Robot Warriors

[Chris Goodwin]

3 hours ago, bpmasher said:

@Chris Goodwin

 

How would you create a robot that carries different weapons depending on the mission (using them like an infantryman, with hands/extra limbs)?

 

edit: I'm reading through the original Robot Warriors at the moment.

 

For anything that is a Carried weapon, I'd let them switch it out with any other Carried weapon of the same or smaller mass.  For weapons with different ammunition types, I'd probably have the stats worked out beforehand so it's as easy as writing down which ammo they're loading.  Optionally I'd let non-Carried weapons be switched out before a mission, which would take time and possibly a Mechanics roll.  

 

Another option is to spend Construction Points for more Mass Units than the robot can typically carry with its Chassis & Power Plant capacity; the capacity limits how much the robot can carry at any particular time, but the extras are for items the character keeps "back at base" and can swap those in and out as desired.  A resource pool, more or less.

 

Edit to add:  In one of the games I played in back in the day, the GM created his own, fairly extensive, premade weapons list, and we drew from that for several campaigns.  That can prove pretty helpful, plus there is at least one list of pre-created weapons in the book specifically for this purpose.

[bpmasher]

Sounds workable. I had this idea to run Heavy Gear-esque mecha for another campaign idea. Trying to wrap my head around the Robot Warriors book right now. Theater of the mind seems to be the way to go when minis aren't available (too few mecha war games).

[bpmasher]

Robot Warriors lost me at advantages being a negative value, and disadvantages being a positive value. It's totally upside down compared to modern Hero specs. I stopped reading at that point, and turned to Ultimate Vehicle, which resulted in the Atlas writeup I did.

 

The END reserve for mecha in TUV give a mechanism for overheating and taking recoveries, which is genius on part of the writers. I think they knew folks would go to Battletech mecha for inspiration.

 

I am still figuring out which armor values and END reserves to use for various mecha. Maybe take the heat sink values off the published Battletech mechs, and reverse engineer them to provide END and REC values for specific mechs.

[Chris Goodwin]

10 minutes ago, bpmasher said:

Robot Warriors lost me at advantages being a negative value, and disadvantages being a positive value. It's totally upside down compared to modern Hero specs. I stopped reading at that point, and turned to Ultimate Vehicle, which resulted in the Atlas writeup I did.

 

Is it just the notation that's bugging you?  Advantages are negative value in that they reduce the damage value of weapons while keeping the mass constant; limitations likewise increase it.  It's effectively the same as increasing (for advantages) or decreasing (for limitations) the mass while keeping the damage constant.  

 

In other words, a 5d6 weapon with three lines worth of advantages will always be 125 mass units, whether you start with a 125 mass weapon (base damage of 6d6) and reduce the damage by three lines (yielding 5d6), or start with a 5d6 weapon (base cost of 16 mass units) and increase its mass by three levels (yielding a cost of 125).  

 

So, despite the notation, advantages always make something more expensive while limitations make it less expensive.  

 

Does this explanation help?

[bpmasher]

5 minutes ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

Is it just the notation that's bugging you?  Advantages are negative value in that they reduce the damage value of weapons while keeping the mass constant; limitations likewise increase it.  It's effectively the same as increasing (for advantages) or decreasing (for limitations) the mass while keeping the damage constant.  

 

In other words, a 5d6 weapon with three lines worth of advantages will always be 125 mass units, whether you start with a 125 mass weapon (base damage of 6d6) and reduce the damage by three lines (yielding 5d6), or start with a 5d6 weapon (base cost of 16 mass units) and increase its mass by three levels (yielding a cost of 125).  

 

So, despite the notation, advantages always make something more expensive while limitations make it less expensive.  

 

Does this explanation help?

 

Makes more sense now, I just forgot how the mechanics come together while reading and stopping for breaks.

 

[Chris Goodwin]

So, I finally ran Robot Warriors!  

 

I pulled out the Destroyer of Worlds scenario from the RW book, and added the following bit of backstory: 

 

Quote

In October of 2017, astronomers discovered an object (named 'Oumuamua, given the designation 1I/2017), of apparent interstellar origin, passing through the Solar System.  It was determined that this was most likely a naturally occurring object, with no acceleration or course changes other than those that might be expected of an unpowered object; it passed through on a hyperbolic curve, with non-gravitic acceleration likely due to solar radiation pressure.  

In January of 2029, another apparent interstellar object was discovered passing through our system.  However, shortly after it was detected, it did change course, multiple times, taking up an orbit approximately between that of Mars and the asteroid belt.  The object was spheroid, just over 1000 kilometers in diameter (slightly larger than the asteroid Ceres), apparently made of or covered in water ice and metallic hydrogen.  

It became worldwide news almost instantly.  The popular press could talk about nothing else, and it seemed that the words of every scientist interviewed were twisted to suggest that the object was an alien ship of some sort.  The consensus among the scientific community was that a natural origin could be ruled out, but that, other than its path, size, approximate mass (slightly less than that of Ceres), and external composition, nothing could be determined without sending a probe.  

By summer of 2030, various space agencies were preparing missions to the object, when something happened.  A number of smaller objects, in the "football field sized" class (approximately 50-150 meters in diameter), broke off from the main object, and moved in to take up an Earth-centric orbit; the closest one was about 85,000 kilometers out.  All were well within the Moon's orbit.  

On September 5, 2030, the objects emitted a powerful radio signal; at least a dozen nations had recorded the signal.  The signal was incredibly dense, probably encrypted, and had no effect at all on Earth or anyone on it -- with the exception of about a dozen individuals worldwide.  Over the course of the next week, those individuals -- you among them -- all had extremely vivid dreams of piloting giant, robotic machines, in various environments.  The final dream consists of a message:  we're sorry for what we're about to do to you, but it is necessary.  

