Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Proposal: Better Go Get Your Armourer

Timed out and failed, 1 vote to 3. Josh

Adminned at 18 Dec 2020 13:45:40 UTC

Repeal the rules Pilot Development, Shell Archetypes, Custom Shells, Mods, and Emergency Shutdown (including any subrules).

Throughout the ruleset, change “Demobbed” to “Outfitting”. Change the status of each Pilot who is Demobbed to Outfitting.

In the rule Pilots and Shells, change the text

At any time each Pilot may be Demobbed or Jockeying or Recovering, defaulting to Demobbed, and their status is publicly tracked. An Demobbed Pilot may change themselves to be Jockeying at any time. A Jockeying Pilot has the following tracked information: a Shell Type (whether Archetype or Subtype) and amounts of Power, Attack and Defence (which are all non-negative integer).

When a Pilot sets themselves to Jockeying, they must select a Shell Archetype or Subtype. The list of available Shell Archetypes can be found in the rule Shell Archetypes. They must then set their Power, Attack and Defence to the default value for their selected Shell Archetype.

If a Jockeying Pilot ever has a Power of zero then their Shell is destroyed. A Jockeying Pilot with a destroyed Shell must set their status to Recovering and blank their Shell Type, Power, Attack and Defence.

To read

At any time each Pilot may be Outfitting, Jockeying or Recovering, defaulting to Outfitting, and their status is publicly tracked. A Outfitting or Jockeying Pilot may have the following tracked information: a Shell Type (whether Archetype or Subtype), amounts of Power, Attack and Defence (which are all non-negative integer), and an Arsenal.

When a Pilot is Outfitting, they may freely select a Shell. They must then set their Power, Attack and Defence to the default value for their selected Shell. They may also freely select an Arsenal, which is comprised of a list of Arms; whenever a Pilot changes their Arsenal they must modify their statistics as appropriate. The list of available Shells and Arms can be found in the rule Armoury. At any time, an Outfitting Pilot with a Shell may set themselves to Jockeying.

If a Jockeying Pilot ever has a Power of zero then their Shell is destroyed. Additionally, as a weekly action, a Jockeying Pilot may perform an Emergency Shutdown to destroy their Shell. A Jockeying Pilot with a destroyed Shell must set their status to Recovering and blank their Shell Type, Power, Attack, Defence and Arsenal.

Add a new subrule to the rule Pilots and Shells, called Armoury:

Each Shell has a name, a brief description (which is flavourtext), a default Power value, a default Attack and a default Defence. The following is the list of Shells that has been approved by RAID R&D:

* The Mark I
** Description: The first Shells to roll off of the Ansible’s production line. Clunky, slow, but durable.
** Default Power: 90, Attack: 15, Defence: 20

Each Arm has a name (which is flavour text), cost and an effect. The cost of an Arm must be spent in Power when it is added to a Pilot’s Arsenal, and may be refunded if an Outfitting Pilot removes the Arm from their Arsenal. An Arm may not be added to an Arsenal if it would cause a Shell’s Power to be reduced to zero or below. Multiple instances of the same Arm do not stack in effect. The following is the list of Shells that has been approved by RAID R&D:

* Auxiliary Reactor - Cost: 10. Effect: +20% Power -20% Defense
* Structural Reinforcement Plates - Cost: 10. Effect: -20% Power +20% Defense
* Side Jets - Cost: 20. Effect: +10% Attack +10% Defense
* Onboard AI - Cost: 20. Effect: Every time a Pilot with this Arm defeats a Bogey, gain 20 power.
* Efficient Circuitry - Cost: 30. Effect: Each subsequent Fire Attempt on the same Bogey after the first costs 7 Power instead of 10.
* Cluster Munitions - Cost: 40. Effect: When a Pilot with this Arm declares a fire post, they may declare a second Bogey as an additional target, using the same fire vector at no additional cost. When such a fire post is resolved the main target should be resolved first, followed immediately by the additional target.
* Shielded Cabling - Cost: 20. Effect: A Bogey’s abilities can’t reduce the power, attack or defense of Pilots with this Arm.
* Soul Threasher - Cost: 50. Effect: Whenever a civilian attack is resolved successfully, Pilots with this Arm gain 10 power.
* Heavy Core - Cost:0. Gain 10 Power. If a Jockey has this Arm in their Arsenal then they may not have more than one other Arm in their Armoury.

