Can we have a lancer thread without it turning into a massive shitshow? I've been reading the beta 1...

alternatively, post cool robots

Why is the minigun on it's arm facing backwards?

idk, i would presume it flips forward for use

But then the ammo feed would be wrapping around to the outside of the weapon and could foul easier. I'm going to assume the artist just fucked up.

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Lancer looks pretty neat, but it does need work. A lot of people think chargen, and particularly licenses, is kinda fucked up right now, and the licenses are also highly imbalanced.

Still, I agree OP, I like the direction it's going and hope they tune it up over the course of the playtests.

Something that was brought up a lot in a previous thread was murderous AI being a boring option, which I do agree with. It's listed as one of three, but I still think explicitly having some nuance and chances for interesting RP in negotiating with your unshackled AI would be good plan.

If you want to focus on that kind of thing, there's an entire Talent set entirely about boosting into melee combat with these huge rocket assisted charges. The capstone for which is fucking ridiculous.

Unstoppable Force (Rank III): When you take the boost action, you can choose to supercharge your mech’s servos. Take 1d6 heat damage, but if you move in a straight line, gain the following benefits:
- You can freely pass through enemies and obstacles. Obstacles are punched through, destroyed, or otherwise smashed out of the way. If you pass through an obstacle larger than yourself, it counts as dangerous terrain.
- You ignore difficult terrain
- You can make a free melee attack and a free ram attack against any targets your mech passes through during your move

I intend to run a game of Lancer on Fridays, at around maybe 4 PM EST (The Time floats due to players and scheduling), over on Sup/tg/. The room's #FiveLancer

Technophile has been seriously buffed in regards to AI. Rank I makes any unshackled AI in your mech non-hostile to you. I mean, it can still fuck you up, ignore you, or pursue its own plans, but it's not going to actively try and murder you.

It's still useless as a starting trait since there's no starting AIs at the moment, but grabbing it at the same time you rank up and unlock an AI would be a prudent choice.

Also, yes, the License system is kind of shitty. I kind of like the concept, and it seems pretty great in execution, but it also locks you into buying up to Rank III in that Mech Core so you don't miss out on getting that extra system space. And it kind of keeps a starting player down because you might need to get Rank II in a couple Cores before things get really interesting. The License system looks like it really comes into its own at around Level 5, which doesn't seem that bad since by then the PCs are experienced veterans and they're probably starting to become interesting characters as well.

>竜神の剣を喰らえ!

>Also, yes, the License system is kind of shitty.

One idea that was tossed around in an earlier thread was giving players 'floating' license that could be moved around. The way I would go about this is giving out floating licences at 0th, 5th and 10th levels, the players can move these around freely when leveling, however the floating licences only unlock cores and gear and do not modify the players kit (stats). Obviously this is going to make the players more powerful, but on the upside, the floating licences get players out of their Everests by level 1 and can be used for mission specific gear later.

Also, the fillable .pdf character sheet could use a little tuning, namely the systems & modules boxes. You need to abbreviate like motherfucker to fit anything in them and that kind of defeats the purpose of having those written down on the char sheet so you don't need to look shit up during play. What I would like to have is two lines, first line has boxes for name, EP/IP and tags, second page just has an page wide box for the effect/description and have more than 6 pairs of lines.

Possibly having Manufacturer specific "generic" licenses which grant access to a small selection of basic gear available to a manufacturer, and would work like a toolkit for what that manufacturer specializes in rather than having to dump two ranks into a mech model for a single piece of gear.

Of course, then you'd have to rework the entire system and everything is fucked, but it'd work a little more like a tech tree where you buy up generics and each rank you spend gets you more and more specialized.

Then again, I don't even know what a finished system would look like in this way, so I'm kind of talking out of my ass.

Still, mission-specific gear is a good idea, although a good deal of that is already covered by the GMS licenses everyone gets. Well, I guess GMS also covers the generic I suggested as well, although each manufacturer package might have more tailored equipment to share.

When it runs and moves its arms, it prevents the barrel from hitting the ground or other objects, allowing a great degree of movement

The belt feeds into a second storage container, separate from the part that flips forward

How good is the game? I'm wanting something like Gundam or Macross and been looking for games to run it in (been thinking more about the upcoming Genesys RPG made by Fantasy Flight Games). Would this work?

It's OK, it's obviously in "beta" phase.

It's more focused on mercs and companies and having a sort of Lego approach to mechs (sorta like Armored Core), so it may not fit Gundam/Macross that well.

