Heavy Gear General: Better quality Mechs

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>armored core
>get reminded of that shit kikestarter

Fug

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So asked this last thread, but got no answer so will try again:

The RedBull no longer lists the missiles on the second turret as part of the standard loadout. Is this an oversight, or am I missing something?

Also; what do people think will be in the PRDF and NuCoal starters next year?

For PRDF I think 4 Warriors, 4 Warriors IV, 2 Crusaders and maybe an Argos. Obviously not counting stretch goals and shit like that.

Well the missiles may be the anti missile system they have, shooting down missiles with other missiles. Not sure otherwise however.

Bump

Monitoring this thread for big stompy robots.

Well take a seat and keep an eye out, while the threads have sort of slowed down a lot lately, interest is sparking and we are seeing more people wanting to join in.

And here is the latest beta for the rpg if you are interested in that sort of thing

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picture bump

Why would you play this when Battletech exists?

because heavy gear is cooler

Because battletech, while cool, is kinda dumb with its mecha.

Heavy gear has a more realistic stance on a mech's role on the battlefield. I've found battlemechs to be too big, whereas gears are the right size, filling the gap between infantry and tanks, without taking place of either.

Because the people who made Battletech are criminals, and everyone who plays it is profiting from the actions of criminals and thus are criminals themselves. Fuck everyone who's ever played or bought Battletech product.

Battletech, while I love it, is more of a simulation. There's a lot more record keeping and it tends to play slower. Heavy Gear is more fast paced, with a while different style of gameplay since the mecha fill a very different role.

Different games for different styles, so both can exist peacefully.

I honestly like both, but heavy gear is more realistic in its portrayal of mechs, In battletech it is mainly you have to have a lance of mechs in order to be competititve, a lance of tanks for instance will not do so well.

But in heavy gear a mech has to play smart against a tank to not get blown out of the water.

Both are fun games to play and I enjoy their lore. Both have their merits and both are fun, simple as that.

I only played Heavy Gear Blitz, the prior edition. This new one I have no experience with.

I love battletech. It's a classic, which is great.

HG at the time was a bit different. Your not-that-giant robots were like big humvees on legs, with huge AK-47s, who get their asses kicked by real tanks
The playstyle was different too. It was about flanking and coordination. Two gears firing their guns at each other almost never results in any real damage. But a gear laying down cover fire, another flanking around and a third lasing the target... enemy destroyed.

That was always what was fun about the prior edition. I hope they keep that in these new rules, the emphasis on maneuver being firepower.

The new edition is pretty fun so far, and yes you got to be lucky or packing a high powered weapon to take down a gear with one shot. It is about tactics and finding the best place and weapon to fire with. More dice rolls means more potential damage

Yeah, I love the new combat system. It really helped balance out some of the weapons and everything feels more useful now.

Yea, it is a lot of fun.

So starter for NuCoal. I imagine, if it follows the example set by others I think we'll see 4 Chasseurs, 4 Cuirassiers, 2 Chevaliers, 2 Jerboas and something else. I doubt they would throw in a Hussar, but maybe. Perhaps they'll get a tank?

I just can't wait for the stretch goals with this next kickstarter. If we can get a plastic Coyote that'd be sweet, or plastic Pitbulls and a Mustang. That'd be awesome.

I would like some sand riders, but probably would not get those

Yeah, I don't see infantry being in any of the starters.

Then the infantry being plastic isn't huge to me like it is with the Gears.

Yea which is fine in a lot of ways as well, but would like to see them none the less

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Because Battletech says:
Mechs are cool, lets make them as cool as possible.
While heavy gear says:
Mechs are cool, lets make them as believable as possible.
I prefer the latter both as a setting and aesthetically.

>lets make them as believable as possible
As someone who's played both BT and HG, I do feel that this is the time when I have to point out, say, the giant mecha Rambo knives and autocannon shaped like huge assault rifles that are present in Heavy Gear.

and here we see a rabid retard attempt to slam a successful property because some jews found out that they weren't making money off a licensing deal made between an up-and-coming game studio and the company that actually owned the rights and licenses to artwork that FASA was allowed to use for its silly little boardgame

never mind the fact the subsequent owners scrapped the inclusion of the original artwork and have been producing in-house designs for years

as realistic as possible means you get to keep some of the cool stuff.

Because why not?
I love mecha in many forms and shapes.

