thread: 2006-11-30 : Mechaton FAQ
On 2006-12-04, Vincent wrote:
Uriel: The mech has, let's say, a honkin' big back-cannon (2 red at artillery) and a sniper rifle (1 red at artillery, 1 red at direct). What dice does it get at artillery, that's the question? The answer is, 2d6. It doesn't even get 3d6 at artillery. Right now that mech is wasting the sniper rifle's artillery potential. It should make the sniper rifle all artillery (to get the d8) or all direct fire. That's implicit in the written rules, but not explicit, so good question.
I never did say my ideal sensor rules, did I? Here they are:
1. You can spot even if you aren't rolling yellow dice.
2. You don't declare your spotting target until after you've rolled.
3. If you're rolling yellow dice, you can spot with any number (over 2, as spotting with a 1 or 2 is pointless). If you aren't, though, you can spot only with a 5 or 6.
That way, if you're rolling no yellow dice, and you're like, "huh, here's this pretty white 6, but my red, blue and green dice all came up 6s too, what shall I do with it?" then you can be like, "oh! I'll spot with it! I'll spot ... that guy! Yeah!" But if you're like, "what a load of crap roll," then you aren't allowed to consider who to spot at all.
That solves the handling time issue, makes spotting more common, and it still doesn't devalue yellow attachments at mech design time, no matter what you all think. If you want a mech to be good at spotting, you give it yellow dice, same as always - that's how the math works! "Mechs with no yellow dice make crappy spotters" doesn't imply "...so don't bother giving mechs yellow dice."
Me and my army of walkie talkie-toting chuckers will kick your ass.
Seth: 1) Pick a point and stick with it.
2) Huh, I can see this going either way. It hasn't come up in our games recently (that I've noticed), so I don't know. I guess my vote is to stick with the general rule ("those dice are already rolled") and say that the mech gets its one last shot off before it kacks.
