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>>1032985
"The Command center's down that should deactivate the turrets and hobble their mech forces. Looks like they're not giving up yet."

>standby for aftermath

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>>1033071
"We have to end this soon! Take out the last command tank or the power generator and it'll be over!"

>Declare actions, next turn is the last turn. I'll probably process it sometime tomorrow evening.

Rolled 13, 18 = 31 (2d20)

>>1033100
Destroy a command tank? Hell, I'd do that on principle...and I will! Come on Excess, one last push! For Turkee!

>Aim (+4 hit, +2 crit)
>Move 33333
>Alpha strike D1

Wow, what a mission. We brought 20 elite mechs overall and lost 13 (I think) thus far. One of them was pecked to death by turkeys. No amount of money is going to make up for the ignominy of this shameful display on our part.

Gunner
Crocodile
HP: 20/20
Agi: 5
EDef:8(12) (auto resist, counter hack)
Scan:14
Move:5
Armour: Ablative
Torso: ECCM Pod, Guidance disruptor, Sensor pod
RA: Laser rifle
LA: Laser rifle
Legs: Thruster Array
Skills: Gunnery Training, Marksman, Alpha strike

>>1033071
Ok, command, asking for another breakdown of events, for future understanding if nothing else.
>[8]Manitou hacks S1, shutting down it's high tech gear.
>[8]Manitou then [stealths], negating the free scans that may have caused [Revealed]
>With S1 hacked, [8]Manitou' disruption field should shut down any [Scanner] equipment nearby.
I can see a couple ways to bypass this chain of events to allow a scan, but the tac-display isn't clear on what actually happened.

>>1033497
Could have been the last command tank? It's (just) close enough to scan.

>>1033497
Hawk's demo charge dealt some splash damage to you at the end of the phase, breaking your stealth.

Also the free scans enemies get for being close proximity are an abstraction of them hearing your mech, seeing a shimmer in the air etc... they don't require special equipment.

Rolled 9 (1d20)

>>1032985
>Special action resist
>Move 2,2,2,2
>fire xbow at tank to South(bonuses from ambush)

Errant
Stealth armor(16stealth)
Skills:Commando, conceal, ambush
Arms:x-bow, canister gun
Torso:ECCM, Smoke launcher,surge protectors
HP:14
Evade:6
Edef:8
Scan:10
MV:6
Stealth:16
HATE:9001

>>1033695
(an X-bow has range 5, so that movement would leave you out of range of your target)

>>1033593
Aha, the damage. I now see my point of confusion, thank you.
>>1033588
It was a possibility, but he semed busy with other things. Also, I would expect to see [Scanning] or flavor text on him. My expectations might be wrong, which is part of why I asked about it.

>>1033071
I was going to ask about this during Q&A/Feedback but since I'm out of the fight:
Was I just lucky the Turkees didn't react to my entering the pen the first time?

>>1033754
I will end 2 tiles away from the only tank to my south

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>>1033905
If I'm reading your post right you're currently going 4 hexes in direction 2, wouldn't that put you directly behind Ajax's Batman?

Rolled 15 (1d20)

>>1033100
"Target locked on the generator red leader, beginning my attack run now!"

>Special: Aim (+2 to hit)
>Move 23232333
>Flying Charge 9 south at Generator (Hit 16, Dmg 21, Crit 3, Pen 6)
>Face 1, pop smoke, ready to get the hell out of this turkey-shoot

---
== Thunderbolt ==
[Cirrus] - HP 10
DEF 8+4=12 - ECM 10
SEN 8 - Move 5+3+1=9
---
Armour - Adaptive Camo {Stealth 8, -2 to attacks when in cover}
Right Arm - Explosive Spike {Hit 12, Dmg 8, Crit 3, Pen 4}
Left Arm - Smoke Pod {1/2}
Torso - CMS, ECCM pod {Auto ECM defence, auto counterhack, +4 to resist}
Legs - CMS {+3 move, +4 Def, +1 dmg per hex on charge}
---
Skills: Commando, Artful Dodger, Ambush {When attacking from stealth: +2 to hit, +2 pen, +25% dmg}

>>1034976
Roll a 15 out of 16? Good thing I chose to aim rather than dodge! Now lets see if I die to random overwatch fire before I make contact...

>>1034979
I wonder if a hit bonus for stationary targets is in order? When hitting was based on defence it made sense because stationary targets had low defence and were thus easy to hit, but now that accuracy is weapon based and target defence/evasion is only relevant if they choose to dodge we've seen quite a few people missing stationary objects with melee attacks.

>>1033839
You didn't end your turn inside the pen so they didn't get the chance.

>>1034999
I've got to say, I don't like the weapon-hit-thresholds mechanic. I much prefer different targets having different defence, and if a weapon is more accurate giving it a hit-bonus.

I understand this way is easier for cognis (each player can see whether they hit or not without the GM having to check each roll personally) but that could be solved by simply posting the enemy Def values in the thread. It doesn't give away too much, and would simplify the system without losing depth.

>>1035014
I'm alright with the hit threshold mechanic, it's easier on Cognis and it's not all that disorienting from how it used to work.

What does concern me defence mechanics wise is the hidden saving throw for mook units. Even if you knew what their odds were, there's never any guarantee of success.

Before I could give a tank the full beans with twin laser rifles and know immediately if I'd done enough damage to kill it, and even if you didn't kill it you knew it was closer to death provided you dealt any damage at all. But with the saving throw you will never know whether a unit has been downed by a player or whether it's still a threat and you need to shoot it some more that turn. You could deal overwhelming damage to a mook but still not know whether you've killed them. They're actually far more unpredictable than mechs.

>>1035014
>Simply posting the enemy Def values in the thread.

Do you realise what a massive pain in the ass that is for me? Es-specially when I build my own mecha and that have some special equipment that alters Def? It's hard enough keeping track of player stats and that's when you actually post them for me. Nevermind having to check if you get cover bonuses or run bonuses etc, and then posting enemy builds in threads.

The main rationale of the new attack system is to reduce stat comparisons. Every time I resolved an attack under the old system I had to look back and forth between stat cards, the post itself and my illustrator window. The new system eliminates at least one.

>>1035039
>Mook saving throws.

I'm not keeping track of multiple HP pools for what are essentially disposable units, deal with it.

>You could deal overwhelming damage to a mook but still not know whether you've killed them.

No past a certain threshold you will one shot them. Albeit this was for a single attack. I guess I could make the damage penalty cumulative.

>>1035094
>No past a certain threshold you will one shot them
Ah, then it's not as bad as I thought. It mostly concerned me because many mook units are anything but; tanks can be hugely threatening, as we've seen this mission. It just seemed silly that you could damage them with an siege cannon or something and not kill them, but if there's a one hit KO threshold in place then that's okay. Thanks for clarifying.

>>1035121
The tanks are also the toughest mook unit before you get into mecha and super-heavies. All the other mooks go down a lot easier.

>>1035136
I'm sure it doesn't hurt that tanks have the frontal armour going for them also.

On a more idle Q&A note it caught my notice while I was looking over the equipment that the mech pistol has been reworked to have the same stats as the old GGA heavy mech pistol (2x2 damage hits rather than 3x1). I'm a bit curious about this one, since it would basically make a pair of them objectively worse than an auto rifle, whereas the high hit count low damage hits seem like they could at least be good for infantry (it's the only reason I can think of for why people still liked using them aside from the silliness that ended up being created by special ammo).

>>1035179
It has to do with GGA company weapons being scrapped and folded into the universal weapons line as well as the new linked rules.

One the game starts to open up the heavy mech pistol just becomes redundant and under the new linked rules a linked mech pistol becomes really anemic.

I might have to rethink how the weapon works.

