This Pseudo-AR (but it's closer to an AR than some others... pseudo-pseudo-AR??? semi-pseudo... i'll go with that one) game is one I've been sitting on and thinking over for months, and to tell the truth I find myself a bit daunted now that I'm starting the fucking thing.
I cite my primary inspirations for this Arms Race as follows: Battletech, GalactiRace, Blood and Sand, and Battletech again.
(And, actually... NOT Titan Race, haha, believe it or not. I had huge chunks of this game thought up, including the title. I'd been discussing it with MoP when the Titan Race came up, and had been quite bewildered.)
But, with only some further ado, welcome to:
Ramshackle Titans
A Semi-Mecha Semi-Pseudo Arms Race
The galaxy is a very, very old place, so old that the humans all over it differ wildly in their accounts of their origins -- only a few of those who remember Earth by name even know where it is. A patchwork of kinds of sentient life, of nations and struggle, of empires and conquest, and of resistance and failure, spreads across it in a bewildering array of technologies and ideologies and cultures and civilizations. In some corners of the galaxy, war rages on with gunpowder and tank, in some others with firebolts slung from primitive wands, in others with breeders discovering the art of pitting increasingly big and vicious war dogs on each other. But across the galaxy, one weapon of war reigns supreme: the Titan. Massive bipedal constructions -- of steel, of stone, of flesh -- slog out on the battlefield, weighing terrifying power and surprising flexibility. Their advanced work and their huge investment present them as symbols of wealth, might, and influence as much as that overwhelming firepower.
In one arm of the galaxy, empires have grown fat or furious in their own little pockets of stars, their own Sectors. This is thanks to the nature of faster-than-light travel out here: Pairing reigns supreme. Pairing is fast, in fact it's instant, with Paired stations able to switch objects around them from one station to the other, but it's expensive, and it's limited: only extremely expensive Rapid-Paired ships, able to teleport each other short distances very very fast, can eventually get across unlinked stars. With the cost of shipping armies between disconnected sectors being prohibitive, especially with the expensive nature of Titans, empires tend to self-divide and stay in their Sectors, fighting and dying and being born and stagnating -- only a rare few are willing to try to make inroads when they know the mighty empires in their neighboring Sectors will crush their preliminary, faltering efforts. For a long couple of centuries, this has been true few places moreso than in the Sommet sector, where the mighty masters of the sector (whether by machines, golems, or battle beasts) have rode the wave of rapid advancement of technology, reaching their apex, tightening their grip and conquest over their sector. They began to look to their neighbors, the chaotic Jumble Sector (as the Sommet Empires derisively called it), a place where petty empires squabble and fight and scheme and stab each other in the back, the roiling political landscape rarely seeming to come to a standstill...
...and the Sommet Empires' plans for expansion ran into each other violently, tangled together, and spiraled into a war the Sommet Sector had never seen, where empires really did send grand armies after each other, and Titans and warships were blown to messy pieces across mountains, across asteroids, in oceans, in fields, and in cities. Now two of those petty Jumble Empires have seen the blood in the water and heard of the damage done to the great Sommet Empires... and they've seen opportunity. The gulf between sectors and its expense calls for a slow process -- small forces sent to build influence and reputation, to learn and gain technology-- and so, on a Rapid-Paired pair of Ships, two groups head out to do just that.Although I wouldn't quite say that I took elements from Space Cowboys for this game, parts of the experience may be similar: each side in the game is going to be largely independent, mercenary groups or paramilitaries or some such thing (we'll figure it out!) sent from the chaotic Jumble sector (though your people no doubt have your own name for it) to the Sommet Sector, to take advantage of the sudden weakness and power vacuum there. You will be operating a few mecha (or really fucking big golems, or big organic walky things, etc) known as Titans, upgrading them, working up to building them, and sending them on various missions. These missions will often be slugfests, but they'll provide rewards. You'll receive scrap, equipment, and pilots you can use to diversify and strengthen your group into an increasingly powerful force. You'll also receive the gratitude of the factions you do missions for, who may become materially stronger or weaker depending on the missions each side performs... and the political situation may eventually crystallize at a breaking point of tension.
