Quote from: YourSwordisMine;749565Hopefully soon... The Kickstarter is running behind, but that is to be expected (it being both a Kickstarter and from Palladium...). As a backer we're still waiting for fulfillment.

All told, I'll be getting about 350 miniatures once my shipment arrives... Something I am both looking forward too and dreading... I think I went a bit overboard... Goddamn that will be a LOT of Battlepods...

I'm so jealous. Robotech back when I was a kid was the thing that really made me start obsessing over mecha. I wasn't in a position to back the kickstarter for the minis money wise, and I'm kind of ;_; over that now.

I gamed huge amounts of Mekton back in the day, and I'm considering resurrecting my old Mekton setting on Roll20, in an effort to get into mecha gaming again.

Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;749655I gamed huge amounts of Mekton back in the day, and I'm considering resurrecting my old Mekton setting on Roll20, in an effort to get into mecha gaming again.

Nice!  Just the system or are you going full on Algol campaign too?

For Mekton II players what do your designs tend to be like?

Back in the day (pre-Techbook), my group's designs were 10 to 20 tons for popcorn mechs, 40/45 tons for light but serious mechs, and a couple of 110 to 120 designs.  But most machines were in the 55 to 65 ton range which we considered the sweet spot.  Most designs were humanoid without extra appendages like wings, but there were a few beastmecha and what we called "dickmechs" (basically a Gerwalk.  The player who made them kept on designing phallic mecha designs).

Nowadays I build mechs with a homebrew hybrid of Mekton II basic construction rules as well as some Techbook and Z Plus mixed in just to make it extra confusing.  I have my own custom universal weapon chart which I use instead of the weapon construction rules provided.  Overall Costs usually run roughly the same as Techbook designs.  The ceiling at the moment is 325 CP with a maximum of 40 points weight efficiency.  But so far the only way designs get to the ceiling is by multipliers.  Most designs are winged humanoid.  Speeds are starting to range about 16 to 20, with one machine able to push a 23 MA and one on the drawing board which will probably have a 24 to 26.  Tonnages are most commonly in the range from 60 to 80.  ACE and Maneuver Verniers are starting to appear on some designs.  The first transformable has been fielded.  There's lots of melee weapon use this time around.  The most common blade is starting to be what is called a "Nebula Blade" which is a 10K lightsaber weapon.  10K is sort of the unofficial damage ceiling for now.

When I'm doing Mekton, I suppose I end up with a sort of Gundam crossed with Zoids feel to things.  There are lots of Gundamesque designs running around with "real robot" beastmecha.

I have played Battletech, Robotech, Mekton II, Mekton Zeta, MECHA, Heavy Gear, Jovian Chronicles and M&M (they had a anime/mech supplement). Out of all of those, I think Mekton really hits the sweet spot.(The biggest weakness with the Jovian Chronicles setting for Mekton is that for some reason the Pathfinder mech (which PCs are piloting by default as the "good" guys) lacks enough missiles for a true Itano Circus. *sigh*) Math needed for the game is simple addition and subtraction. A non-scientific calculator is very useful for mech construction.

Battletech - Well, Battletech is good for playing Battletech. I started playing with 1st edition when it first came out and fights were pretty much long drug out attrition based slugfests. Battletech is Battletech. Math needed for the game is simple addition and subtraction. A non-scientific calculator is maybe needed for mech construction.    

Robotech - Palladium has to be about the worst system to use to run Robotech. The only one I can think of that would be worse would be use Battletech. It was filled with such silliness as Valkyries that have more armor (MDC) than main battle tanks and most destroids. Ummm yeah. KS, I want some of what you are smoking. The only good thing about Robotech is that you could use its books as source material to run it in another game system. Math needed for the game is simple addition and subtraction and there is no mech construction system.
 