Not that user, but ramming is the pinnacle of mech-romance.
I want to redirect all powers to thrusters and slam my metric shit-tonne of military-grade equipment face-first into the enemies of the state. I want my mech to be nothing BUT thrusters and armor plating. If I cant hurt my enemy by giving him a 500 km/s headbutt from 500m away, why even play?

The thing that seemeed goofy to me about technophile is that it lets you have two AIs installed in your mech without taking up any component space. That seems like a huge deal, since AIs are all fairly bulky systems.

Does anyone else think invasion might be a little too good? At level 0, if you take the hacker trait, invasions destroy instead of disable their targetted systems, whereas weapons fire requires rolls on the critical table. At level 9, with Goblin 3, Medusa 3, and Minotaur 3 from Horus, you can have a goblin core with 16 systems, an additional +3 to invasions and +6 e-defense, and the ability to make up to three invasions in a round. On top of that, with your +9 to invasions, you can just eat the two difficulty to use puppetmaster all the time and keep at least one enemy mech permenantly allied. Or, just destroy half their weapons in one round and move on, or use the hacker 3 thing to destroy their optics so they're permenantly jammed. And, you inflict a cumulative +1 difficulty for anyone who tries to invade you, and if they fail their invasion you can destroy their systems and shut them down in response. It seems like the only mechs that can keep up with an even halfway competent Goblin core are other Horus cores.

This looks awful.

Why didn't you post actual Lancer art to start the thread instead of that garbage? Abbadon's 11/10 art is the only reason I have any interest in this game.

God no. This game punishes Pilot play *hard* and has no fluid method of movement.

See

Fluid movement is just a matter of skill checks.

As for punishing pilot play... it just doesn't pretend you are not at a huge disadvantage as a pilot without a mech vs mechs. Otherwise, I don1t see how it's punishing.

Being fair, I do think it's kinda lame how many abilities are 'Pilots are auto-hit and die'.

I don't think Titanfall RPG is a good descriptor of Lancer, it's a very surface level reading IMO.

Don't pilots count as mechs while in their hardsuits? Which they should be wearing at all times on a mission anyway.

I may be mixing it up, I only gave it a cursory read.

Ok, I'll admit that is a fucking leap in the right direction; but that is still more of a D&D Dervish or übercharger equivalent than actual ramming.

The romance of ramming is to forcefully and violently giving your entire being to another in a catastrophic way that hopefully will leave few or none of the participants functional at the end.

It shouldn't work as free attacks, nor work off of an ordinary attack stat, because that would only serve to make the fighters better at fighting. it shouldn't allow you to simply attack multiple foes at once, because that would be adultery at best and cheesy at worst.

Ramming should be a last resort, and a huge if not fatal risk at best. Supercharging your engines or reactor core to self detonate is entirely optional.

>Lancer
>the Titanfall RPG
Remember the part in Titanfall 2 where the moment BT got even a shred of autonomy he used it trying to kill Cooper and how he actively despised his pilot throughout the campaign? Me neither.

Bebcause it didn't happen or because it wasn't memorable?
>Disclaimer, have not tried titanfall 2.

The overheat maneuvers fill a similar role, letting you thrash yourself to bring the absolute maximum out of your mech. I _think_ there's a self destruct thingy in there somewhere, so you could do that too.

BT could be a Dummy Plug.

But what I want is to hit the other bot so hard only the one with the tougher exterior and the even tougher pilot inside will remain functional at the end.
>Reducing a manly test of manlyness into a shoving contests kills it for me.
>Boys will be boys, but I need me a MAN.

Then you have no place in this discussion.
>able to make decisions and requests on his own
>able to learn on the spot and make intuitive judgements
>able to come up with unique terminologies for previously unheard of tactics
Or maybe you're just an idiot.

I'm saying you can turn on your overheat to turn it into a contest of "do I kill you before my bones melt".

>Hey, I don't know the background for the topic, but I am interested in participating due to interesting topic.
>No, fuck off. Only people already in the know get to talk about the interesting topic.
>oh, ok then.

You make it sound really appealing now. For which I am grateful.

But it's still gives off some sort of "This is a mandatory buff that you will always use because it's simply efficient and speeds up the combat; also My DPS is higher than yours" vibe. But that might be mitigated with better players.

I'm used to people wanting to have the spotlight in combat, doing the most damage.

Maybe Cooper has even a single rank in the skill that makes AIs like you?

Some mechs/pilots can be built for it more or less. I think some heat management will play a role for everyone, but the option for desperate gambles/manly struggles will be there for those ballsy enough to take it.