>>1035232
It's mostly a quirk of the new linked weapon rules that gives diminishing returns on multiple shot weapons. Single shot guns (like the boomstick or sabot cannon) getting one extra shot is functionally identical to the old rules of just letting them both fire. Similarly, linkable beam weapons (ie. the Apex laser) are also more ore less the same since one extra hit would double the max damage of the single gun, making it as powerful as two separate ones would have been under old rules. But because rapid fire weapons rely on volume of fire to deal damage and linked attacks only provide a small increase in that department it end up not really benefiting them.

>>1034965
Ohshit,Three phase images rather than two.
Whatever, don't matter now.

>>1035094
The damage should be cumulative in a decent number of cases in my opinion.
Logically a tank doesn't take a direct hit and then be just as good to shrug off more hits the next time they start getting shot at.
a tank that manages to shrug off a direct hit from something like a marksman rifle will have a huge dent in it, and compromised armor.
We face battle damage, why shouldn't they?
This also goes to mitigate the attrition game that comes when high-end mooks shrug off shots with a lucky save and just keep thrashing us with firepower AND weight of numbers, if they get lucky enough they can effectively have infinite health until someone manages to jam a powerfist into them for an instagib(though some of these armors may even mitigate the instagib effect). Of course, GM discretion may play an even bigger role in deciding who lives or dies, but for the player the GM influence is intangible.


Suggestion:more powerful weapons should have a cumulative effect.
This gives incentive to bring the moderate powered weapons.
Where the light guns can force saves and the big guns can outright negate them, a medium weapon would be able to have its own utility in the dynamic.

>>1035094
>>1035769
What if the instakill threshold counted all damage taken in a phase rather than per shot? This would allow a unit firing multiple standard weapons at once to achieve it. It oughtn't to be more work either, you should be able to just eyeball how much damage it's taken and go "yeah, it's dead".

I mean, even in the old game we never really wore tanks to death over time, we killed them in one or two shots in a single turn anyway.

Right let's finish off this mission.

Processing...

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>>1036119
"The command tank and Mobile Generator are down!"

>Standby for aftermath

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>>1036289
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB4kL7rNiJw&index=3&list=PLLUWDBbrQp9nNFZbipIO84KFlL8HYuMaC

PETM Units: "Enough! We've lost enough men, your employer can have his stupid turkey hunt."

Operator:"Saint preserve us; I haven't seen an operation this sloppy since the Camel Corps tried to attack an Anuncian land carrier. And that... that was nothing compared to this. 20 mecha with 60% casualties to take out a bunch of animal rights activists!? All of us will be lucky if we ever get another job offer after this debacle."

>>1036357
Alright so now that that test is over I want to hear what you guys think of the new system. Generally things are playing out the way I want them to be some tweaks are still necessary.

One major aspect I wanted to ask you guys about is whether you want to have to roll for hacking instead of just making it automatic. Someone suggest to me that I make a distinction between jamming actions (removing locks and debuffing accuracy) and hacking actions (debuffing movement, disabling high tech gear).

I'm having second thoughts about the new linked weapons system. I put it in to allow people to link more weapons without throwing off the power curve but in the end I think it just causes more balance issues; overpowering weapons that were not meant to be linked and under powering weapons that were.

I'm also thinking of removing the slow reload attribute. It was intended to balance larger powerful weapons but right now it feels like a needless handicap considering you can get better damage output from multiple smaller weapons and everyone just takes the enhanced auto-loader once Apex becomes available.

>>1036627
> whether you want to have to roll for hacking instead of just making it automatic
My inclination is to say roll, since getting it for free is a very powerful boon not afforded to regular attacks and can completely shut down anyone using sensitive equipment (i.e. anyone using most high tier gear, as well as anyone with ECM, with the added effect of that making it harder to resist subsequent hacks), but doing so does interfere with the new special action system, so I dunno, some more qualified people will have to weigh in on that.

>the new linked weapons system
I agree that rapid fire weapons are underpowered by it, but I'm not so sure that anything is overpowered. Like, I mentioned earlier that you could use More Dakka to stack three Apex lasers for 32 damage max? Thing is, under both this system and the old one you could have two pairs of them do the same amount, it's not actually that much better (one hardpoint difference).

(Also, don't take that as a balance criticism about the laser, it has its own issues, like low range).

>I'm also thinking of removing the slow reload attribute
No strong feelings about this. On the one hand yes, it can be a hassle in pre-Apex play, but all it really affects is ranged platforms that don't need to move much anyway. I suppose it's a question of whether they'll begin significantly outdamaging other mechs without it, though I guess that hasn't really happened to players using the loader. And on the Heavy Laser I felt that having to take the autoloader was a fair exchange for getting that weapon. Really, I'm slightly apprehensive that a more debilitating attribute might replace it. I like the Heavy Laser.

Although, on the note of the last couple items I think we'll need to see the revised Apex and LHI sheets before we can weigh in on how changes might affect their stuff.

As for my own questions, the obvious one is what changes are you intending on making in light of the test? (leaving out things that you're still considering like the items above).

Another one is: if you're returning to the Camel Corps, have you considered a one time offer of a free respec to returning players? Since a lot of abilities people had now work very differently or those abilities (and in the case of drone controllers their entire subclass) have been swapped out entirely for new ones.

>>1036627
As for observations of equipment and skills:

A little worried the canister gun might be too potent now.

Given the new cost I'm not sure I see anyone taking Overclocked Actuators, I'm just not sure 2 damage is worth your legs.

Redline. Powerful, but it effectively guarantees crippling yourself for free actions other classes get without cost.

Since I don't want to just criticise what stands out, I'd like to acknowledge things that I do like.

I like how the Alligator has something going for it now. The platform is still poor, but the auto carbine is no longer as lacklustre as it was, and I can actually see it being fielded now. I might have even used one in pure Gavial play.

I like the rebalances to armour. Adding just a little to ablative goes a long way. I don't know whether Composite will get the same buff or if it'll be an HP vs DR thing, but either is good; the former makes HP armour more viable in general, the latter creates an actual choice between them. Making reactive just a bit less potent via piercing damage was good, and the hedgehog system is now something you might actually take.

I like that the mostly extraneous Gavial exclusive list has been merged with the universal one (since a P-spike was barely better than a bash and heavy pistols aren't really any better than regular ones). Nobody used the recoiless rifle, but I see that as the sort of thing that only really comes into its own in a tier 1 game.

I like the tweak to the Nimbus that makes it more of a ranged support type in lieu of having to charge into battle (and the related nerf of the jammer).

Juggernaut mods are more viable now that you can melee structures with them (on a related note, I like that the demolisher attribute no longer confers that terrifying instagib effect on mechs).

I like optimised servos and how they create a balance between them, jump jets and thrusters (have either, or both but with the risk of losing them to ECM/EMP).

The laser designator is a cool addition that adds a new dimension to electronic warfare in that it guarantees a lock like the active scanner with no drawback, BUT uses an attack instead of a lock action and thus doesn't benefit from Target Acquisition.

Skillwise, the new Assault class is great. It now clearly benefits people like Tragedy (who want to get close, but not too close), and has more broadly useful skills. In particular, Tactical Advance is (at long last!) actually really desirable now. I might switch to assault, depending on how things play out.

Gunner wise, the changes to the marksman subclass both fit the new system and are more broadly useful, More Dakka is an interesting option that opens up whole new possibilities and Alpha strike is differentiated from Berserker/Combo attack by getting potentially more firepower in exchange for a single target focus.

So yeah, if we're quiet about any of the new stuff it's probably because we actually like it, so don't think it goes unappreciated.

>>1036627
>Hack Roll
Yes. Absolutely yes. Mechs even already have the stat to use for Accuracy. You could even go as far as making the various ECM-tagged gear provide differing bonuses to resist or hack actions (Like, the ECM pod provides a bonus to resist, the eccm to hack, and the advanced ecm provides it to both).
As to making jamming and hacking different, I don't think it's needed, but I also have no objections.
>Slow Reload
It does seem to be strangely unbalanced now, especially considering the changes made to the Gunner tree. Perhaps change it to a penalty when moving and firing, or firing without taking an Aim action, or something along those lines?
>Other Feedback
I miss the drones.
(I know, I know, proccessing nightmares and test-run and all.)
Do you have updates for company benefits?
Have you decided against having a full-Reaper option?
Did you have fun? I know I did.

