Split from TROS mechanic (split):
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=8950
Yeah, I get off track way too easily.

Anyways, everyone's talkin' about making TROS in space, and I was wondering how capable it would be of handling a Sci-Fi ground war. More specifically, what mechanic changes would be involved.

I think that the major question involved is the degree of manual skill involved in combat vs. the degree of technical skill. Highly manual combat (i.e. Space Opera Fighters, Melee, etc.) lends itself incredibly well to the TRoS mechanics. Highly technical stuff (lots of overt computer reliance and to some degree ranged weaponry) kind of falls apart. So i guess the question is: Precisely what kind of gian robots do you want?

Thomas

For something like.. bloody hell, what was that cartoon series? Anyhow, it involved a direct-neural interface between man and combat suit. Essentially, the suit became an extension of the body. For this, I could definitely see TRoS working well. Perhaps instead of Reflex, you could have an additional derived attribute called Interface, maybe an average of Wit and WP (making "pilots" need to be more mentally adept than physically) and use it in place of Reflex when doing robot combat, with the Proficiency being a level of skill and familiarity with the particulars and armament of a given robot.

As technology would obviously be higher, a modification, perhaps a melding of the CP/MP concepts would probably be needed. The preparation time would be largely irrelevant; perhaps a round or two to deploy a weapon that was in some sort of storage mode, and perhaps reloading times for kinetic and explosive ordinance weapons. For any range beyond immediate, you've got to deal with lockons from targeting systems, so you'll have your CP/MP refill at a rate of Interface dice per turn, as per MP refresh from TRoS. Within a certain range, that time won't be necessary, as the pilot can essentially fire them on a fire-and-forget or snapshot basis, or even switch to a melee weapon, so in that case, he'd be able to use his full CP/MP. If you were to do it this way, I would require the CP/MP to refresh as per MP rules for the first round after switching from a "ranged" target to a "proximity" target, as the pilot and the targeting interface adjust to the new range.

In a game such as this, you could add other systems which would affect different aspects of combat, such as jamming systems which would add an activation cost equal to their level to any "ranged" attacks against them, or advanced targeting systems which would give dice bonuses to ranged attacks (which would effectively negate/reduce range penalties) or even Inertial Compensators, which would negate penalties due to movement while firing, or recoil from weapons which have recoil.

Hm. I'm running away with this idea. If you want to actually do something with this, either post here on the boards and I'll throw some ideas in your direction, or feel free to e-mail me to bounce your ideas off of me.

If, on the other hand, you don't want to do anything with this, maybe I'll take it up as a project along with my (long overdue) Gladiators project.

I've done some work with this, because I want to use TROS for EVERYTHING. I'm happy with most of it, the only parts I really need to ply test the most are weapons damage. Like it's been said, it's not very granular, so there's not much statistical variety in modern or futuristic ranged weapons.
I haven't tried anything with neural interfaces. So far I've been hndling riving and piloting the same as riding, as a normal skill. Targeting equipment and such can give massive bonuses.
What do you think about this....Should large vehicular weaponry, such as a tank cannon or your giant robots lasers be handled as skills or proficiencies? After a point with weapons like that it seems it's less martial ability than technical ability. But then again it seems best handled by dice pools and sucesses...

If its publishing your referring to, then no, I have no intention of doing something with this. However, I would like to work out the details none the less. Mostly because I think TRoS is the best system for the job.

I think the combat styles and maneuvers can easily recreate the uniqueness between vehicles/bots. And, the damage model provides exactly what I want in a mecha game: High detail, high damage combat. Getting peppered with a vulcan cannon should shread off plates of armor, and melt through vital components. Damage to different systems should effect the overall effectiveness of the unit. Shoot out the knee, limping robot. Blow off the head, the pilot is running blind (or dead, depending on the position of the cockpit).

It's a fast paced war, in which every shot can be fatal. That's what I want in my gritty sci-fi settings. I think TRoS could do a better MechWarrior than MechWarrior.

