thread: 2006-10-30 : Mechaton developments
On 2006-11-02, NinJ wrote:
You know, we've never really settled on non-mecha rules. We'd talked about other stuff having two dice: a tank might have a Red at Artillery range and a green, for instance.
They're worse per dude than a mecha, though. They'd get lots of initiative dice, which is I guess good, but they'd decrease your points per.
People rules are just like mecha rules. You have a stand with a bunch of guys on it. One guy gets a grenade launcher (2R at Direct range), one guy gets a walkie-talkie, and that's a Yellow. I think the catch is that they can't fight with only Whites: they don't have big, smashy hands and feet to fight with. It's gonna be hard to knee-groin a mecha standing nine feet tall.
Until we have time to take some pics, here's an approximation of my guys.
Vincent's guys:
We haven't seen Emily's yet! Em, I propose something along the lines of Dougram (though smaller, of course), or Patlabor. Both seem to me to be the kind of high-tech, top of the line mecha that the Occupying Power would have. I'd call them, like, fifth generation ptimans. (Mine are "second generation".)
Vincent's Chuckers are first generation pitmans. They're controlled with levers and pedals and are pretty much like armed forklifts. They even have big diesel mufflers on the back.
My AIn 11s are second generation pitmans. They mimic the body movements of the wearer. They're like Shirow's Landmates. They give full field of vision through a now-common full-surround video screen. There's a computer that speaks, though we can't get it to speak in Mukun, so we've had to learn to understand its feedback from Turkanian, the language of the nation of their manufacture.
Emily's I propose are fifth generation. They intercept the nervous impulses of the pilot and translate them into motion. Likewise, feedback is through the five senses: tasting poisonous gasses, feeling an itch on the back of your head when someone's behind you, seeing the trajectory of a target for fire-leading purposes. All sensory data is very buffered: nothing hurts that much, for instance, though you feel hits. It's all very fancy. They probably get clogged with sand and dirt and require support crew in vehicles, which could totally be the objectives you're defending.