>>1036627
Will there be combined arms(as in we'll have our own IF tanks and footsloggers) in the full game?

Will drones appear at all?

Will a player driven command structure be implemented?

How much of an impact will the psychopaths of the Caramel Camel Corps play into our own activities?


What are some notes or changes that need to be implemented you learned about here?

What things should we look into to make ourselves better pilots in this new iteration? Are there any old ways of thinking we need to leave behind?

>>1036627
My initial, emotional kneejerk reaction to the mooks is pretty "REEEEE" when you want to play them min/max it means a tank will likely have three rolls to see if it dies, two of those after you legitimately hit the damn thing. Meanwhile when they hit us we feel it. There is no ignoring a hit. So worse case it turns into an attritional grind where tanks just laugh at our shots and blow us to hell, and that's before you take into account any Mecha allies.(I can't pull away from this emotionally, it irks me, take with a grain of salt)

I don't like the flat stat to aim, It's a pretty far leap from realism to be just as likely to hit a tiny infantryman as it is a mech, or a stationary object, I see that it's for the purpose of making things easier, but it still comes across as unfair in some cases(miss a fucking stationary target in melee REEEEE)

Autohack when you don't resist it forces you to buy an ecm if you want to use any action other that resist. In this skirmish not resisting without an ECM basically gave you +2 to aim in exchange for a bunch of debuffs not least of all an action to recover from the autohack. It seems like a poor exchange, and that's before you consider you could just end up missing, having your shot evaded, or just outright ignored after you've made the exchange.


See:>>1035769

Glorious victory.

Well.

Uh.

Sort of, anyway.

>>1036627
Slow Reload is a fine balancing artefact. I would keep it for some weapon systems where it makes sense. On weapons like Mortars and Howitzers and Rail Guns it makes sense. Since the Advanced Loader is a thing, something already exists to mitigate the reload attribute. But getting rid of it will also not change things dramatically, so do as you see fit.

LINKED WEAPONS
There's /one/ issue with the new linked weapon attribute. It condenses multiple rolls down into a single roll, which radically shifts the probability of scoring a hit. Rolling 1d20 vs 16, where each margin is 1 hit is still a flat 20% miss chance. In the old system where multiple dice were rolled, individual hits were the same odds of missing but in totality you had good odds of scoring one or two hits (3d20 vs 14 - 1% chance of a total miss). I would like to see a return to that. When you have a set hit threshold, rolling multiple dice is also not a problem since eyeballing quickly how many hit the threshold is easier.

It makes burst weapons more reliable, without making them overpowered.

In this new margin-linked system, there's a bit of a problem with the burst weapons in that you MISS, HIT or KILL - rolling a 3 on a 4 shot weapon is 4 * damage. But with flat probability curves of d20, you have even odds of rolling 4 or rolling 15. It works, and it's easy and there's no problem with it at all, it just makes them a little bit good.

HACKING / JAMMING
Love it.

Actually having to worry about hacking defense is good. There were many, many missions of old mecha where Hacking was just kinda /there/ without really offering a given edge or competitive advantage. You could specialize in hacking, and then, hey, you could /maybe/ provide a -2 debuff to someone, sometimes, but not against the vast majority of units. Speaking as a player who baically ran with an ECM module since mission one, I feel pretty qualified to say that.

If someone hacked you and shut off your [Sensitive] you rebooted them with an action. [Control Drones] were deadly, but there are no drones any more in most cases so that fixes itself.

Now, hacking is -4 to hit (YES) and you have to actively defend against it, which by oppertunity cost makes it appply a defense debuff to those who are engaged in gun combat (no dodge if resist)

I like it a lot. I feels swifter, it feel meaningful, but it's overowering. It's simply on the same level as dual linking howitzers with Marksman skills or buying railguns or getting a bunch of longbow missiles. This might take a little bit of adjusting to, but it's also absolutely meaningful that an Elite Level Pilot with VIral Upload and 1337 Haxor and an Advanced ECCM module is actually a dangerous threat.

Because they should be.

And command tanks that can hack you? Also dangerous. Fantastic.

>>1036891
Not having to roll for hacking makes ECM gear pretty much mandatory if you want to take any other special actions than Resist.

Moar Dakka-Scythe Fire Control build is fun, but pretty gimped by the fact that you miss completely on the benefits of the first Gunner level, since you don't have the luxury to Aim most of the time. Also by the fact that Auto-Rifles are next to useless against tanks.

Tanks are too strong to be mooks. Really. With basically having a save from death they're more dangerous than enemy mechs now, or at least it seems so to me.

Tactical shield seems unexpectedly weak for all the praise I've seen heaped on it in MM1.

>>1037995
** it's swifter and meaningful but *not* overpowering. Pretty important typo there.

---

If you have an electronics warfare specialist, they need to have teeth for it to matter. Out of a good chunk of pilots, I only distinctly recall one last go around who specialized in hacking and even they tended to go on to favor missiles.

Even in this test crucible, with odds being what they are, hacking didn't win the day but did provide marked benefit.

So I think the new system works, and I think it provides an interesting game element.

--
GENERALS

The Cirrus is a bit of a death trap. It needs to [Dodge] to benefit from its high dodge, but it needs to [Resist] to avoid hacking and lock on. They're mutually exclusive. If it defends itself with a Guidance Disruptor, then a Hack can shut down all sensitive equipment - including the disruptor. With an ECM its the same. So if the Cirrus does not Resist, it soon won't be around much.

Basically its caught in a two-sided trap where its defenses default to the lowest of RES or DODGE. It's [Dodge] is also quite low, despite feeling high - 12 at best is 60%. Not something to stake your life on, near about a coinflip.

It does need to have a weakness, and hacking and high targetting weapons are clearly meant to be that weakness yet at the same time right now it feels a little extreme. If a hacker or missile bay is fielded against a Cirrus, the Cirrus picks what it loses - its dodge to defend against those missiles or should it just do its best to avoid a large chunk of the map (= which ever is within missile range)

I suggest fiddling with it a bit. One good idea was auto-applying Dodge if the Cirrus moves with the Mobility System so that its actual defenses no longer mutually exclude. This doesn't make it invincible, but it does mean you can sit in it without fearing for your life.

--

I miss drones, but I understand their lack. Alas.

--

Some of the new skills stack in ways that are hard to anticipate and only become a major issue once high end tiers become available. In particular [Automated Aggression], [More Dakka], [Scythe Fire]. [Alpha Strike] and [Combo Attack] all condense multiple attacks down into a single action. This allows for some pretty beefy stuff, so I'd keep an eye on it, but there's nothing to really suggest or change here.

[Scythe Fire].
In the old version of linked fire, getting +1 shot per new target was +1 dice, which carried with it a usual 20-60% chance of failure, target def depending. That was neccessary because hitting 3 targets for 2 damage was pretty much useless, so the extra dice helped. In this new system, linked fire increases weapon max shot which with Scythe increases max targets - you get 1 more shot to allocate out, and with More Dakka you get 2.

And then all those targets get 1 more shot in the volley for a potential damage multiplier, each hit of which triggers a Death Check.

This new version doesn't need Scythe to provide +1 shot.

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>>1036627
>a distinction between jamming actions (removing locks and debuffing accuracy) and hacking actions (debuffing movement, disabling high tech gear).
Sounds like an interesting distinction to make. Would Jamming be a buff to the person using it (replace the current Resist special action perhaps?), or a targeted debuff on a particular enemy/enemies?