Caz,

while realistically it is true that modern technological combat is more skill-like than proficiency-like in application (I know; I was an Armor Crewman for 4 years, and am now a Forward Observer for the Artillery) running it as such takes away the aspect of TRoS combat that I feel is most important; the combat system. It could easily be run with a "piloting" skill used to determine all maneuvering actions, and a "gunnery" skill used to determine all firing actions, but that goes entirely away from the way the combat system for TRoS works.

For modern tanks, I would use just such a system; Modern tanks have nothing in common with medieval duelists. On the other hand, mecha are modeled in part on the human body, and therefore should react the way a human would. Neural-interfaced tanks would react in a similar fashion as well, though their maneuvers would be described differently.

YMMV, of course, but my opinion is that the only good way to do this is to keep it as close to the TRoS combat system as it is feasible to do so.

I agree, I hadn't thought of mecha damage charts, those could be fun to write up. Attack charts for different types as well, wheeled or tracked vehicles, 2 and 4 legged mecha, front/rear and side or oblique angle attacks. The way I've been doing it so far it skills for piloting and sensor etc. operation but proficiencies for using the various weapons/attacks, even though they're large vehicular ones. Is that how you guys are doing it?
And just how specific do you guys get with that? General like Vehicular weaponry? Weaponry for a specific type of vehicle? Or a proficiency for every weapon, like vehicular laser cannon, electro mag cannon, etc.?
Thanks for indulging me

We're not currently working together on this. All of my own ideas are predicated on the concept of neural interface. The way I would do it is to treat it basically like a regular TRoS combat, with basic maneuvering being done by assumption, and specific maneuvering being done ala Terrain rules.

For proficiency, each proficiency would represent a different vehicle or mecha. For example..

Proficiencies: 14 points
Veritech Piloting: 6
Beta Veritech Piloting: 5 (defaulted from Veritech Piloting at a -2, with a single point of proficiency given to raise it to 5)
Destroid Piloting: 5 (defaulted from Veritech Piloting at a -4, with 3 points spent to raise it to 5)
Goliath Tank: 4

*names borrowed, and do not imply any use of these vehicles for any purpose other than as an example

And yes, mecha damage charts would be vital for such a game, with generic charts given for all humanoid mecha, and generic charts given for all tank like vehicles.

This has the potential to be very frigging cool. I'd be intrested in playtesting it, when you guys get some stuff ready.

I've actually been working on adapting TRoS to a scifi setting for the past few months. I've mainly focused on figuring out how to work battles in spaceships, though. I've had a lot of trouble with it, and everything I've come up with has turned out to be a lot different in many ways than the regular TRoS battle system (not that I didn't expect this, since I'm working with spaceships, and not knights and duelists)
THe hardest part is figuring out the maneuvering. It's mostly hard because we're talking about a 3 dimensional battlefield, where you have to worry about up and down, becasue there is no ground. so for now, I have a simplified battle system that doesn't worry about maneuvering, and just assumes that the ships are in a position where they can attack eachother with out much trouble (although I allow for a reflex type roll to see if one ship can get out of the others crosshairs.)
As for tanks and robots; I haven't worked on tanks, but robots aren't nearly as difficult.(writing the damage tables was tedious, though) Of course, I'm having trouble with the damage.
Well, now that you got me thinking about all the sci fi stuff, I wanna go back to work on it again (its just kind of been sitting in a floppy disk for the past few months.)

Wolfen, perhaps you were thinking of the Gundam series, or maybe Evangelion, or.. there's alot of anime shows like that. As for me.. I'm finally getting to understand japanese animation terminology, much to my embarassment hahahahahahaha....

*shrug*

-Ingenious
Continuing the time-honored tradition of not knowing what the hell I'm talking about.

Wolfen, another posible show you could be thinking of is Escaflowne. The robots in that were pretty much controlled by the exact movements of the pilot. (and now that I think about it, that would be the best way to have robot battles in TRoS

One suggestion, Moth, which I didn't want to break space over there to do but which came to mind immediately when you broached this subject...