Each side will only sporadically directly encounter each other -- and though the sponsors that sent you to the Sommet Sector will urge you to take actions that harm each others' interests directly or indirectly, it's ultimately up to your actions whether you largely ignore each other, or whether you're constantly throwing wrenches into each other's plans and striking a back-and-forth battle through proxy factions.
Titans are the primary things that you will be building, upgrading, and fielding during Ramshackle Titans. They’re massive and (usually) bipedal vehicles of war, each individual Titan a significant investment but capable of wreaking havoc and literally or figuratively stomping conventional vehicles, beasts, or infantry. Creating a Titan is an expensive affair, and each individual Titan that you create will represent a significant increase in your capabilities – therefore most work you do on them will likely consist of replacing and upgrading their parts.
Although Titans can potentially have very radical setups, including ones you might design yourselves, the standard Titan consists of the following parts: Head, Torso, Left Arm, Right Arm, Left Leg, Right Leg. Each part typically fulfills certain inherent functions no matter what the part is, as a simple function of the shape of the Titan. Typically, the Head contains the Pilot and sensory equipment, the Arms (usually) allow the Titan to manipulate other objects (including Carryable Equipment, detailed in the below spoiler), the Legs grant the Titan the ability to move, and the Torso holds the entire Titan together and its destruction will cause the Titan to cease functioning until heavy repairs are enacted. The Torso is also the most difficult part of a Titan to entirely replace, connecting to all other parts and defining the layout of the Titan. Titan parts can be replaced and exchanged, but in cases of dissimilar mechs or Jury-Rigs set up to be hard-connected to the mech, this’ll require a Revision.
Notably, there is something called “Tech Type” which comes in three varieties and the combinations between them: Mech, Magic, and Organic. While I’ll go into more detail on what these categories represent in the opening posts of each thread for the first prelim phase, Mech can be broadly thought of as “science-y and/or mechanical stuff”, Magic can be broadly thought of as “magic” (wow), and Organic can be broadly thought of as “biotech”.
Tech Type actually applies to Titans on a per-part basis – each part of the Titan is individually Mech, individually Magic, individually Organic, or individually any combination of two or perhaps three of them. Perhaps you start off with a purely Mech Titan, but as time goes on, you replace its legs with living organisms designed for that purpose, its left arm with one pulled and converted from a golem, and you replace its right arm with a cyborgified one. Your Titan would therefore have a Mech Head, a Mech Torso, an Organic Left Leg and Right Leg, a Magic Left Arm, and a Mech/Organic Right Arm.
While your starting Titans will be uniform in their parts’ Tech Type, as the game progresses and you work on them, they may become patchwork messes of many different Tech Types, as is common for mercenary and insurgent groups in the Sommet Sector… they will become Ramshackle Titans. ha ha ha
Although Titan parts often have inbuilt extra capabilities based on the design of the part itself (for example, one might make a Right Arm that is a giant cannon), something you will be able to and even encouraged to do yourself, a lot of the equipment that you will likely use is slotted in and out of Titans at will through Equipment Mounts. Each Titan has a certain number of Equipment Mounts dotted throughout its parts, and these Equipment Mounts are one of three sizes: Small, Medium, and Large. Each Mount obviously gets more costly to implement but holds heftier equipment as it gets larger. The equipment that goes into these Mounts can be and usually are the Titan’s weapons, but other things such as defensive equipment or sensory equipment. Equipment can also be limited to certain parts – sensory equipment usually goes in the Head, for example. Mounted Equipment would be stuff like the lasers in Battletech: weaponry set into the mech’s systems, often fairly small.
There is also Carryable Equipment – Titans can bring along Carryable Equipment, although they need to have Arms and a Torso with the capability to use and carry this equipment, respectively. Think of Carryable Equipment like the gigantic Senapang rifle carried by the Tectonic mech in Industrialized Warfare Arms Race – it’s not so much fixed on or part of the Titan as it is a big-ass piece of equipment literally carried in the hands of/on the back of the Titan. Carryable Equipment is extremely large and unwieldy by its nature as independent Titan-sized equipment, meaning that it can hamper a Titan’s mobility, agility, and balance – but this Carryable Equipment is typically quite powerful, as well. Most Titans can only carry one piece of Carryable Equipment, but specially designed Carryable Equipment or specially designed Titans can get around this.