>removing the slow reload attribute
Since you stripped it off the LHI cannons already, slow reload only comes into play in two cases: The Cobra, and Apex mechs. In the Apex case it basically reads "+1slot and 6 Cred to use" because of the autoloader, but the Cobra case is a little more complex because of early-game balance.

I support the idea of scrapping it from Apex guns, along with the Autoloader, and simply rebalancing them around the new metric. The only one that really loses out is the Railgun, because you were likely to be remaining stationary anyway so the Autoloader wasn't as mandatory.

>mook save vs damage
As others have said, I think this is rather unnecessary. It generates more rolling for you, makes Tanks vs Mechs even more slanted towards Tanks, and makes battle planning a headache. Perhaps just giving mooks a damage-per-turn death threshold and leaving it at that would be enough? Or three possibles thresholds (Fine, Damaged, Dead) for heavy mooks? Reactive armour already acts like HP as it is for late-game mooks.

>Other feedback/questions
With the removal of Drones, what changes are you thinking of making to the Warden and Zenith?

>>1038020
>Tactical shield seems unexpectedly weak for all the praise I've seen heaped on it in MM1
You might have noticed we died ALOT in this mission. Shields really help in having that not happen (as well as actual planning and co-ordination). Also, they work exceptionally well against enemies carrying multi-shot weapons. In the first mission I was on, I survived roughly three-times my mechs HP in damage because I was carrying a shield (see pic for a particularly deadly volley).

>>1038020
>Moar Dakka-Scythe Fire Control build is fun, but pretty gimped by the fact that you miss completely on the benefits of the first Gunner level, since you don't have the luxury to Aim most of the time. Also by the fact that Auto-Rifles are next to useless against tanks.
You can still aim, it just depends on your situation. As for auto-rifles? Yeah, they suck, but they're supposed to. They're mostly early game weapons, and there are other more powerful guns that can be linked, like the boomstick, laser and sabot cannon.

>Tanks are too strong to be mooks
>Tactical shield seems unexpectedly weak
A curious pair of observations, considering the main reason tanks are tough is their frontal 2 DR...the same amount afforded by the tac shield. It's enough to make a unit effectively invulnerable to light weapons if you manage facing right, and the mitigation it affords against stronger weapons can carry surprisingly far. I mean, 2 damage off an 8 damage tank gun? That's 25% damage reduced, not too shabby.

>>1037995
>HACKING / JAMMING
You make an interesting and convincing argument about hacking being relevant now, I just wonder if it's too relevant. It kind of seems like it dominates all tactical consideration. Now the mere presence of an ECM module on the field is enough to direct the entire battle and supress the special actions of whole teams with the very idea it *might* hack them, and if it does pick them to be smote they effectively lose an action having to recover, which is absolutely crippling. Add to that that even if you resist (with or without ECM) your odds of beating it aren't even that great, 60% tops unless you're driving an Exo-Terra mech. Plus, it screws players more than NPCs because there are less effects that work on mooks, most notably sensitive equipment.

With you on the Cirrus though.

>>1038169
So tanks have 8 damage? They dealt me 8 damage last turn even with the shield, so I thought they deal 10 normally

>>1038171
Notice how they dealt 6 damage to Ajax's Batman? His blast shield has the same DR as a tac shield. Most likely Command just overlooked that you had one, oversights like that happen from time to time running a game like this and you just have to call them out. I imagine he was just focussed on ending this trainwreck of a mission and was somewhat more distracted by that.

>>1037199
>Will there be combined arms?
Maybe. Before I shied away from it because I felt that the players must do the bulk of the fighting. I think there will at least be some specific combined arms missions.

>Will drones appear at all?
The enemy will definitely make use of drones. Players may yet get a way to deploy drones of their own.

>Will a player driven command structure be implemented?
Most likely. It worked fairly well before.

>Are there any old ways of thinking we need to leave behind?
You aren't the heroes anymore. In the future I will be more willing to play optimally and have enemy units focus you down, but there will be ways you can mitigate this.

>Caramel Camel Corps play into our own activities?
Depends on the choices you make.

> if you're returning to the Camel Corps
I'm not.

>>1037194
If you're talking about support assets then yes there will be a redone version of them.

Full Reaper option is still there, just not available in this mission

Yes I had fun, glad to know you did too.

>>1038067
>With the removal of Drones, what changes are you thinking of making to the Warden and Zenith?

Zenith will get a giant EMP missile, Warden gets the ability to build chest high walls.

>>1038033
>The Cirrus is a bit of a death trap.
Yes, yes I'll give it an auto-dodge.

>Scythe Fire Control
Gonna rework this. I didn't really think too hard about how it would work with the new system. Even before it was an awkward ability to work with.

Gonna try and address the more common concerns here without replying to anyone specifically.

>MOOK SAVES! REEEEE!
Fine I'll just give them CoD style regenerating health over tiny HP pools. (Highest is 8)

>TANKS OP REEEEE!!!!
Git gud scrubs

>AUTO HACKING OP REEEEE!!!!
The thing about electronic warfare is: it's a technological arms race. If you're not packing the right kit you are vulnerable. Everyone is so scared of the POSSIBILITY of being hacked that they never stop and consider how often it will actually happen. Taking ECM and hacking is an opportunity cost to the enemy as well.

Having said all that I think that while I'll leave the hacking system as is I'll give the Players more ways to resist it.

>>1038171
>They dealt me 8 damage last turn even with the shield
oops my bad...

>>1038198
>The enemy will definitely make use of drones. Players may yet get a way to deploy drones of their own


MMMOOOOOOEEEEEE DROOOOONEEEEEEES

that is all

>>1038198
>You aren't the heroes anymore. In the future I will be more willing to play optimally and have enemy units focus you down, but there will be ways you can mitigate this.

well just one other thing than moe drones

Yes. This is good - yes. This mission was good and you should feel good and keep doing this.

--

Scythe - I love the idea of it. It's appropriate for the system, and it helps doing what the Reaper does, be the "anti mook".

Maybe something like an anti-alpha strike? "Use 1 weapon to resolve an attack vs shot targets". That ties into the new link system too, and preserves the wide-sweep ability.

File: Adorable_Drones2.jpg (1 MB, 2339x1615)

1 MB JPG

>>1038204
>"Use 1 weapon to resolve an attack vs shot targets"

Not sure what you mean by that.

One last change I'm thinking of making is changing the mech icons slightly to reflect key pieces of gear such as shields and ECM pods. This is more so I can tell at a glance where a mech has damage reduction or auto-resist as it would be impractical to do an exhaustive set of symbols for all equipment.

A fair amount of processing errors come from me losing track of things after constantly looking back and forth between stat blocks.

>MMMOOOOOOEEEEEE DROOOOONEEEEEEES
Here, enjoy. Also thinking of giving the drones better regular icons. Not that it matters since you'll go straight for the moe drones first chance you get.

▶
>>1038225
ScytheFire - fire at targets = shots.

So you resolve 1 normal attack versus target = your weapons RoF / shots. With an autocarbines 2 shots you'd fire at 2 targets. With a higher RoF weapon you'd resolve attacks vs more targets.

Each target is only attacked once, and since high rof weapons deal low damage they're still beat by DR. It's basically Scythe as it is now without the headache of additions and subtractions. A sort of flip of Alpha Strikes "All weapons vs 1 target" this would be 1 weapon vs more targets.

--

also yaaay

File: Drone Chans 2.jpg (100 KB, 1106x740)

100 KB JPG

>>1038225
I'm still kind of sad I never got a chance to try out Caffeine the terror-drone in the field. A Zenith fabricator spamming terror drones is downright horrifying.

See this nasty build, now sadly invalid:
== Hive Queen ==
[Zenith] - HP 14/14
DEF 10 - ECM 8
SEN 12 - Move 4
---
Armour - Reactive {4/4}
Right Arm - 1x Terror Drone, 1x Demo Drone
Left Arm - 2x HK Missile {2/2}
Torso - Fabricator, Smoke Pod {2/2}
Legs - Anti-Mech Mines {2/2}
---

I'm seriously considering making my next character significantly more black-hat, to play around with some more of the war-crime options.