Have you considered using TROS:Melee (as opposed to Missile fire rules) for everything, and expanding out the scale of the Range rules? I think you could do very good things with that. Some weapons (missiles) have minimum as well as maximum ranges - these are very real. Some weapons, like a gatling gun or whatever, are useful at all ranges out to their limit - but could be parried (!) if you tried to use them from melee range proper. Then add to the obvious maneuvers of firing and dodging and swinging and parrying, a few This-Changes-The-Range maneuvers (since the "only a damaging blow changes range" rule is quirky even in TROS). Or, alternately, use the Terrain roll to establish range (he who gets more successes vs. the terrain you're in, controls range for the round) - some mecha might give a bonus or penalty here.

Obviously range Zero is a special category; you can't just attack with a melee weapon at -2 dice versus a chaingun-wielding foe at medium range for him, not without changing the range first. I suppose one could call those two dice paid for the range disadvantage, "Your movement roll" to close up. The problem would actually be that in this case, what if you lose the attack roll (due to a superior parry total, say)...? You then, per TROS, didn't close the range successfully (or he moved back to chaingun range in the same exchange), which is rather strange.

Mmm. Here's a thought. Change the rule on what happens when you're at the wrong range; make the movement part and parcel of the Exchange, to keep things focussed on the exciting parts. Your weapon is only effective out to range X in arbitrary, and vague, units. (It's not that a chaingun is only good out to 500m and then stops, or whatever, it's that it's only good to range bracket 5, which is about 500m.) Or it has an ATN of 7+(1/bracket beyond 5), that's probably better. Let's say your opponent is happy where he is - at range bracket nine. You'll never hit from here, but you're very mobile and have lots of CP left.

Rather than "your attack has an A.Cost of +1 die per range bracket," run it like this. "As part of your attack (or evasion), you may try to close (or increase) the range by allocating any number of dice to this portion. These dice are rolled versus your current Terrain value, under Hurried motion [or, under Your-Mobility-Class?]. Every success closes (or increases) the range by one before the attack." So in the above, you put five dice into closing at a sprint as you unload bullets, as well as a four-die attack. His three dice go into a dodge; he can't afford to back away as you charge. You get three successes on the five dice, bringing the range from nine to six; your TN is therefore 8 on the attack, with only four dice, but hey, it's worth a shot. And you're now at range six, unless he puts some dice into backing up on his own turn.

If we want to complexify, this should interact with the buying initiative process to preempt you. Perhaps, "Every bracket you passed through which was inside the standard range for your opponent, reduces his cost to buy initiative by one die." He won't automatically preempt you every time, but he'll have a shot at it as you come in. If he does, though, unless he has access to Fire And Evade, he's committed to that and not to getting out of your way, should he fail to take you down. It's all good, apart from the fact that I don't like the buying initiative rules in most instances and you might opt for a different set of die rolls for this purpose than in the TROS main book. (I personally use "Spend any number of CP, versus your Swordsman Vocation - I'm using the Quickstart method for skills - while he gets Wits dice for free and may spend more, versus his own Swordsman. Tie goes to him." But I'm in a special case, given that I have house rules [the "Press" option] governing initiative as well, and can also safely assume that pretty much every combatant has Swordsman at some TN.)

However, that's a ramification. As a core rule, I think the "close using CP dice versus Terrain" is an excellent alternative to the standard "activation cost due to Range disadvantage" rule from TROS, given that range would matter more. Then you could have:
- Everett Chainsword: Range 0, ATN whatever, yadda yadda.
- Mitchell K6 Chaingun: Range 0-5, ATN 7+1/range bracket past 5, yadda.
- Ishram 'Salamanca' Missile: Range 7-12, ATN 8+1/range bracket (either past 12, or inside 7), yadda yadda boom.

And so on.

How does that strike you?

- Eric

Krammer, Ingenious,

Nope. It's not anime. It was a cartoon show that played here in the States for a while. Exo-something, I think. They weren't big robots, but were rather powered "exo-suits", and they were fighting an alien invader race led by some guy named Phaeton. S'all I remember.

Exo-Squad? Eh, mebbe..

I have to say, that matches what I was thinking, with a whole hell of a lot more detail.