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How does the visigoth compare to the aller? I'm just learning the rules but the latter seems much better because of the rail gun and FT HAC.

It depends, the visigoth has some support benifits more than the aller with the ECM and ECCM versions

As realistic as possible would just be tanks with legs. Heavy gear takes a few liberties on things the setting has to have for rule of cool.
human-like mechs, FTL travel, etc. Unlike battletech though, it does what it can to make those things believable. That extra effort to make things seem more plausible and down to earth makes them so much more awesome in my eyes than 100 ton nuclear powered skyscraper robots.

The melee weapons in HG are kinda ridiculous. I'd have preferred something more like VOTOMS in that regard.

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The Visagoth packs a little more weaponrt. The tank gun hits harder than the railgun on the Aller, plus it has those rocket packs which give it even more options including indirect fire.

Both are absolute beasts, though, and any gear unfortunate enough to be caught by one in the open is fucked.

>The melee weapons in HG are kinda ridiculous.
While knife, sword and ax weapons are kind of dumb against robots I do love stuff like the spike guns and explosive lances though.

>that's supposed to be the Sidewinder
Great, they finally get ONE of the heads at least passable but completely and utterly fuck up the body.

God, fuck HG Arena's mech designer.

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I think the knife is actually a smart weapon for the gears at least, in this case you jam the knife into a joint and leave it there potentially making it hard to move an arm or leg

Well, at least it still has the antenna on the head. I'm honestly surprised sometimes that they even bothered to keep the fucking V-Engines with the "liberties" they've been taking with the designs.

The majority of gear melee weapons are for the gladiatorial arena shows and not meant for actual battlefield combat.

The knives are vibroknives, so remember that. They are much more combat effect then, say, a sword or axe. Rarely do gears get into hand-to-hand, but when they do, a subervibrating sharp edge makes it effective.

I just don't look at it as a heavy gear game anymore. At this point I'd be more bothered if they stopped going off the rails and hit uncanny valley between heavy gear and whatever they're going for now.
Maybe we'll get a decent spiritual successor to heavy gear 2's gameplay out of it.

Or jam it into the head of a gear and, subsequently, the head of the pilot.

Plus an ax to the V-Engine is sure to ruin someone's day.

So a bunch of units have 2 or more actions but less weapons then they can spend actions on. What can I do with the second or third action after firing the weapons besides using smoke?

Can you give examples of such units? I can't think of any 2 action models with only one weapon.

The Ballista Hun, Ostrogoth and Artemis of the South Army all have more actions then weapons.

So they do.

Can you not use the same weapon more than once a turn? I don't see anything saying you can't in the actions paragraph on page 23.

I don't know if I'm understanding correctly but page 34 first paragraph seemed to suggest otherwise.

>This section details the procedures to conduct Ranged, Direct fire attacks. Further special weapon attack cases can be found in section 10.0. Unless otherwise noted a weapon system may only be used to attack with once in each round regardless of weapon traits or a model having multiple actions.

I had to search the term "once" to find it because they're are some units with 2xweapon and I could understand what their benefit was so I assumed they were allowed to fire each once.

So it does. Wouldn't have thought to look there.

So yeah, no idea what their 2 actions are good for.

Okay, so I've been thinking about demos.

Would you guys recommend full forces, or single combat groups? I'm thinking like a GP squad and a single big fire support gear.

I think smaller may be better in this case, and would mean I don't need to build all my North models.

Also; Hunters come stock with fucking Panzerfausts? Where the hell do these things even go on the model?

I would do two squads for a demo game, 150 TV

Well full forces with 3 conbat groups using the starters I can get around 135 points per side.

I just think maybe keeping them smaller and faster might work better.

One more thing how does armor piercing work. I really can't grasp what they're trying to explain.

>A Target with an Armor Rating higher than the Penetration Rating of the attack will suffer damage equal to the Margin of Success up to the rating of the trait, or normal damage, whichever is greater.

Well with upgrades like veteran and stuff. That may be a good idea to show off the veteran skills and such

From how I understand it if you shoot something with really higj armor with a low PEN weapon that has APit will do damage equal to the MOS up to the rating.

I could be wrong, though. It's certainly not the best worded rule in the game.

I suppose with veterans you could get up to 150. I was getting the 13ish without any veterans or generic upgrades.

I suppose it can't hurt to try both options.