>>1038230
>war-crime options

Sorry, not going to happen.
There will be no more illegal weapons available to the players. Last time that stuff actually caught up to someone it almost caused a shit storm.

While I want to give the Players the choice to do bad things with potentially dire consequences, these choices must be made collectively. Last time some people wanted to be paladins while others wanted to be war criminals and when everyone's fate is tied together allowing that kind of choice just derails the game. Don't get me wrong; it makes for great RPing but mecha mercs is a skirmish first and foremost.

I do have an idea for a skirmish game that lets player make independent choices though...

>>1038198
>I'm not.
Aww, too bad. Still, I recognise the need for a fresh start.
I hope Pilot Cryptic some day makes officer like the Chief and Tragedy predicted, the notion rather grew on me.

>You aren't the heroes anymore
Blood Dragons? Blood Dragons.

In fairness the Camels weren't really heroes either, they just (mostly) had limits (unlike their employer at Noblesse, the slimy bastard). Between the good, the bad and the silly they were firmly in the latter category. Still, it'll be fun to see where this new group goes.

>>1038341
>Blood Dragons
I have a tingling feeling that "not heroes" means less "villains" and more "redshirts"

>>1038347
That too. Still, if everyone bites it after a couple missions no-one is going to get elite skills at all, so who knows.

>>1038347
>redshirts
More this. In the previous campaign I pulled a lot of punches, gave the players too many toys and was generally lenient in the name of letting people have fun.

It drove me nuts... Now I want to wreck you all. Don't let me.

>>1038417
So on a scale from "cakewalk" to "We just lost twenty pilots fighting turkeys", how grindy are you attempting to make it?

>>1038457
Hurray! 75% casualties!

>>1038457
That largely depends on you. What I will do is attempt to role play the enemy. Based on a given force's morale, level of cohesion and general attitude they will react to the player's actions in a way I hope makes sense.

As you saw in this mission tank squads with their command unit intact generally act more effectively. Killing of the command tanks and the command tanks reduces enemy cohesion and their will to fight.

>>1038504
*I meant command tanks and command trucks.

>>1035009
I got it in my head they didn't care for one reason or another because there wasn't any kind of feedback passing through. Oh well. I guess I should have gone for the 360 coverage.

>>1036627
I had given a general run down of EW as how it works IRL on IRC a couple of times when the topic came up in regards to MM (one more recently when MMR popped up) but I support the idea of splitting sensor jamming and systems hacking unless a purpose built EW rig is implemented that brute forces an upload through an input channel. I never quite got the run down as to what the cloud link does for the mechs.
I'd like to see some power management features involved with EW but I understand that might get kind of complicated.

>>1038198
>Drones
Would deployable fixed position devices be enough of a save in processing? The delivery method could be direct and/or indirect but once they land, they become fixed. It was an idea cooked up around the same time the above discussion was going.

>Tanks
The rules tanks follow were never clear to me but I always thought they should have certain trade offs based on role. Like MBTs would have a slower turning rate both in hull and turret, making them a little bit more vulnerable to a more mobile mech up close.


>>1038417
>>1038504
So what kind of mortality rate are we looking at for an average? Monday scale?


I'd give more feedback but I'd need more time with the system.
As always, thanks for running these!

>>1038949
It doesn't need to have higher actual mortality per say. Evem in the old game people were ever having their rides shot out from under them, but due to crit mechanics actual pilot death was a somewhat rarer (though always possible) occurrence.

>>1038417
Other people with (excessively) difficult skirmishes have often devolved into cluster fuck grinds where nobody involved has fun, these generally devolving into month long heated arguments and seas of salt and whining (some of it even justified). (Oh dear god) please beware how you appoach hyperlethality

>>1039761
You misunderstood the question..

>>1038949
>I had given a general run down of EW as how it works IRL on IRC a couple of times.

I don't actually recall this...regardless I think I'll try out a jamming-hacking system in another test to see how that pans out. In regards to general electronic warfare...

This is the part where I ask you to suspend your disbelief. I admit the whole cloud thread thing is stupid and exists only to justify the hacking mechanic in universe which in turn is there simply because I wanted to add that layer to the game. I actually wonder now what would happen if I just threw out the electronic warfare layer all together. Would the game lose depth? Would it be less fun?

>Deployable fixed position devices.
No. I have to be very firm on this. Allowing a player to deploy anything that needs it's own stat block makes my job harder.

Back when drones were a thing even two players rolling out with three drones was a headache to process. No amount of soft limitations I tried to impose toned down their use to levels I'd like. In the end I had to impose a hard limit of two per player and even that was too much. Now that I'm starting again I'm putting my foot down. Nobody gets pet drones.

There might be opportunities to use drones as NPC allies, but they will never be something players can buy for themselves.

>Tanks
The irony is that tanks can actually turn on a dime because treads. Look there's gonna be a lot of abstraction in these rules and adding more checks to the way a tank moves to balance it is less than ideal.

Tanks work in almost the same way as they did in the previous campaign and nobody who played that bitched about them then, not even when I threw 20 of them all decked out with reactive armour at you at the same time.

It seems to me like everybody suddenly decided that they should be able to stand in front of THREE large bore cannons and expect to survive the turn. Or maybe it was because Obtuse did 6x2 damage to one and it didn't die.

I'll admit: that was my bad. When a mook gets that lucky I should have used GM fiat to just remove it from the fight. It was a mistake, I learned from it. That's what test games are for.

There are tools and tactics to deal with tanks, but few people seemed to have bothered to use them.

Sorry if it sounds like I'm ranting at this point because I am. Everybody has been on my case about the damn tanks!

>>1038949
>>1039761
The issue previously was that I was afraid to play optimally because I might deal too much damage to a mech and instakill a pilot. As a result the missions were either too easy or an elite pilot with 100 creds worth of stuff to their name bought it and had to start over. I lost one dedicated player this way.

My planned changes to this part of the game is to actually increase the amount of internal hitpoints a mech has, making it harder for pilot death to occur from excessive damage.

>cont

>>1040641
Lost my trip.

>On Mortality
Oddly enough while I want mech mortality to go up I want Pilot mortality to stay about the same. It's a trick I can use due to the nature of the game. with mecha and pilots being separate entities.

The battlefield might become slightly more dangerous to a dismounted pilot because I want there to be some tension. (And also maybe more incentive to buy meta-upgrades focused on pilot rescue.) But ultimately pilot death should only occur if the Player is taking too many risks.

>>1039941
It's the catch twenty-two of skirmishing IMO. You want high lethality to keep the number of actors on the board and thus processing time down, but you want some kind of progression to give the players something to look forward to. How to kill off a lvl 99 player without making him REEEE is a question for the ages.

From what I know some QMs make re-spawning easy, others make progression more limited, while others just tell their players to suck it.

Maybe you might know more.
I'll admit I don't play skirmishes myself because I just find it so hard to see what's going on in all those maps. (It's the reason why I spend so much time on little annotations on the MM maps.) Monday's maps are beautiful but so frickin cluttered and hard to read.

>>1038225
>I'm thinking of making is changing the mech icons slightly to reflect key pieces of gear such as shields and ECM pods
This seems like it would be super useful for both you and us, but it also seems like a lot of work to give yourself.

>>1040641
>Would the game lose depth? Would it be less fun?
I think it would. I never really use them in games, but It's nice to have a debuff layer, it adds more to combat than a straight slugfest.

>Tanks
I think the main reason everyone had trouble with the tanks this mission was the format of the mission itself. Being a test game free for all where players arrived in dribs and dabs over many turns (and their arriving on several different fronts) made them easy for the pre-deployed enemy forces to gang up on.

