I know every once in a while someone will make a thread looking for info on mecha RPGs...

I know every once in a while someone will make a thread looking for info on mecha RPGs, but I've been wondering why there's never been a movement for a Gundam wargame in the vein of Infinity or WH40k (ie. Each model has associated stats and operates individually or as part of a squad to defeat a similarly-sized opposing force). UC has a pretty consistent scale of power, ignoring the obvious outliers, and the 1/144 sale range is very diverse. I feel like between /m/ and Veeky Forums, the concentrated autism could produce a half-decent kitchen table wargame.

Other urls found in this thread:

drivethrurpg.com/product/201440/Jovian-Wars--Alpha-Playtest-Rules-Package-v1?cPath=73_124&affiliate_id=4310
boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6078/mobile-suit-gundam-jabro
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

BattleTech.

>but I've been wondering why there's never been a movement for a Gundam wargame in the vein of Infinity or WH40k

A lot of Gundam revolves around characters rather than armies, or it did at first. It's about individual people and how they defined history rather than the ebb and flow of massive interstellar factions. This sort of narrative style doesn't lend itself well to a Wargame, since whole factions don't really have solid identities or doctrines.

Also, Zakku a best, Gundam a shit, though my favorite tech from the series was probably the mobile workers introduced in Iron Blooded Orphans. I'm a sucker for gritty, 'realistic' military tech.

Robotech tried it. I hear it wasn't that great.

>This sort of narrative style doesn't lend itself well to a Wargame

You're totally ignoring how many people love stories about grunts.

Why are you assuming that a Gundam wargame -has- to be about named characters, and therefore has to be shit? That's obviously completely antithetical to what's being proposed.

There's a reason people do army builds like OP's pick, and there's a reason suits like the Graze had so many damn kits. People love grunts, and love them more when they're in groups, and abso-fucking-lutely love big setpiece battles. And if you want a big damn hero, then it can be like almost any other wargame and have big damn hero units, too.

You like mobile workers, but you don't want to re-enact the opening battle of two armies of mobile workers fighting around a Gundam smacking the shit out of three grunt suits. You need to love yourself more, user. You need to FUCKING LOVE YOURSELF.

>in the vein of Infinity or WH40k

BattleTech: Alpha Strike

Don't fucking truncate the crux of my point, asshole.
>since whole factions don't really have solid identities or doctrines.

Factions in Gundam aren't separated by tactical identities, they're separated by aesthetic identities and their cast of important characters. This makes it difficult to build a wargame around since the popular wargames all live and die on their mechanics and distinct factions, or at the very least the ability to build a functional but still unique army.

Gundam doesn't offer that as a setting.

>but you don't want to re-enact the opening battle of two armies of mobile workers fighting around a Gundam smacking the shit out of three grunt suits.

Actually that would be pretty tits, but I'd prefer it if mobile workers could stand up to a Gundam by themselves instead of being infantry fodder. They're such a weirdly niche combat vehicle.

What about that Heavy Gear?

Tanks and their equivalent should be effective against mobile suits. The zaku machine fires a 120mm round iirc; same as a modern MBT. In IBO things might be different because lolnanolaminate armor.

Mobile workers are a kind of odd interim combat vehicle. Rather than being full fledged MBT they're closer to a large tankette or infantry fighting vehicle.

Another issue is that the MWs in Tekkadan's inventory aren't made for hitting hard targets like a Gundam or mobile suit in the first place, though they'll shit on anything smaller than that.

The Jovian Chronicles setting is Not-UC-Gundam, there was a tabletop wargame called Lightning Strike.

DP9 recently revived the line and renamed it Jovian Wars.

drivethrurpg.com/product/201440/Jovian-Wars--Alpha-Playtest-Rules-Package-v1?cPath=73_124&affiliate_id=4310

There's no point: Current existing MRPGs aren't that good, and any new ones are instantly hated.

Believe it or not Heavy Gear Blitz is actually a 1/144 scale wargame, it's just not as apparent because the mecha are small and VOTOMs size.

1) No one is talking about RPGs.

2) New ones aren't instantly hated. Just your shitty homebrew because you acted like a little shit and threw a tantrum when the feedback you got didn't say your game was perfect.

Yeah I know who you are.

First of all, the crux of your point is that Gundam stories are character-driven:

>A lot of Gundam revolves around characters rather than armies, or it did at first. It's about individual people and how they defined history rather than the ebb and flow of massive interstellar factions. This sort of narrative style doesn't lend itself well to a Wargame, since whole factions don't really have solid identities or doctrines.

A tail-end addendum about tactical doctrine doesn't change that - to say nothing of the fact that you're claiming factions don't have enough personality to drive the narrative in the absence of named characters, meaning you're still talking about the "character" that drives the story.

Second of all, it's not even true. The entire start of the One Year War is about a fundamental shift in tactical and strategic doctrine as mobile suits are introduced, and the EF and Zeon continue to be different in this regard as they adopt different technologies and employ them differently as Zeon experiments with mobile armors and multiple mass-produced and limited-production mobile suits and one-off Mobile Armors while the Federation relies on mobile suits, balls, and a small number of super-advanced suits. JUST during the end of the OYW, JUST looking at the things that happened in space.