MECHA - I have a little trouble remembering this one. This one with its Aztec style mechs was abstract and weird. It was also supposed to use 1/144 scale robot figures which meant that ranges for weapons... well you would end up using your entire room for a battlefield. Math needed for the game is simple addition and subtraction. A non-scientific calculator is useful for mech construction (maybe?).  

Heavy Gear and Jovian Chronicles - They are good, tight systems, but not without their flaws. The first is that they are deadly. Mooks die in nice fireballs, but then again, so does everyone else. Don't get too attached to any character; one fumbled defense roll and you are most likely dead. The  combination of using d6, stat modifiers of up to +3 and damage being based on measures of success was a hard system to tweak to tone down the lethality. It sometimes felt like a wargame that wanted to be a RPG. Math needed for the game is multiplication (for all MoS rolls) and maybe some addition and subtraction. A scientific calculator (for cube roots) is needed for mech construction. The other downside is that I don't think the various threat rating were very accurate, so the construction became, "just wing it." Also gears and mechs started out much simpler than their Mekton counterparts but it didn't take long for their weapons, perks and flaws lists to grow and grow to the point where it was hard to tell which system was more complex than which. Both were really nice settings and the rulebooks had consistently good artwork.  
 
M&M - I tried to get this one started but it always felt that we would be playing superheroes instead. The really needed a supplement dedicated to just the mecha genre.

I tried to set up an Adeptus Evangelion campaign some time ago, but one of my players encountered some health problems and we didn't want to have her miss out since it was her idea, so it fizzled.

Should try giving it another go Miss Lass. I always have trouble with keeping things going myself in my play-by-posts.

Quote from: 3rik;748615I've never played or run a mecha game, but I was wondering: has anybody here checked out Alephtar Games' BRP Mecha? And if so, what did you think of it?

I've got it and have made use of it... but not for a straight up mecha game (which I've never run with any system). I picked it up to flesh out the huge magical constructs in my fantasy campaign... which I'd previously just been winging/handwaving/avoiding, but now there's a war on and those things are going to be making a much bigger showing.
It's not really a gearhead type of supplement full of crunch and formulas, certainly not like GURPS Mecha. It's aimed at a wide variety of mecha... the really plausible stuff on up to God Mazinger (which is where my interest lies).
I like its approach... it's what I needed for my game and the players haven't raised any complaints (anyways, it's not like I described the setup to them as a mecha game, cause it's not).
I'm not sure how a hard-core mecha fan/gearhead would react to it... or if it would satisfy for running something like Appleseed, Votoms or Robotech, but it seems to speak to most of the elements of those.

MZ+ replaces the mecha creation rules in the Zeta corebook, so in that sense it's sort of a revision. I've never used it but I have read through it - it's very comprehensive, and is intended to provide stuff creation rules for all scales (ie. from humans to space dreadnoughts, basically) described in Zeta.

I played way more CP2020 than Zeta, and haven't played either in years, but this thread is making me want to bust it out again. I'm thinking a campaign where the player's have to fight off numerically inferior but far more technologically advanced aliens (I watched Gundam recently and sympathised far more with Zeon than that boring little twot Amuro). Although that might be a bit deadly for the PCs. Hmm.

Quote from: Simlasa;750018I've got it and have made use of it...

Do you feel it's RQ6-compatible?

Quote from: The Butcher;750055Do you feel it's RQ6-compatible?

I'm not familiar enough with RQ6 to make a decent guess at that. If it isn't I'm guessing it wouldn't be a huge amount of work to tweak it so it is.

Quote from: The Butcher;750055Do you feel it's RQ6-compatible?

I'm not familiar enough with RQ6 to make a decent guess at that. If it isn't I wouldn't think it'd be a huge amount of work to tweak it so it is.

This thread is really making me wish Mekton Zero was out right now.  The original release date was six months ago, so hopefully it should be soon...

I feel compelled to mention that Space Master (Rolemaster's sci-fi twin) had Battlemech rules in it but they were...not precisely intuitive as I recall.

Im really hanging out for Mekton Zero too!