Obviously in a proper campaign format where everyone deploys at once on turn one this is much less of an issue (on paper at least, the Camels had a few setbacks due to players being absent at deployment, though that's another issue entirely).

There is one other thing to be said about tanks, which is that the new aim mechanics make them generally harder to hit and thus a bit more potent. Not demanding a system change or a debuff, only asking that you take it into account when balancing enemy numbers in future.

On that note, a campaign that demands more tactical play would be interesting. The Camels often struggled through their various missions and bumblefucked around endearingly into somehow pulling out a win by the skin of their teeth. The one time they actually came up with a really cohesive plan and all stuck to it (with tactical discussions before any rash moves) they ripped a hardened military unit to shreds without suffering a single loss. I suppose the trick is creating missions that require that kind of approach...and then far more challenging: getting the players to actually apply it (without it devolving into one player ordering everyone around, which is no fun for anyone and is always the trouble with a tactics game where everyone controls a separate unit).

>>1040761
Call me strange, but I kind of felt there was a decent balance of lethality in MM Classic. Because of the mechanics, a pilot was safe as long as an attack didn't do five more damage than they had health AND hit the torso when it overflowed, a 25% chance. Provided they didn't take any foolish risks they could usually avoid over-damage, and a redundant system provided more security if you had one.

I kind of like the genuine (but slim) risk of death, it leant a real weight to events. You probably weren't going to die, but you *might*, so there was some palpable tension. And if my character had died I think I would basically look at it as an excuse to write some stirring final moments then roll up something new. Since (at that point) you could start with a basic skill and a Crocodile (viable even at higher levels) it wasn't as bad as starting totally from scratch.

>>1040761
Sit in on the chat and ask about the lethality of the last floors floor, you may get insight even through the salt. From what I saw, he scaled enemies against the top 20%, but they could kill that 20% with ease. Which draws on the perspective with the tanks again. The tanks shrug off our shots and dish out DAMAGE in high NUMBERS and can just ignore something that should have killed them. From your "rant" we need to git gud, but in that scenario we had:fewer numbers, worse overall damage output, and a need to focus down the Mecha that were instakilling us with swarmers, leaving the tanks to do whatever they wanted with near impunity until the Mecha were dead, we also had pretty poor cover and then all this stacked on top of the fact that the tanks can get lucky and not die AFTER we need to get relatively lucky to even hit them(60% chance from supposedly elite pilots)(I will hammer this in every time I can)This is why I asked about the combined arms, because then we don't get swarmed by numbers that have damage and reasonable survivability, piled into the fact that they have DISTRACTION MECHA to draw shots away from them while also being big threats. From my perspective this mission was a grind and even without the enemy mecha the odds would still be pretty tough , there really was no way around it aside from a few tactics changes that could be rendered irrelevant anyways(because shrugging off shots), and if we get another mission like this it will end the same way, except we won't have infinite respawns. I know my opinion is pretty useless here, but I don't really enjoy this mission.

>>1041158
On the other hand, other missions will not be like this one. If we'd had even ten mechs deploying from one side at the start (like we would have done in the old campaign), and they all went the same direction, they could have torn apart the tanks platoon by platoon, and had the numbers to spread out any damage and have the volume of fire to take them all out, as well as being able to quickly dispatch any of the mechs after they revealed themselves and pulled their ambushes.

I don't expect future missions to be like this because this was a test game mostly just to see how the mechanics held up in actual play.

That being said:
>we need to get relatively lucky to even hit them(60% chance from supposedly elite pilots)
Is a valid point. Maybe the Advanced Warfare training that provides slight bonuses (5 and 10%) to veteran and elite pilots could be implemented as a regular mechanic? Or at least included as a purchasable option. Now that accuracy is a measure of the pilot rather than the target, it does seem odd that you don't improve at that at all unless you become a gunner.

>>1041294
Wrong.
That's what would happen when fighting last generations enemies, these enemies will focus fire to kill targets systematically, as cognis stated: the enemies will be very competent.
Your scenario is fine in theory, but it fails to take in that
1:the tanks can get lucky and not take a hit*
2:we always feel the hits that we get, because evading is often inefficient AND comes at the price of resisting hacks and their now potent debuffs
3:the damage won't be spread out anymore, if you're hurt expect them to finish you off*
4:it's a battle line of ten Mecha versus 20 tanks that can put out damage on par with the Mecha they're fighting, with the exception of the heavyweights or glass cannons who they'll be focus firing anyways.*
5:You're assuming everything goes our way and is skewed in our favor, rather than at the behest of dice(like really, get those rose tinted glasses off.)
-You're also assuming players will do their best, will automatically know the best ways to engage and wont break in a panic the first time something scary glances at them
We started this job in a human wave remember?
It didn't work.
Yes. This was a stress test, but just flip through what cognis is saying, this isn't very far from what we can expect in standard play.

*The current stuff plays into attrition heavily.
When it comes to attrition fights?
We. Will. Not. Win.
Ever.
We never have, in my experience.

>>1040971
>The one time they actually came up with a really cohesive plan and all stuck to it (with tactical discussions before any rash moves) they ripped a hardened military unit to shreds without suffering a single loss.
That was the Nkrumah mission?

>>1041512
>1:the tanks can get lucky and not take a hit
Command has since reconsidered this

2:we always feel the hits that we get, because evading is often inefficient
I don't know if tanks would even want to evade at all, likely their evasion will be even worse than ours considering how abysmal their defence used to be.

3:the damage won't be spread out anymore, if you're hurt expect them to finish you off
This makes sense for them to do though, some enemies even did it in the old game. Attrition should happen, people should lose mechs. If the players have no losses then the fight was probably lopsided. It was that way before, we almost always lost a few units.

>4:it's a battle line of ten Mecha versus 20 tanks
This is somewhat unfair, there were 12 tanks in total and they were spread out across the map. An organised group of players would have performed much better, and we had no organisation at all (besides most of us picking one deployment zone).

>5:You're assuming everything goes our way and is skewed in our favor, rather than at the behest of dice(like really, get those rose tinted glasses off.)
Come now, the personal jab was uncalled for. Rolls can just as easily go badly for them as they can for us. That's dice based games.

>-You're also assuming players will do their best, will automatically know the best ways to engage and wont break in a panic the first time something scary glances at them
I'm assuming they might discuss plans during the deployment phase (as we often used to) and reach some measure of consensus. If I'd realised before I jumped in and picked what I always used that Automated Agression was busted I would have taken a Stratus full of Hammer missiles and wiped out whole tanks squads in one go (I intended to redeploy with one at first, I just rolled with the Croc I was given) Plus, there were a lot of dumb moves from players. How many times did people plink 0 damage shots off tank front armour before it sank in that it was a waste of an action?

>>1041613
Yeah, that's the one. I fully concede that it was in large part a result of compounding factors of circumstance in our favour (the enemy having assault servers, those servers being within easy reach of an ambush position, the players having access to good gear by that point and Command deciding that it would make more sense for Zanvra to scrub the mission than send in the third wave unsupported), but the fact remains that it did turn out that way, and that player planning (of every phase, not just the first) had a not insignificant part in it, since while we didn't make the most optimal efficient moves at all times, we still coordinated and made some pretty good ones.

>>1041702
That whole mission was "let kestrel(or whoever was CO) play our characters for us"
1:moot(thankfully)
2:why wouldn't a tank do anything but?It's something, and they don't ever need to worry about getting hacked.
3:I guess you agree?
4:You glossed over most of what I said about being outnumbered by an enemy that can put out damage on par with ours and have decent defense(and failing to point out that it was 12 tanks, several mecha, infantry, AND heavy cannons) my example was fictional "20 (only)tanks versus 10 Mecha"(our max when cognis put in a cap)your example is somewhat poor anyways, what else is there to do in a human tide(our first deploy) but "shoot x" that's literally what we did and it didn't work, they didn't even have that many numbers like you said, our side was pretty spread out and it still bombed(a suggestion that players need to learn some things)
5:the dice are more forgiving of the enemies that can get up to three saving rolls before they die(it's moot but what my logic was based on), have more numbers, and better armor(they had no health but fucking HEAVY front DR ? REEEEEE) unless the tanks have poorer accuracy the dice favor them because they have -again- guns on par with ours, and more of them. End of story.