And then there's the different weapons, and support vehicles, and capital ships, and their relations to each other, and mission-specific variants of battlefield-specific variant mobiles suits, and the way things explode when bits and funnels and psycommu and quasi-psycommu get involved, and when factions break down into sub-factions and splinter groups with different ideologies...

And that's JUST the early Universal Century.

>Factions in Gundam aren't separated by tactical identities, they're separated by aesthetic identities and their cast of important characters. This makes it difficult to build a wargame around since the popular wargames all live and die on their mechanics and distinct factions, or at the very least the ability to build a functional but still unique army.
desu all I'd be happy enough to field some good old Zack vs Jim field battles and leave the one-off super prototypes for some special missions. There's a pretty large variety of suits, but I admit a lot of the differences would be pretty nuanced without clear jumps in tech progression (say, the implementation of 360 cockpit huds giving a pilot vastly improved situational awareness).

One problem I see is that in the UC series, the war was pretty much over for Zeon once the Feds started mass-producing beam weapons, which unlike solid-shell weapons used up to that point, had very good odds of "one shot, one kill".
Without the beam spam, or with anti-beam coating, things get interesting again.

If you go strictly OYW, you can balance that pretty easily by making beam weapons ungodly expensive. Other eras get trickier as they get more commonplace.


Also ya'll know there are actual gundam wargames, right?

boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6078/mobile-suit-gundam-jabro

Bullshit, we know The doctrines of most of the au's factions, and the big uc factions.

We know what they use, where, and in what amounts. And to top it off we know the culture behind The Uc factions, hell we even know their fashion

>mobile worker figure is ungodly expensive and the Biscuit and Orga figures aren't even painted

If they were going to make you do work to make it look good anyway they should have made it a model kit, would have been cheaper.

I've never heard of it, no. Is it even in English?

Dunno, never played it.

All I know is its a hex and chit game based on Squad Leader.
There are actually a couple of Gundam strategy wargames but I'm not 100% sure they all use the same system.

Nope. None of the Gundam games have been printed in English that I know of.

>Nope. None of the Gundam games have been printed in English that I know of.
That's not very helpful then, friend.

Well,
A) You might find some fan translations with some research

B) The Jaburo one, at least, you now know is based on Squad Leader. So there's your basis for homebrew.

Oh, also

C) The fact they exist shows it can be done, so all the people saying it can't work upthread should shut the fuck up, because it's already been fucking done.

Are you me? I'm constantly thinking about this, but I have no game making experience, so I haven't done anything about it

>Factions in Gundam aren't separated by tactical identities, they're separated by aesthetic identities and their cast of important characters.
But that's wrong.
The EFSF and the Principality of Zeon feel very distinct, with the Federation using flexible, multi-purpose mechs (GMs) backed up by incredibly powerful super-mechs (Gundam) and ground units (Tanks, Hovercraft, etc.)

While Zeon use specialist mechs; melee units (Gouf), skirmishers (Dom), and a ton of various aquatic mechs. They back these up with plentiful, tough, yet poorly armed Zakus. Also weird specialist aircraft like those tanks whose turrets fly around I forget what they're called.

I see /m/'s "what if gunpla battle was real" autism threads and wonder why no one hasn't taken the first step into making it happen. I tried my hand at it a couple years ago, but quickly realized it was a project beyond the scope of my dumb ass.

>Tanks and their equivalent should be effective against mobile suits.

They're effective when taken in numbers user, assuming the production rates of UC era. And remember, this robot can basically dodge your fucking shots, because UC tech is THAT insane.

>The zaku machine fires a 120mm round iirc; same as a modern MBT.

With 300 rpm per second, this was enought to flatten any type 61 you see. The only tactics viable against MS is by swarm it with coordinated fire, which is what Revill's do at Odessa, and that won't really succeed if the Zeon don't go full retard on MAs and not stretch themselves too thin.

And yes, don't forget to bring your Gundam.

If you really want an effective solo anti MS machines, see Hildolfr or Assault Guntank, those was bassically UC Bolos on roids.

>>enormous robots with multiple servos required for movement are capable of dodging AP shells traveling at mach 5
This is physically impossible no matter how much handwavium you use.

It's probably more like that unlike threaded vehicles they can duck, weave and change their profile rapidly.

But yeah, it's silly mecha bullshit. But so are mechs to begin with.

Jovian Chronicles is Gundam with enough changes to get around copyright.

Spun out of Mekton/ Mekton Zeta, which is great if you love autistic number-crunching.

They are physically incapable of moving fast enough to dodge. Ducking or weaving is meaningless. They have trouble with missile swarms, do people realise that shells travel 5x faster than most ATGMs?

>Ducking or weaving is meaningless.

It's not meaningless for those aiming the things.