They do count as mechs. There's quite a few abilities and systems that I harsh it's though.
It doesn't punish pilot play. Titanfall is an FPS. If you automatically got your shit pushed in by an enemy titan if you weren't in your titan it wouldn't be fun. That's a relevant consideration where titans are dropped like powerups. Since everyone in lancer starts in a mech, and pretty much all the rules revolve around being in a mech, it's not such a big deal.

Or BT is some form of AI whose main selling point is being friendly over having all sorts of crazy AI abilities.

Honestly, I could totally see that as an AI. Still has empathy when unshackled (But could still totally disobey you if it's empathy goes against your orders because you ordered the robot to go stomp puppies) and it's special trick is that it can take hits for targets in the same square/adjacent squares. It's used mostly by bodyguard/police mechs.

Then play the game or watch a playthrough. Making a snarky remark about your own ignorance isn't going to endear anyone to you.
He's not even a Pilot, he's a Rifleman with minor pilot VR training.

Titanfall is a mech combat game. BT is a story element. Claiming lancer is a bad Titanfall game because it has different story elements is retarded, since the story in any given lancer game is up to the GM in the end.

>Since everyone in lancer starts in a mech, and pretty much all the rules revolve around being in a mech
>and pretty much all the rules revolve around being in a mech
>all the rules revolve around being in a mech
So you admit that it's not remotely a Titanfall RPG, then. Glad we can agree.

>He's not even a Pilot, he's a Rifleman with minor pilot VR training.

And the skill for making AI's like you isn't about training. It's about how you've made connections with them most people don't.

where did you guys learn about this game?
rpg.net?

Sounds good.

There's also the fact that Titanfall universe has no equivalent to unshackling anyway (at least so far).

We don't know how BT would have acted if "unshackled" since that concept may not even exist there. May as well just fluff unshackling as "enemy hacker turns your friendly AI pal against you".

Being in a hardsuit counts as being in a mech.

You are always in a hardsuit on a mission.

Eh, if you concider hard suits to be what the pilots are wearing it wouldn't work terribly but it does focus more on the mechs than the pilots. So it would be a bit more 'Titanfall setting' rather than 'Titanfall gameplay'.

That's fine and all, but here's the thing:
1. That doesn't exist in Lancer
2. BT is the norm in Titanfall. It's all about you and /yourmech/ taking on the world.
In the first one you were even able to choose a personality for your Titan to make it feel more personal. The second one got rid of that for present Titan personalities and models, but they still all are highly protective of their pilot.

tl;dr: the relationship between a Pilot and his Titan is a critical part of Titanfall and Lancer doesn't just not have that, but it's actually completely antithetical to Titanfall's mech design philosophy.

BT is a story element born out of the game's design philosophy, a philosophy Lancer actively goes against in an attempt to be grimdank

Mind you, does Titanfall ever show what happens if you DO strip the empathy code out of a mech? As I don't really recall any mech that could be called Unshackled.

>So it would be a bit more 'Titanfall setting' rather than 'Titanfall gameplay'.
Which we've already established it has nothing in common with.

...What?

I don't think the comparison with Titanfall makes sense, but I don't get your point here at all.

BT was capable of disobeying orders if it meant he was still completing the mission and protecting the Pilot.

I'm saying story and gameplay aren't as divorced as you seem to think. BT was a narrative element that was representative of the relationship between all Pilots and Titans. You have to literally get neurally bonded to your AI in Titanfall, for example.

Nah, it was posted here a few weeks ago, and then a few threads were shitposted into oblivion. I'm just trying to redirect discussion because I think the system has promise.

>I'm just trying to redirect discussion because I think the system has promise.

You mean abaddon spanked your bottom hard for messing up the launch of his game here and now you've got to do damage control or you're scheduled for another spanking.

That's much more believable than that you spontaneously decided this game has promise based on little to no evidence and mostly just hopes and dreams.

Story and gameplay >in a premade, sold to you as a whole unit, are unified. Story and gameplay in an RPG less so. Lancer has some worldbuilding, but mostly what we have is a fairly generic sci-fi background that gives you fighting robots and AI that's non-human if not programmed to act human.

I wondered how long the thread would last before you came back.

And yet RPGs still have a general tone and idea of what they're trying to be intended for. Sure, you COULD run a Titanfall game in Lancer, but you'd be fighting the system every step of the way. You may as well run it in fucking DnD for as much work as you're gonna have to put in to make it fit.

Begone, shill!