Yea that veteran reroll is pretty critical in a lot of ways, so always good to show it off. Plus the commanders. Not to complicated because you probably want a vet squad in every army you run for your main killy or protecting squad.

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I was directed at this thread when I asked about GMing a Western themed mech RPG.

I got the .PDFs from the link above, but what do the experts recommend using to play that setting?

The reading order for the lore anf fluff is on the op. So you can read them there, but if you wish to run it I heard you need to do a combo of 2nd and 3rd edition.

This is the beta of the new system

You'll probably also want to look at "Into the Badlands" for a more wild-west feel.

Huh. They finally got to revamping their RPG. Nice.

Personally I'm hoping for more stuff in the Jovian Chronicles area but for now I'll take some HG

I think DP9 is going to eventually revamp everything they have, for more cash and stuff

Man, i really dont like the art direction they're going with the gears...the models look great but they just look like skeletons with bolted on armor plating.

where is the universe right now in the time line?

the only eras i am remotely familiar with are the north v south stuff and the CEF invasion.

Earth has currently invaded again.

So there's Blitz, Tactical, Blitz Lock and Loaded and Arena.

Which is the actual skirmish one?

Arena is the smaller scale one, but you can play blitz with a small scale as well

There are two Blitz ones, any difference?

TN1950, Second CEF Invasion.

TN1935-39 was the Interpolar War

TN1914-17 was the War of the Alliance, AKA first CEF invasion

I have only played the new blitz, so cant help you talk about the rules for the other.

This is the current edition of the living rulebook

Jovian in early next year I think. I don't recall if they gave an exact date.

I just hope we see them expand some of the forces.

Greedy fucks.

I just hope it does well enough to warrant fonally seeing the other colonies. I suspect that New Jeruselem will have something similar to the Paladins of old.

>the giant mecha Rambo knives and autocannon shaped like huge assault rifles that are present in Heavy Gear.

To be fair, it seems like a big part of HG is making gears feel like infantry including grabbing weapons from the fallen armories. It's hard to restock a hardpoint MG when it's out of ammo or damaged, where in heavy gear, catching a round on your autocannon by chance means you huck it, holster it, and grab a new one off a gear as you pass it. Much like real life, too, the knife is a last ditch effort, though some gears have specialized punching pistons and such.

IIRC. gears top out at like 14 feet tall. They act more like space marines would, I'd say, in a realistic combat role. An MBT still smokes it in toe to toe combat, but gears chew up infantry due to superior durability, mobility and weapons.

So, yeah. Big infantry, not mecha. the mecha in the game has hardpoints, multiple crew and such. Gearstriders are dumb though.

Pretty much as it is stated in the fluff, Gears are replacements for the modern day Infantry fighting vehicles.

>Gearstriders are dumb though.

it doesn't seem like the gear striders are very popular...

what is the preferred era of most players here?

Trooper gears are usually around 14. Stuff like fire support gears and a few others tend to be bigger.

Yeah, they shoehorned every Terra Novan faction suddenly getting them so they could make big centerpiece models.

Thankfully they aren't so stupid good that the option is "bring a gearstrider or enjoy losing."

I like second CEF invasion. Lots of factions, lots of options.

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>replacements
No. Gears don't replace anything, IFVs still exist on Terra Nova. Gears have their own niche that doesn't exist in modern military doctrine.

>Gears have their own niche that doesn't exist in modern military doctrine.
Go on.

>it doesn't seem like the gear striders are very popular...
The old-guard of players usually dislikes them, not sure what newer players think of them.

>what is the preferred era of most players here?
The default era of 2e RPG is pretty cool. You can hang around in there for more low-key stuff and there's always the looming war with Earth to move into for more straight up combat.

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They're high mobility strike forces in the rough and harsh terra novan climate. Remember a lot of the planet is basically a hellish badland of canyons and hard to navigate rocky terrain that infantry doesnt fare well in and things like tanks have trouble navigating. Gears were developed to get firepower where it needed to be, able to scale steep slopes and handle the heat all while bringing enough firepower to make a difference.

It's like asking why anyone'd play chess when there's checkers.

>Gears are replacements for the modern day Infantry fighting vehicles.

More like they're replacement for immigrants and slave work. I understand they came about because the nations of Terranova needed to husband their grunts and because the badlands are a pain to operate in without some form of protection.

So they used the robotics they had to give their enviro-suited infantry more bang and mobility for the buck, with the additional benefit of needing to deploy less of them for the same firepower that way.