SO here is some thoughts on Folded Steel that I was originally going to collect on Friday, but then the plague…. (as it is these are still going to be much rougher thoughts and not as long as originally intended. Still playing catchup on life)
Mechs are an interesting thing to work with thematically. They can fall anywhere from “realistic” stories about war and hardship, or “super robot” stories where the colorful named mechs are stand ins for superheroes. There is also a certain expectation of “crunch” when it comes to mech games. In the conversations I’ve had with my various gamer associates that was one thing which surprised me as it has come up over and over again. Below is the beginnings of my current ideas for a balance between the mindset that wants mech games to have lots of fine tuning of your mech and the fiction first mindset of Forged in the Dark games.
Currently there are five different classes of mechs with more advanced mechs (higher tier) having the possibility of being a hybrid of those two. The five classes are Assault, Harrier, Support, Defense, and Artillery. A mech will have a number of hardpoints (currently four) that will each have a list of things that can be installed on that hardpoint. Each mech class will have a default loadout. In order to gain access to new hardpoint options (or build new mechs for your hangard) you need to spend resources on R&D and Construction.
Blades is already a game with a few mini games built into it. Managing your stress, your rep, the factions, and your crew’s heat are all connected mini games. The Tech game as I keep calling it in my notes is basically something along those lines. Every time you go out on a mission your objective will grant a specific type of resource as a reward (current examples are Metal, Exotic Materials, Bio-mass… still working on the exacts). This is the guaranteed payoff and why you are going on the mission. The payout tables for the mission will also have the possibility of bonus resources that you managed to score incidentally. With the goods back at your Enclave you can then use downtime actions to conduct R&D (which will unlock the parts) or construction (which lets you build it to install in one of your mechs). These same resources will also be used to repair the mechs during downtime, and build a replacement mech if one is destroyed on a mission. Fold 1 Enclaves will have abilities that will not be available as Echoes that will make this easier to manager, to show how the infrastructure was still around, but Fold 2 and 3 will definitely make it more difficult to keep your Enclave’s hangar running smoothly.
How resource expensive is it to build a new/replacement mech and do you include things like scavenging from an old one to reduce the cost of the new?
(I know my players would ask that as soon as they got to that situation)
Do any of the playbooks have abilities that increase the effectiveness of resource gathering/scavenging, in a similar vein to the +1 Coin ability one of the Blades playbooks has?
How detailed are you making the R&D, do the different components give abilities or actions and are these going to be detailed and pre-planned, or is it going to be more like how Blades handles inventing things through a discussion on what the goal is and how easy/hard it would be to design and build it??
I am still working on the exact numbers, but R&D/Building should be about two jobs worth of resources and building a new mech should be about four jobs worth of resources. By default if a mech gets destroyed on a mission the thought is that it will be too difficult and dangerous to salvage any parts at that moment.
The intention is to make the mech R&D more explicit and concrete. It is almost like an experience system for the mechs. The abilities will be explicitly spelled out as well the resources needed to make it happen. This will of course be modified by playbooks. (The Commander will have some ability to call in favors during downtime to get resources, and the Tech will have abilities that make it happen quicker or cheaper for example). Enclaves will also have upgrades that interact with the subsystem as well.
Will you still be able to gather resources without a mech available?
Oh yes. I figured that there will be times where doing missions out of the mechs will make the most sense from a fiction perspective, so that will be supported. There will also be downtime options for it.
Don’t know how common Enclaves are or if there could be multiple factions working out of the same one, but I’m thinking of an option of borrowing someone else’s mech to be able to go collect resources but you’d owe them some big favours and had best not mess up their mech. That could cover a few side missions, persuading them to let you and to pay them back later. Or purchasing resources from them or something.
Enclaves can and will tend to have more mechs than pilots so the group should have a couple spares at any given moment. Losing one mech is not the end of the world, but it is a major setback.
Aside from the Ace’s Signature Mech upgrade, the mechs are a group thing more than an individual’s thing.
Ahh yes, I think you said that they are designed to have multiple pilots doing different tasks. Is that right?
Yes. The Enclave has a hangar of mechs that anyone can pick when a mission starts, this allows the pilots to adjust their tactics based on the needs of the job, the current state of affairs, and the pilots available.
I’m sure most groups, both in and out of character, will decide that specific mechs belong to specific pilots. This just won’t be supported as a part of the rules.