The players here were pretty dumb, I frankly hate telling them how to play their characters and mostly point out a few things they missed, but they did do some dumb stuff, but that's the grey area of telling the how to play their characters or 'playing for them' so I really just don't want to touch that, at least until it becomes persistent and it becomes clear they aren't learning and may need it pointed out to them.

Alot of what you're banking on is variable about players participating in discussion, we shouldn't bank on players participating or discussing anything, because in the end, "herd of cats".
That wasn't a jab, your initial presentation was very optimistically inclined, if it hurt your feelings?lel get assblasted cuck XDddd
just Kidding

>>1042021
>That whole mission was "let kestrel(or whoever was CO) play our characters for us"
Having actually been on said mission, I respectfully disagree. Malek (for indeed it was he) came up with a broad plan (including input from the other players) that gave us good chances, and it was down to us to handle the specifics. The one exception was when we collectively realised we needed as much as possible dead NOW before reinforcements showed up and discussed and agreed to for that one critical turn attack in specific order for maximum effect (and even then there was some wiggle room).

Tanks have kind of had all of their advantages for a while. Frontal armour, long ranged guns, reactive armour etc. We were able to fight them before. Weren't you in that meatgrinder defence mission against like two dozen (veteran) tanks? You guys won that, with less equipment than we had here. And for all the residual fuming over saving throws (which I didn't like either, by the way) only once did a tank fail to go down when it otherwise would have. Heck, that last tank I lasered would never have gone down under old rules, since it would have had 8HP. It could have cut both ways. We don't actually know what their save threshold was, it might have been terrible.

>they did do some dumb stuff
Not to put too fine a point on it, but wasn't it you that ran through an electric fence due to not knowing how the jump mechanic worked despite being a long time player?

>>1042247
That mission was basically a flip of this one, we had:
WALLS, turrets,mines, Mook support, drones, viable cover, and when they could get in they had to funnel through chome points. Not to mention repair trucks.
If one in three of those tanks had just kept on trucking when it should have died we would have MAYBE been in trouble, but in hindsight that job was pretty stacked in our favor
Clearly, I don't know how jump works, it's not like I JUMPED into there in the first place or anything, right?
It's mostly I thought I stated I JUMPED, and a pretty false notion that cog would see what I was trying to do in the case I ever goofed and follow through on what I seemed to be trying to do.
Turns out he's not as nice as I assumed, and doesn't bother to do that/is too lazy to be bothered(completely understandable)/I'm not as clear as I like to think I am.

Hey at least I fucking tried something other than "stand in the open and exchange gunfire with the better armed gunline" like everyone else other than zili

If you were in the chat you would know how fucking PISSED I was about that, because what I tried to do was quite sound and possible and if it got processed the way I thought it would be the whole mission would have ended in WAAAYYY less of a clusterfuck and AAHHDJFJDJDNGNGNFJN-RAAAAAAAAGEEEEEEEEE
don't bring it up, or I'll find some illogical way to be pissed at you, too

>>104239
>>1040641

Which fucking reminds me.
The truck didnt take damage from my hedgehog OR shield

What the fuck gives cognis?!

>>1040761
>>1040641
. . . I liked the tanks?

Not saying that to be a contrary wiseass either. This is 12 tanks with a command tank backup, which has reactive armor. It's the equivalent of taken on an entire tank platoon. It's an open field, our approach is piecemeal and the tanks maintain consistent squad cohesion to viably fire at the same target.

Loses to that sort of thing is inevitable.

If it was 4 AFVs and a command truck with Old Merkalin's Discount Mercenaries, we'd stomp all over them.

>>1041512
You can't argue that someone's scenario is fine in theory but flawed in practice, and then proceed to set up a theoretical scenario to prove your own point.

Why don't tanks need to worry about being hacked? Lock Ons or -4 to hit are pretty severe problems. Why are there 20 of your hypothetical tanks? Why do they consistently get lucky? Why do the mechs consistently get unlucky? Why don't the mechs have artillery, sniper or siege cannon support? Why can't the mechs move into cover? Why do the tanks act with perfect killing machine effeciency and the mechs act with disorganized disunity? Why do the mechs have no denfeses? No shields? No LHI heavy plate? Why do the mechs not dodge, knowing they'll be shot at? You're fine to say "because of the overpowering murder of doom hacking", but a -4 penalty isn't quite as steep as death, so in some cases you're going to want to dodge anyway and then you're the one with multiple saving throws. Why don't the mechs have anti armor weapons? Smoke screen launchers? EMP missiles?

All these options exist.

Tanks are tanks. They're meant to kick your ass.

They kicked our ass.

So it goes.

>>1040641
>just threw out the electronic warfare layer all together
I think the game would become less... unique.

Tactics would become a selection of variants on SHOOTSTABSMASHKILL, whereas the existence of EWar provides some nice depth and "magic-like" tactical options beyond just making the enemy HP disappear as fast as possible.

However, it's possible you could make it less "Hacking" and more "jamming and scrambling". So long as strong and useful ways to fuck with the enemy exist that don't involve reducing HP, you should maintain the feel of the game.

>There are tools and tactics to deal with tanks, but few people seemed to have bothered to use them.
This is simply a case of this being the first game back in the new system. No-one understands what is going on, no-one can agree on strategy or even tactics, and no-one knew if you'd even changed the NPC stats! I expect the second one to go much smoother.

Also, posting the stats of the Mook NPCs at the beginning of the mission would always help. In the last game we eventually figured them all out OC over time (and then you started posting them), but surely IC every pilot worth their salt would at least be aware of the main strengths and weaknesses of an MBT? (Eg, don't attack it from the front with less than cannon-weaponry). Of course, if we end up playing child-soldiers in a Midas-Warlords Conscript-Army things would be different.

>>1042021
>>1042247
>That whole mission was "let kestrel(or whoever was CO) play our characters for us"
Malek here. I've got to apologise for that one. I was worrying the entire time I was being too specific in orders, because I know how annoying it is to be treated like a puppet. But I was in a constant panic, terrified it would snowball and we'd all get killed and/or scrub the mission if things went even a little off.

That whole mission was a complete nightmare, and just felt like Custer's last stand. You know what they call a defensive position if: 1) the things you need to defend are at the front and can be shot as soon as enemies enter the AO, 2) there are no decent lanes of fire, and 3) the deployment zones are all in awful places? A kill box.

Perhaps the next campaign can have more Sergeant/Squad-Leader roles? If the Mission Lead in large fights can give orders to squads/fire-teams/mech-bro-pairs, it should maybe feel less puppet-like while retaining the co-ordination necessary to find victory amid the chaos.

>>1042432
>The truck didnt take damage from my hedgehog OR shield
It had DR-2 from the sandbags. (I hit it the generator for 21 damage and it took 19.) Should have probably taken 2 from the hedgehog though.

>>1043565
Notice how I flipped from the fictional theory of 20 tanks to the scenario that just happened to counter his argument?

Notice how when you click those questions into the scenario that just happened you suddenly see that we didn't use/have any of the "where are" options?

>>1043565
>Why do the tanks act with perfect killing machine effeciency and the mechs act with disorganized disunity?
Isn't this a rhetoric question?

>>1043647
NO

IT ISN'T


WHYYYYYYYYY won't you work like my imaginary paper soldiers of perfection!?

>:P

>>1043634
And then that's the crux.