This gives rise to another thought. Mobility method. For example, a mecha with a forward jet-roller would have an advantage in closing over smooth terrain (maybe a reduced closing TN). A heavy would have a harder time moving around (probably an activation cost on closing/retreating). The spider mecha would have an advantage in closed in areas. And so on. Jumping and flying has me a little stumped. I suppose, aside from the out of combat benifits, it could reduce terrain modifiers for unlevel terrain. I don't know. It just seems easier than keeping a seperate modifier chart for each mobility type.

For mobility modifiers, you'd place them in the description of the individual mecha, the same way special rules are noted by several of the weapons. Keep the parallel between weapons and mecha, and you'll be on the right track.

FYI, if Harlequin's suggestions are more the route you're going, I think we'll be diverging. I don't feel they were bad ideas, it's just not how I'd choose to handle it. When it comes to rules modifications or expansions, I prefer to add as little or change as little of the rules and stats as necessary to achieve the desired effect.

Just for your own edification the cartoon was, in fact, called Exo-Squad.

An excellent cartoon, for my money.

Wolfen,
I agree with you on that point. I would want the rules to retain as much TRoS flavor as possible. However, my ultimate goal is to cover a larger variety of technology and capabilities than the man on man style combat. I feel the core rules don't fully allow for this kind of combat (nor should they). I'd be quite happy if you proved me wrong.

However, since I'm doing this for nothing more than a set of fancy house rules, I'm interested in everything mentioned here. Harlequin's description just matches eerily close to what I initially pictured.

Well, see you got me thinking about it, which means I may work it to the point that it's publishable as a mini-supplement for TRoS. I'll contribute to any discussion here, but the actual work that I'll probably be doing will be later, once I've finally got the bulk of TRoS: Gladiators done.

Now, obviously the core rules alone cannot handle massive robots who primarily use ranged weapons. This is why I made the additions that I did. However, I do not see rules designed to simulate the thrust and parry, cut and evade accurately and smoothly simulating long-range combat with energy, kinetic and explosive weapons. That is why I prefer a melding of the ranged and close-combat rules, each used at appropriate ranges. My rationale is this:

Ranged field combat between armored vehicles is broken into a couple different "styles". The first, the most popular, is what I refer to as the "see it, shoot it" mentality. You see an enemy target, you identify that it is an enemy, you shoot it and kill it before it has a chance to recognize you. If it's got buddies, you quickly move on to the next target before their confusion at the distruction of their buddy abates and defensive instincts take over. One rounds have been fired, and there are survivors (either because you missed, or because there are more targets than firing elements) then the second style of combat takes over. At this point, Evasion is a constant task, using constant, difficult to predict motion, and/or Inter-Visibility lines, such as terrain features or structures to obscure yourself or block the enemy's fire. All the while that you're evading, you're doing your best to get a good shot on the enemy, who is doing likewise. This evasion is not about the act, perceive and react that melee parrying and evasion is all about. This is simply making yourself a difficult target, which is best handled by the penalties given for ranged combat -vs- moving or obscured targets.

Now, obviously there must be some tweaks to the ranged system, as modern and ultra-modern weapons can fire much more rapidly than medieval bows and crossbows, but much of these tweaks can be made simply by modifying the weapon stats. Some rules, such as burst or rapid fire, or even firing multiple weapon systems at the same time (quite possible for multi-weapon vehicles) will need to be added, but these are additional rules that do not require any real change to the core mechanic.

A (hopefully) brief example of how I would see my system of mecha-on-mecha combat working:

Seneschal: Mecha2, You missed on your first shot, and mecha1 now has a chance to react to your presence.
Mecha1: Hm. This isn't a good range for most of my weapon systems. I'm going to charge him, moving erratically, while readying my HV-Cannon. That'll take me.. 2 rounds.
Seneschal: Alright. Your movement score is 17, and it's 42 unitsofmeasure between you and mecha2. So it would take you 2 rounds to close to within 10uom.
Mecha1: perfect timing.
Mecha2: I'm going to check fire for 1 round, and allow my targetting systems time to work.
Seneschal: Alright. Mecha2, your pool refreshes, and mecha1 spends time closing and readying. Next round.
Mecha1: still closing and readying. Man, I wish there was something I could use for cover. I feel so naked out here in the open.
Mecha2: I'll be taking my shot this round. Particle Cannon to.. upper torso. I think that's where the cockpit is. How many dice will I have?
Seneschal: Your Interface is a 5, your total CP is a 13.. So you'll have 10 dice after a round of aiming. However, your target is moving erratically, and is at 2 range increments. So that totals to a -5 dice.
Mecha2: Alright. I fire with all 5 remaining. (rolls dice)
Mecha1: Damn, this is gonna suck..
Mecha2: Against a TN of 7 for my Particle Cannon I rolled an 8, 7, 5 3 and a 1. So two successes.
Seneschal: What's the damage on your Particle Cannon?
Mecha2: 7, plus my 2 successes for a total of 9.
Seneschal: Okay, so 9 minus your mecha's AR, Mecha1.
Mecha1: AR is a 6, so I take a level 3 wound. Crap.
Mecha2: (rolls a d6) I rolled a 5.
Seneschal: (consults chart) Shoulder hit. System shock -X, Damage -Y, Power Loss Z.
Mecha1: Damnit! Well, it's not enough to take me down. I'm gonna have to close in if I want to finish him off.
Seneschal: Okay. Next round.
Mecha2: I'm gonna snap another shot at him. I should have 5 dice.
Mecha1: I'll be closing into close range now, and my HV-Cannon should be ready to rock.
Seneschal: Okay.. Your Interface is 8, so you've got 8 dice, minus SS and Damage.
Mecha1: That's.. ech, only 2 dice left.
Mecha2: Wait, he's in close. Don't I get to use my full CP?
Seneschal: No, it's the first round of transition for you. He's using a freshly readied weapon, so he's got to refill too.
Mecha2: Alright. I'm firing with all 5 dice, upper torso again.
Mecha1: Eh.. I'm going to full evade this exchange until the SS wears off. 2 dice, obviously.
Mecha2: (rolls) Ohmigod. A 7, 4, 3, 3, and a 2. That sucks.
Mecha1: Heh. (rolls) A 9, and a 6.
Mecha2: You so totally suck.
Mecha1: I beat you, didn't I?
Seneschal: Okay guys, cool it. Defender wins exchange, but you both used your entire dicepools, so the round ends. Next round, full CP refresh, Mecha1, you've got initiative.
Mecha1: I should have my full CP now, minus my Damage, so that's.. 12 dice.
Mecha2: Ouch! I didn't realize your CP was that high..
Mecha1: You should have thought of that before you took a shot at me, pup.
Seneschal: Declare your actions already.
Mecha1: I'm gonna let him have it with my HV-Cannon. At close range, I get a +2 CP to hit. Hm. I'm gonna hit him in the leg. 6 dice.
Mecha2: I'm going to do an evasive shot. 1 CP activation cost, Spending 2 dice on evasion, 6 dice on the hit.. total of 9 dice out of my 13.
Mecha1: (rolls) 10, 10, 9, 8, 5, 4, 1, 1. Good thing I got some successes, or that would have been a fumble. So.. TN 8, err, 9 I suppose, 'cause of his evasive attack... Still 3 successes. (rolls a d6) 6.
Seneschal: Hm. 3 successes + 6 damage for the HV... minus an AR of 6.. Level 3 wound to the.. upper thigh. SS:X D:X PL:X, roll for knockdown, -2.
Mecha2: Blah. (rolls for knockdown) Success. Now I roll to hit.. 3 dice now, 'cause of SS. (rolls) 10, 6 and 2. 1 success....

And so on. As you can see, it retains most of the feel of TRoS, with one little odd-point as it switches from ranged to "close" range.

Can't argue with that. Now, I can see your point of view. I really couldn't picture the ranged rules working, primarily due to their speed. But, you seem to have got it working nicely.

This sounds pretty amazing to me. If you guys put together enough to warrant a playtest - count me in.