Then you all wake up, inside the cockpits of the machines you were dreaming of.  You all know how to pilot them and how to fight inside and with them, but also many of your other skills that might have been relevant to robots have expanded to grant you knowledge specific to them.  As well, any scars, skin blemishes, or minor injuries you had are completely healed or gone.  You feel acceleration, and knowledge you didn't know you had tells you that you're in a drop ship of some kind, launched from a base orbiting Earth, toward your first mission: an immense, monstrous creature of some kind that has been trapped under a mountain on Earth for thousands of years, has just awoken and is threatening the population.  It is up to you to stop it from destroying the city! 

 

I was having a hard time getting even the minimal prep done that I would need, but fortunately what I did get done was enough.  I'd built three robots; two of the players had built characters, and I was able to pull one of the RW pregens that I'd previously converted to 6th edition for the third player.  I had them fight the Devourer of Worlds monster from the book.  

 

Fortunately I hadn't gone back to reread the monster before I built the players' mechs, because I gave one of them a weapon with AVLD, with force fields being the defense.  And the monster didn't have force fields.  That ended up being the weapon that took it down.  The rest of the session was spent with them learning more about the so far mysterious aliens that cloned three random Earth people and turned them into mecha pilots.  

 

They had fun and want to keep playing!  

[Lord Liaden]

Congratulations! That had to have felt so satisfying for you.

[Chris Goodwin]

Very much so!       

[Chris Goodwin]

Second session went very well.  We discovered a tactic: when targets with superior defenses as a result of large amounts of DEF built as Force Fields that are Hardened with 14- Activation and 15+ Burnout, the way to overload them is with Autofire attacks.  Each hit triggers an Activation and Burnout roll, and eventually that 15+ is going to come up.  Two of the PCs had weapons that were AVLD vs. Force Fields, so when those went down the opponents were much easier to damage.  (They fought against two each of Alpha/Beta, Gamma/Delta, and Epsilon/Omega Eliminators from the book.  All were 7 DEF plus 10 Hardened Force Field on 14-/15+ Burnout.)

 

To be honest I'm not sure rolling with every hit is strictly RAW but it made a nice weakness for the PCs to exploit so I went with it.  

 

[Chris Goodwin]

I can't believe it's taken me this long to actually run it, and I also can't believe how well it went and how happy I am with the results!

[Chris Goodwin]

13 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

To be honest I'm not sure rolling with every hit is strictly RAW but it made a nice weakness for the PCs to exploit so I went with it.  

 

 

I just checked, and for the record Robot Warriors does specify that an Autofire burst does only trigger one Activation Roll.  Still, I'm happy with how it came out.  

[Spence]

10 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

I just checked, and for the record Robot Warriors does specify that an Autofire burst does only trigger one Activation Roll.  Still, I'm happy with how it came out.  

 

Sometimes RAW doesn't have the right feel.  Overloading defenses by saturating them is very very Mecha.  

[dmjalund]

a compromise that would reduce die rolls, is for every hit past the first, subtract 2 from the Activation/Burnout roll

[Ninja-Bear]

@Chris Goodwin what type of sheet did you use for the Mecha? Iirc there really isn’t a vehicle sheet for 6th-either printable or for HD.

[Chris Goodwin]

2 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

@Chris Goodwin what type of sheet did you use for the Mecha? Iirc there really isn’t a vehicle sheet for 6th-either printable or for HD.

 

Typed into and printed out from Google Docs, or handwritten into a printed out robot sheet from RW.  

 

I'm using the Robot Warriors construction rules... 😁

[Ninja-Bear]

Btw, did I mention I was jealous of you playing RW? 😁

[Chris Goodwin]

Just about everyone else in my group has run, and they're starting to need breaks from running.  So I offered to run a "one shot" ... which I think is turning into a campaign without meaning to! 

[Spence]

47 minutes ago, Chris Goodwin said:

Just about everyone else in my group has run, and they're starting to need breaks from running.  So I offered to run a "one shot" ... which I think is turning into a campaign without meaning to! 

 

The best kind of campaign is the one that has a life of its own

[Duke Bushido]

1 hour ago, Chris Goodwin said:

Just about everyone else in my group has run, and they're starting to need breaks from running.  So I offered to run a "one shot" ... which I think is turning into a campaign without meaning to! 

 

 

Sorry, Chris.  

 

That's just awful-- having players all excited to do it again....   

 

Congratulations on the success, and the chance to play RW (color me as jealous as ninja-bear) again.

 

 

(And I am really sorry that I may have accidentally done the same thing to your Barrier Peaks one-shot  )

 

 

 

[Chris Goodwin]

I offered the group to either stay with the Robot Warriors build rules or switch to 6th edition vehicle rules... they chose vehicle rules.  I wrote up a set of conversion and build guidelines here; I converted all of their mechs on my own, but at least two of the group are going to build their own.  

 

I was a little iffy, until I converted their robots.  Better now.  I ended up building a basic frame (thanks to Duke for the idea), also built a weapons prefab in Hero Designer, then it was pretty easy.  Out of three robots (four players; two of them drive the same model) two of them came in at right around 400 points, from 325 point RW originals.  I allowed them 425 to build with, if they were going to.  Two of them are submitting their own designs.  

 

Now I have to write more of the adventure...  

RW.hdr 200 Ton Frame.hdc

Edited August 2, 2021 by Chris Goodwin
Adding files