If the difficulties of this mission relate solely to this mission - why are you writing a general description as if it applies? It won't. In a different scenario, the exigent circumstance will be different.

So it goes.

War.
War never changes.

Except for when it does.

>>1043660
It's all we have to go on, so for now we don't know anything except for the stuff right in front of us

>>1043582
> I've got to apologise for that one
I don't think you do. That mission could easily have gone very badly from us, but your input turned it around. Putting the best gunners (me and Nkruma) on the flanks was smart because it allowed just our two units to reliably wipe out nearly all of the flanking force by ourselves, leaving the bulk of our force free to engage the bulk of theirs. Yes, the AA went down, but given simultaneous actions it was always going to, and we essentially removed them from play in exchange. Meanwhile the Linebreakers being up the front let them hobble the main force before it even got off the ground. It was clearly supposed to engage us and bog us down to buy time for backup, but we basically crippled them and picked them off so well that it was clearly a lost cause to send more waves because the force they were supposed to support essentially no-longer existed.

The total enemy force was comparable (if not superior) to our own in composition, but fighting smart and going for the soft bits won the day.

And I don't think you need to worry about bossing people about. The way I look at it is like this: The Sakala mission went so bad because there was no clear direction, no clear goal and everyone ran around doing their own thing. In response to that officers were created. They weren't intended to be able to give people specific instructions for what actions they take (in fact the rules explicitly forbid this) because obviously that's no fun. This wasn't the army, it was the Camel Corps. Instead a CO was supposed to be able to provide general direction/cohesiveness to a force. Their suggestions were always just that, and generally to the effect of "Advise you fuck up that guy, sort the details out yourself", which fit a mercenary group with an independent streak.

And most importantly, people didn't go along with that because 'they were in charge', they did it because they themselves recognised the tactical ability of the CO and voted them in and are far more likely to listen to their advice than if they were some schlub from officer school. We didn't listen because you were the boss, we listened because what you said was worth hearing out.

For instance, I sincerely doubted Spare as a commander right up until that stunt with the bears, at which point I realised I would follow a man like that into hell itself. A part of me felt like taking defence of the flank in the Nkruma mission was getting the easy job while everyone else was at risk, but at the same time I knew that as unglamorous as it was my task was vital and I was objectively the best suited for it, which was really cool.

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>>1040971
>seems like a lot of work to give yourself.
Only during setup. And frankly putting more work in there really helps down the line. I need to be less lazy with that.

>A decent balance of lethality in MM Classic.
What is this? A popular brand of soda? Are we gonna start demanding a return to the old product despite the new one tasting better?

>>1043582
>>1042394
>>1041158
>>1041294
>>1040971

>Players aren't a hive mind.
>We don't know the game dynamics yet.

Okay after reading these new replies I've decided that perhaps I was expecting too much from people and that perhaps this was not a well designed mission. In hind sight a butt load of tanks were the wrong enemy type to throw at a bunch of people who may or may not have had experience with the system. I will still maintain that tanks are not OP, but they do require a bit of extra knowledge to fight effectively and so were inappropriate for this mission.

I guess I'm forgetting that players don't have the same perspective as I do, and are in fact more like a herd of cats.
And I was also forgetting that the dice gawds laugh at probability curves.

Alright you people want a peak behind the curtain. Fine. Here's the stat sheet for MBTs as they were in the mission.

The little cog icon represents durability. When a mook gets hit by an attack, the damage of that attack is subtracted from their durability score. The resulting number is the threshold for the save they have to make in order to not blow up.

Oh you'll also notice the fact the tanks have 0 agility. Yes that means they are incapable of dodging.

>>1043700
Forgot to add mook saving throws are made on a d10. 10 is the highest durability score. All other units have less than this.

I'm now also a little less hell bent on making the game tougher. Generally speaking the difficulty throughout most of the original campaign was fine. It's just that there was a massive power spike towards the end of the campaign where the players were combining high end gear, veterancy bonuses and redline to stupid effect.

I never admitted it but I was salty as fuck when Malek one shoted two assault servers by auto critting with an impact hammer. In that moment he broke the game, but because I'm such a principled GM I had to play by my own rules. At that point it felt like the Players no longer needed readline since it had gone from a little something to help against bad luck to an insta-kill button.

I remember I had to start going out of my way to stuff everything with redundant systems so that you couldn't one shot crit it with redline. I even designed the last mission to try and fake players out so they'd waste redline on decoys and actually have to fight my boss enemies PROPERLY. It didn't work, you smarmy bastards.

...whew. I guess I was just habouring a lot of passive aggressiveness from the old campaign, which was probably why I was a bit meaner in this mission.

Here's hoping I can do better next time around.

>>1043711
Oh yeah, Redline absolutely had to go. It was introduced to give the players (who at that point had only Gavials with weak unreliable equipment) a means of actually succeeding sometimes, but the players access to equipment quickly outgrew the need for the ability, so having it was way too powerful.

(Also, the other main reason the impact hammer strat worked was the instakill mechanic of the demolition trait, which is also mercifully gone now).

>>1043711
>>1043700
It's fine - just take out your general aggressiveness by brutally murdering players again and again

>>1040641
> I actually wonder now what would happen if I just threw out the electronic warfare layer all together. Would the game lose depth? Would it be less fun?

It would definitely leave a certain vacuum.


>Deployable fixed position devices.
Fair enough. I didn't imagine them to have anything complex but admittedly it does still require some processing.


>Tanks
I really don't have an opinion on tanks. I just threw the thought out there because I remember discussion about tanks in MM1 and see discussion about tanks here in MM2.

>Mortality (Mech or otherwise)
That was probably a difficult question to quantify/answer. So let me try asking it another way. I just hope to get an idea of what to expect on the field beyond that it's simply going to be harder.
On a mission of average danger level with what you project to be average play, how much mech mortality would you be aiming for, optimally? 20%? 50%?

>>1043700
>Tank stats
Now that the mechanics are more transparent I'm starting to grow on this concept, and wouldn't at all mind the game using them. I do wonder if the threshold is a bit high, since it allows a tank to survive single hits that would have killed it before (since they used to have 8HP), and I do think it would be better to roll based on total damage per phase (or at least per attack action) so it isn't quite so rough if you don't happen to have a high damage single shot weapon. It was a misstep to change this without mentioning it to returning players who already thought they knew what to expect from tanks, but yeah, I'm on board with this concept for now, let's see how it goes now that we know.

>>1043711
> It didn't work
The players saw through the ruse, but I think that mission ended up balanced okay. They accomplished it and protected their NPC backup but lost two out of five mechs, and could potentially have lost more depending on stealth rolls.

>>1043792
>I remember discussion about tanks in MM1
Oh yeah, now that you mention it so do I. Wasn't someone trying to argue that a tank was objectively superior to a Lord? Because if I recall correctly the conclusion was that it was, but only if you ignored all of a Lord's strengths and played to all of a tank's.

>>1043711
>It didn't work
In all fairness those were some of the more clever and self reliant pilots from the ranks of the 3C
we'll take that as a compliment, btw

>>1040641
Removing the Ewar layer would strip away an interesting tactical push and pull. Since Ewar is also Scanning for stealth, lock on for weapons, missile guidance and missile defense, and ties into EMP, jamming and drone control you'd lose a lot.

Many of the more interesting options directly or indirectly go into Ewar territory.

Don't under-estimate what you've made here; it's a very beautiful and stylish representation of the *potential* of electronic warfare if not the actual thing.

>>1043792
>Mortality (Mech or otherwise)
For an average situation. 50% mech mortality, 10% pilot mortality and the latter only if a player is really unlucky Or stupid.

Pilot deaths are a bit of a pain for me. I have to write Eulogies and RP the funeral.

>>1049471
> I have to write Eulogies and RP the funeral.
Well, you did for the Camels because Kerry was good people and he cared. Not every operator has to be like that...

>>1049556
Please don't give him these ideas.