[Mechaton] Compliments and rules questions

[DevP]

We played the short version of the game and had a great time of it! The first team to rush the satellite actually managed to hang on to it, but only barely. They were helped by (1) have way way way too much cover on the map, and (2) one of the mechs boldly standing and taking many hits for the other mech holding the satellite.

(In the end, that poor mech had nothing left but one white die, and then suffered a six-out-of-six damage roll. We proceeded to disassemble it into rubble and scatter it across the table. It was just the right thing to do.)

I have a two questions and two wierd questions:

(1) What's a good guidelines for ruler-size vs total game-board size? (In our setup we accidentally made artillery just about impossible. Alas.)

(2) What's a good guideline for actually targetting cover directly, rather than the mech behind it? (One idea is to treat is as a defense-0 target that takes normal hits on 5s/6s. Or, maybe just blow away given cover if it suffers a directed attack.)

(3) Station ownership on ties... we seriously nearly had this situation, really:

Mech A is near the station and seizes control.
Mech B moves next to the station, waves to Mech A.
Mech C moves next to the station, high-fives Mech B.
Mech A is exploded.

...So who controls the station now? Is it joint custody?

(4) So... would it be legal to "attack" your own units to provoke them into an early action? That'd be... weird. But interesting. (Like having a command unit that greatly strengthened your units' initiative choices. Craaazy advanced strategy.)

Thanks again.

[lumpley]

Thanks, Dev!

1) We play with a ruler about 1/6 the diagonal of the table. On our usual table, that's a 9-unit ruler (with each unit being 5 cm I think). When I play on a smaller table, I knock units off the ruler. On a bigger table, I'd increase the size of the units instead - 40 units is about the maximum size I'd want for the world's x or y axis.

If it absolutely hauls ass, a mech still can't cover 40 units' distance in the game, so if things get further apart than that, the game goes bad.

2) We never do. If we were to, we'd try your first idea first, and then probably finally just switch to your second.

3) Uh oh.

Oh wait! You tag the station at a particular point in your go. Whoever's mech goes next, tags it first.

4) "Johnson! I'll teach you to just stand there." Brakka brakka. "Now move it!"

I'd personally never stoop to that kind of poor play. Um, unless it were in one of our campaign battles and I really, really needed to.

[JCunkle]

My concern in allowing #4 is that it makes rolling a low number a good thing. 
"If I assign a 2 to my shooty red dice, then I can still takes this big shiny 6 for movement"
My understanding is that the requirement to roll high for success is what keeps tension in the game.
Vincent?

[lumpley]

Shooting at your own guy to activate him a) is going to happen so rarely, b) is only going to happen when all other hope is lost, and c) is so very cost-ineffective, that I'm not worried about allowing it having any wider effect on the game. Yes, you'll happily put your 2 into the attack. But the fact that you're using up this mech's attack to do it means it's still a serious tradeoff.

That's my hunch. If somebody builds an army based on shooting its own mechs as a strategy, and it proves to be even remotely viable as a strategy, well, I'll be so shocked that I don't know what else.

-Vincent

[DevP]

I'm perverse enough to at least try it as a surprise maneuver. A high-initiative spot-mech could work with an artillery cannonbot. The spot-mech runs in, "attacks" the cannonbot, and throws a spot on the real target; the cannonbot goes next and takes advantage of said spot die. Of course you don't know if you have a spotting die worth a damn until after you've picked the targets & rolled, and it's an expensive gambit.

This will probably end with my mechs all being on fire.