Why are people still talking about Titanfall? Lancer isn't very similar to it at all beyond one piece of art of a mech on roughly the same scale.

I'll admit that titanfall and lancer aren't a perfect 1:1 comparison, but really? Not encouraging you to get out of your death machine and having AIs that aren't bros means it would be better to use D&D?

Because titanfall is the most recent mech hotness so it gets all the comparisons. If an armoured core game had just been released and finally started to die people would be asking if lancer was the armoured core RPG. It's desperation to get more of the same

It would be nice if your hardsuit benefited from any of your upgrades from licences (Even if it was half rate) so there can be a bit more customisation.

If you want a nice mecha board game, you've already posted a superior alternative in your OP. Just use MF0 for combat and then slap something lightweight on it for the out of combat stuff

No, it's actually because the single Lancer image we've seen is a bad imitation of a titanfall titan but with less of an understanding of mechanical systems.

>Piloted bipedal robot
>Invented by titanfall
Kay

Why not just run a Macross game using the Macross system? Robotech Shadow Chronicles also isn't terrible.

I really don't like MF0. I don't have a coherent reason for why, I just don't like it that much.

>I'll admit that titanfall and lancer aren't a perfect 1:1 comparison, but really?
The only thing they have in common is "has robots". And I guess Lancer mechs being a poorly designed ripoff of Titans.
>Not encouraging you to get out of your death machine and having AIs that aren't bros means it would be better to use D&D?
Titanfall is a high octane buddy cop action movie adventure that's all about preserving momentum and the seamless transition between pilot and mech and constantly swapping back and forth as the situation requires. In Titanfall it's just as viable to remain on foot the entirety of an encounter as it is to use your Titan, or even calling in your Titan to act as a distraction while you harass from afar. The act of rodeoing a Titan is not only to damage an enemy, but to buff your friendly Titans with pilfered cores in a tense battle of platforming and wits rather than just turning an AI craucray with a save or die roll.

Meanwhile, Lancer is just your average mech vs mech slugfest with some random psuedomythical grimwank set dressing and little to no pilot rules. In fact, there's an active discouragement from getting out of your mech for any reason. Furthermore, there's no clever use of positioning yourself or using travel paths that mechs can't easily access or Target whatsoever, partially because everything is too abstracted. Teamplay is limited at best, and not only can your mech not be trusted but there's really no way to positively interact with it at all besides buying a perk that essentially brainwashes it. At every level, it's pretty much the exact opposite of Titanfall.

Calling it "Titanfall: the RPG" dies Lancer a huge disservice because you get people going in with a preconceived notion that Lancer fails to deliver on in every front.

>Titanfall is a high octane buddy cop action movie adventure that's all about preserving momentum and the seamless transition between pilot and mech and constantly swapping back and forth as the situation requires. In Titanfall it's just as viable to remain on foot the entirety of an encounter as it is to use your Titan, or even calling in your Titan to act as a distraction while you harass from afar. The act of rodeoing a Titan is not only to damage an enemy, but to buff your friendly Titans with pilfered cores in a tense battle of platforming and wits rather than just turning an AI craucray with a save or die roll.

...wow, that feels like pure marketing speak. If I thought the titanfall producers gave a shit about Veeky Forums I'd be tempted to call you a shill but that would be silly.

That's valid. I don't agree with all your points, but you conclusion that it's doing a disservice to compare the two is probably right.

>I don't know anything about mech designs

It's a titan-style body/head/arms with pointless and even detrimental bags and straps attached to make it look detailed(but instead it just looks liefeldian and busy), but with some guys legs with random cables in the back.

You dumbfuck.

>Titan style
It has a torso and arms? Has the terminator franchise been ripping off titanfall for years now? You're going to have to actually make an arguement here.

You're an idiot.

Sorry, Ab, but everyone can see that all you really have had no experience drawing mechs, so you took a quick google search, started to just straight up copy an Atlas (and didn't even bother to change the distinctive head), but then gave up when you realized your drawing skill set didn't include mechanical design so you just added a human's legs and hands.

You moron.

My god, the troll is desperate. They just made another Lancer thread with a troll OP to try and distract from this one with actual discussion.

For a game that’s meant to emphasize customizeability, there are almost no options for customizeability? That’s my big complaint with mf0

Someone explain drones for me. Can you only have one active Drone per Nexus and if not, where is that detailed?

That might be it. Since it's any weapon becomes a red die it doesn't matter if you've got a ballista or a railgun, it's still a red die. It's too abstracted.

What's more pathetic is how the shill has had to try and keep this thread bumped.