It was possible with massproduced, lightweight titanium frame with 1000 years worth of advanced servos and actuators.

And since the combat in UC was reduced to VR, the seasoned pilot (Zeon has hundreds of them in their sleeves that time) can basically dodge the bullet by predicting where those turrets are pointing at. Which is why the massed voley was effective against MS was effective, the point is not to just blow that 3x thick of composites armour out of the water, but also to confuse the pilot.

>With 300 rpm per second
>300 rounds per minute per second

Unless you are capable of seeing the future, the moment that the shell is ejected from the barrel, a mech cannot physically dodge when you factor up the engine needing to route power to the mechanical limbs to begin the process of moving, those limbs need to move MECHANICALLY, and then travel fast enough. All to dodge something moving at mach 6. The human brain calculating information and then reacting alone is stacking the odds against you.

"oh but they are so super and amazing they are capable of doing that anyway".

Wunderbar. This technology and personnel would be far better suited in wheeled vehicles then. Bi-pedal transport is the worst mode of transport in existence. Mechs are shit, gundam is gay.

And its also fiction to begin with, so comparing things that come from a so distant future which is come with their own handwavium fuckery with our current tech and doctrines is as stupid as Baneblade realistification thread.

So why don't y'all drop that autistic shit, and post MSes instead?

Yes, i was wrong in that brother /k/ommodos, thank you.

>Mechs are shit, gundam is gay.

So you come so far to a thread that you don't even like, with all that slapstick wall of text, just to autistically tell that?

Holy shit, thanks to show how retarded you are user....

See
And
>>the seasoned pilot (Zeon has hundreds of them in their sleeves that time) can basically dodge the bullet by predicting where those turrets are pointing at
I wonder if any mech fans re-read this statement to realise it's even more ridiculous sounding than saying their wank-tier human being is able to dodge bullets fired from machine guns when they're in-person outside of their mech suits. Because that's more feasible than giant mechs dodging tanking shells. And that alone is ass-fuck retarded.

Listen here dipshit.

I'm not saying the mech is dodging the shell.

I'm saying its erratic movement (compared to a more predictable movement of a wheeled or threaded vehicle) makes it harder to aim at, and so more likely to miss a target.

Hey, how about we have one fucking mecha thread without the motherfucking 'realism' autsim?

Jesus Christ.

Do you realise that modern-day fire control systems deal with more computationally difficult situations? What a shit-tier argument

NO. ONE. FUCKING. CARES.

>Each model has associated stats and operates individually or as part of a squad to defeat a similarly-sized opposing force

You should look into MF0

Well can we have a feasibly good universe explaining mecha instead of autistic manchildren savant space operas instead?

Stop. Fucking stop. Stop enabling this bullshit. Stop being a dumbass by feeding the dumbass.

Do you realize how stupid you are bringing irl shit to a thread about supertech fictional warfare?

No?

Yeah, thats what i thought, now report back to your 114st chaiborne wariors CO user, your mission is complete here.

You care enough to get assblasted and defensive when someone calls you out for enjoying your autistic male-version of "the bold and the beautiful", faggot.

Hey you know what'll actually shut him up?

Not responding to him.

>supertech
You mean outdated by 2012 standards. God forbid somebody want supertech fictional warfare done with a sense of legitimacy without masturbatory autistic fantasies about superhumans avenging their nakama in their reality bending thousand-folded Federation titanium penis extensions

Welp, there goes another thread down the shitpost hole.

Different user here

Have you tried ignoring the troll instead of feeding him

Yes, everybody want an entertainment about supertech operas that by what your claim "obsolete", instead of superturboautisticmanchildrenabsolutely100%accuratefantasyofsomethingthattheycan'treachoutsideofhisownbassement.

Because most of people wasn't a savant autism.

I'm not one of the anons arguing, just pointing out what happens when the realism arguments start because some anons are too stupid to not engage the realism fags.

Yes, all started because somebody triggering the lurking /pol/ac/k/. Now the damages are done, lets get back at the topic.

Now, considering that i want to start a long term campaign about UC mercenaries either in land or space campaign, what wargame system do you suggest?

Zakus are cute. CUTE!

Are you running an RPG campaign? Why do you want a war game?

No, its a wargame campaign...

Like the Kill Team campaign and such.

The Silhouette Core tactical rules could work.

SolCore is half RPG half Wargame. Before Heavy Gear Blitz made the separation between RPG and Wargame they used to be one in the same, sort of like how the Mechwarrior RPG would just use Battletech for mech battles.

...

Zeon had tons of zany experimental units, while the Feds generally took from what they learned and produced mobile suits a cut ahead of that. Basic GMs were all around superior to everything but the Gelgoog and about on the level with the Dom/Rick Dom, but a Gouf could still fuck a GM up in melee and Zaku Is made great snipers despite being obsolete models.

A Federation force in any game would pretty much be made up of high-end generalists, while a Zeon force would consist of a lot of inferior but well-performing-in-their-field specialists.

...

>there will NEVER EVER be a MkV HG

B-but that was Xeku Zwei....