thread: 2006-05-18 : Mechaton: done playtesting
On 2006-05-19, Sydney Freedberg wrote:
Emily, Joshua, thanks for the design discussions.
To get all the way to true "combined arms," you'd probably need to have mech size interact with terrain in a way that gave advantages (e.g. better cover) to the smallest, slowest designs (i.e. the infantry)—but I doubt that the added fun is worth the extra complexity, at least given how nicely Mechaton's shaped up as is.
What really pleases me is that Vincent appears to have made a "design cool things and make 'em fight!" game that—thanks to a bunch of careful balancing mechanisms, among other things—does not boil down to everyone making as much as they can of a single optimal design.
This makes NinJ go "Blue die for being little!"
I didn't make any little, slow guys. They probably would have gotten no Greens but two Blues.
This makes SF go "Are "blue dice" in the rules?"
Can't find the dang links at the moment...
This makes AG go "Blue are for shields/evasion"
They're in the original rules. Red for attacks, green for move, blue for defense, white for whatever.
This makes BL go "Maybe you can only get one bonus dice"
So if your guy is little with no ranged weapons, he is either hard to hit and fast but not both?
This makes SF go "Being slow can be good..."
...because moving objects are easier to see, and slow movement allows you to creep along under cover more easily. But I don't think terrain works in this way in Mechaton, so I'd suspect "blue die for being little" is a better idea than "blue die for being slow."