Add a new subrule to the rule Pilots and Shells, called Learning and Development:

Each Pilot has the following trackable variables: Experience and Knowledge.

Experience can be gained in the following ways:

* A Pilot gains 1 Experience every time they start Jockeying a new Shell
* A Pilot gains experience equal to the Experience Yield of a Bogey’s sub-species whenever a Bogey is eliminated as a result of one of their Fire Actions
* A Pilot gains 1 Experience every time they cease to be Jockeying because their Shell is destroyed, unless it was destroyed as a result of an Emergency Shutdown

Whenever a Pilot’s Shell is destroyed, while they are Recovering, they may spend the cost in Experience of an Arm that they had in their most recent Armoury to gain it as a Meme. While Outfitting, a Pilot may add any Arm that they have as a Meme to their Armoury without paying its cost.

Change the description of the ‘Refracted Crystal Heart’ DEVA Reaction to “-”. Remove the Mechanoids of all Pilots. Uphold the statistics of all currently Jockeying Pilots.

Sorry, another long one. Attempting to streamline and simplify the shells, mods and experience mechanics. I hope that the effect of this will be much simpler.

This does take out power cores, but I think that’s fine.

Comments

Coderblaze:

16-12-2020 14:46:34 UTC

Efficient Circuitry doesn’t stack with Water Mechanoid. This is probably intended.

Josh: Observer he/they

16-12-2020 14:54:30 UTC

Ah right we should be getting rid of mechanoids, thank you, hang on

Josh: Observer he/they

16-12-2020 14:56:17 UTC

Okay, that’s fixed up

Coderblaze:

16-12-2020 14:59:47 UTC

Actually there are a few of these that do not stack with their mechanoid equivalents. (Shielded Cable, Efficient Circuitry, Cluster Munitions maybe)

Also the metal Mechanoid would need to have its ability changed, as it currently references mods.

Finally, do we want to allow Pilots to put any number of these on their mechs? Unless they use the heavy core there is no limit now.

What happens if I build a mech that starts with 0 or less power?
Instant XP?

Coderblaze:

16-12-2020 15:01:02 UTC

Oh this would replace Mechanoids entirely. Feel free to disregard the first half of my previous comment.

Josh: Observer he/they

16-12-2020 15:14:27 UTC

Good point about the XP loop! Thank you, I would definitely have sat on that and exploited it.

The limit is the Power cost, I think - with 90 Energy to spend and firing costing 10 you don’t want to be going too wild.

Bucky:

16-12-2020 15:55:29 UTC

Your intended list of Arms is actually another list of Shells. Drafting error?

I’m not sure what an Armory is in the last couple of sentences. Assuming it means Arsenal, Pilots might be able to use memes as Power boosters by adding arms for free and removing them for a refund.

As worded, I think it’s possible to carry over your Arsenal from a previous shell without paying for it in your new Shell. Or, since it’s untracked when not Jockeying, to claim all the ex-Mechanoid Arms for free while Outfitting. This supersedes all my concerns below.

There’s little point in having an Auxiliary Reactor that costs power to equip, or to have the Plates cost extra power beyond their cost.

The power-conserving Mechaniods seem to be overpriced here.

Josh: Observer he/they

16-12-2020 16:09:43 UTC

Alas, out of the editing window.

All good points.

Fail and repropose or pass and fix?

Bucky:

16-12-2020 16:37:31 UTC

against

Raven1207: he/they

16-12-2020 17:33:39 UTC

against

Coderblaze:

16-12-2020 17:47:50 UTC

against

Josh: Observer he/they

16-12-2020 18:10:33 UTC

Is the feedback here just the bugs or is it dislike for the entire proposal?

Coderblaze:

16-12-2020 19:42:09 UTC

I guess I’m fine with removing mechanoids. The bugs need to be ironed out though.

Bucky:

16-12-2020 22:42:28 UTC

I have nothing against streamlining the various customization options in principle, but multiple issues with its execution here as described above.