anyway: The Source Campaign: battle 3 setup

2009-04-01 : The Source Campaign: battle 3 setup

My turn!

1. Where on the map will this battle take place?
In space outside of C4, where the inbound trade arc crosses into the Galactic Core. My space navy is interdicting Sisterhood-controlled smoke shipments.

2. What's the special objective?
It's a gigantic trade ship. It represents control of the flow of smoke.

3. What's the battle environment?
Space! Vector movement! It's in space with total vector movement.
3a. Each army gets 6 1-shot rockets. (6 is a lot! Don't forget these.)
3b. No special attachments required.
3c. No declared target => +1 thrust (no ranged weapons DOES NOT give you a green d8)
Additional initiative die => additional go (w/ no move)

4. What army limits for Rob and J?
None of your mechs (that is, space ships) can have armor attachments. Only I can have blue dice. Ha!

Let's say that in this universe, space weapon technology has solidly outpaced shielding technology. My vast resources let me afford to give my space ships effective armor; neither of you have that kind of money to burn.

To sum up: 6 1-shot rockets each + no blue dice = carnage.

1. On 2009-04-01, Vincent said:

Vector movement in Mechaton

You'll need a vector marker for each of your mechs. You have to be able to tell which vector marker on the table goes with which mech, so key them somehow. Mine are color coordinated, for instance.

On the table, a mech's vector marker shows its current movement vector.

When you assign a die to movement, that means you're thrusting, which moves your vector marker (NOT your mech directly). Thrust in any direction; as always in Mechaton, facing doesn't matter.

Thrust = half movement, so:
Movement die 1-2 = move your vector marker 1
Movement die 3-4 = move your vector marker 2
Movement die 5-6 = move your vector marker 3
Movement die 7-8 = move your vector marker 4
(We won't be using the green d8, so this last won't happen in this battle.)

After you've thrusted, move your mech:

Put a placeholder on the table. Draw a line from your mech, through its vector marker, to a point on the table again as far.

Examples (m=mech, v=vector marker, p=placeholder):
m—-v becomes m—-v—-p
m———-v becomes m———-v———-p
m-v becomes m-v-p

Now move your mech to its vector marker and its vector marker to the placeholder.

Examples (o=old mech position, m=mech, v=vector marker):
m—-v becomes m—-v—-p becomes

o—-

m—-v
m———-v becomes m———-v———-p becomes

o———-

m———-v
m-v becomes m-v-p becomes

m-v

In sum: thrust to move your vector marker, then use your vector marker to move your mech, and use a placeholder to preserve your vector.

Because you thrust only half your movement die, once you get going as fast as 5 or 6 you won't be able to stop or make a tight turn in a single turn. This is what makes vector movement fun! You can easily get your mechs moving faster than they can maneuver. Otherwise we might as well play with normal movement.

Collisions:

If you're rolling any green dice, you can pass through cover, as always.

If you aren't rolling any green dice, when your movement takes you through cover, you crash into it instead. Roll a damage die against yourself for each full 1 in your vector - 6s hit you, 4-5s hit the obstacle - then reduce your vector to 0.

(Sadly, this doesn't let you hit a wall at an angle and slide along it, for instance; it supposes all collisions head-on. Anybody know a clever way to deal with angled collisions without having to do trig in the middle of the game?)

This doesn't apply to other mechs. Pass through other mechs without a collision. However, there are the ramming rules: for hand to hand attacks, measure from vector marker to vector marker, and treat that number as a spot on the target.

Questions welcome, as always.

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