster until late in the game, so we just left it off.

Unfortunately I don't have pics as my phone died before I could get them off (as in dead dead, lousy built for obsolescence junk...almost two years to the day and the power control module burned out).

Some things I did learn through and will need to consider:

9/10 really changes things, I wonder about changing it up to a critical hit as in double or triple damage.  In other FFoL games this doesn't seem to matter so much or seem as off (only 3 health per model), but here spending points on extra health was a waste in all but one of the six circumstances.  That will require some thought.

PPC with a cooling system was stupidly good.  I'll have to consider that some more as well.  It could be balanced in a couple ways though as below:

1. Cooling/Shutting down was only marginally effective when foes can keep adding heat/shock once you've cleared.  Making it so you clear all heat and cannot take any shock until a restart next turn may make this a more desirable item to use

2. Heat/Shock wracked up a LOT of negatives to hit with 1 for 1 -1 to shooting.  I might move to -1 for every 2 or -1 if below half and -2 if over half.  The PPC Annihilator boat was dreadful for overheating stuff, as was the dual PPC warhammer.  They made return fire all but impossible, which wasn't the intended effect.  More difficult, but not needing 11s to hit....

I removed the requisite move each turn, and the drift, and that seemed to work well for the mechs.

Lastly, movement and torso twisting went brilliant, it made it 'feel' like mechwarrior, and you could navigate through the buildings to block fire, while setting up nice shots of your own.

We'll play again, with all light/medium mechs, and try a couple of tweaks and see where that goes.  Hopefully I'll be able to get some photos up this time.

[BaronVonJ]

we use 9s and 10s as 2 hits, not Out of Action. I also do heat build up for this scale different. Really only comes into play if you push it and go over you heat sink capabilities.

[Maniac]

I'm gearing up to run the second scenario with my kids.  I've finished up a lot of the buildings I've had laying around, and so it's time to put it on the table again (I've still got some radio towers, the air traffic control tower and landing pad, and a couple other bits and bobs.  Not to mention trying to make a park).  The river will be fordable, but require a piloting roll to pass (similar to GH task rolls).  Falling the piloting roll will cause the mech to immediately fall/stumble and will count as shutdown until the next round.  Once I get the quick reference guide done, I'll post that up somewhere along with some sample mechs for critique.

They'll each play one of the two sides, and I will rules moderate.  That should help me determine if my tweaks are working in the way I would like or not.  Additionally the lighter mechs should shake things up a little.



I've included some wip infantry and a 'proto' mech as well as one of the new Catalyst mechs for scale reference.  I think eventually I'd like to add infantry and vtols, but that is a distant dream.  Have to get the basics working first.

[Golgotha]

Looking forward to the Fistful of Lead Mecha rules. Liking what I see here. Need to give this a go...