Scrap is THE resource for independent actors in the Sommet Sector, especially for mercenaries and paramilitary groups (like yourself), and it is THE resource for Ramshackle Titans. It’s the loot you’ll take from your fallen enemies, it’s what your employers will pay you in, it’s what you will conduct trades with, what you’ll use for repairs and what you’ll expend in creating your gear.
Scrap is basically just Titan parts and equipment at various levels of damage. If you’re very lucky, you might find or receive a totally functioning Part or piece of Equipment, and if you’re still lucky but just a little less so, you might find one of those that only needs to be repaired or revised. On the whole, though, you’re likely to receive Scrap that is incompatible with your Titan, is so damaged that it’s only good for being used in Design Actions or trading, and/or has ended up essentially generic.
This last category exists to make bookkeeping a bit easier and to make it so there are pieces of Scrap you don’t feel bad about using for routine things: I don’t want to make every single piece of Scrap something unique, so most scrap will be generic (Mech Right Arm Scrap, Magic Weapon Scrap, etc), although some of that will also have descriptors (Organic Weapon Scrap [Viral Components], Mech Head Scrap [Advanced Electronics]).
This is also because damaged Titans often require generic Scrap to be repaired, or in more severe cases require generic Scrap with certain descriptors. Blueprints (detailed later) also often require generic Scrap or generic Scrap with certain descriptors.
Whenever Titans go into combat, they’re controlled by Pilots, who you might get through events, as mission rewards, or through trades. Although Pilots are blank slates at the lowest level of experience, having little effect on how the mech performs in combat, they start to add their own twist on things the longer that you have them. After their first battle, they go from Level 0 to Level 1, and then it takes 2 more battles to reach Level 2, and then 3 to reach Level 3, etcetera – but the only thing that each level does is add one more Trait, based on the battles that got them to that level. Each Trait specializes the pilot somewhat, providing them with a bonus in one respect but a smaller negative bonus in another.
For example, if a pilot was ordered to try to act as a sniper with his Titan during his first mission, and he succeeded, he might gain a trait called Sniper, which allows him to do significantly better when using long-range weaponry but slightly worse when using short-range weaponry. If the pilot failed catastrophically due to enemy counter-snipers, he might instead gain a trait called Sniper-Hater, which gives him skill in avoiding long-range fire, but makes him a bit worse at using these weapons himself. As pilots grow more experienced, they’ll grow more eccentrically specialized, but more viciously effective within those specializations.
None of this is numerical, so don’t worry about trying to perform some sort of arithmetic with them – they’re entirely qualitative, I’ll just keep them in mind when writing Mission Reports.
It’s entirely possible for pilots to be injured in battle, or even killed, but the latter possibility will be rare and reserved for cases of truly grievous damage. Injured pilots will be out of action for a couple of turns.
The Navigation Phase is where new information is gained and a couple of individually small decisions are made. To tackle this phase by its individual components:
Rumors: “Rumors” are snippets of information that you will receive during the Navigation, which bring up potential opportunities and potentially provide some direction to teams. Although it’s titled “Rumors”, and many of what comes up may be just that, more formal communiques can also be here, such as your home faction giving directives (which aren’t mandatory, they’re a sector away) or friendly factions requesting aid.
Trades: There may be trades offered during the Navigation Phase, from various vendors or individual actors hanging around in your system. Since I don’t really want to play Bartering Simulator, these will be on fixed terms and visible upfront, but there may be some latitude for choosing what to pay out of certain categories; if so, you would vote for both taking the trade and what to give for it.
Navigation: Each Navigation Phase, the map of known stars in the Sommet Sector will be posted, along with a summary of the known situation in each, and you will vote whether to stay in the current system or move to another within immediate range.
This is the simplest phase. In this phase, you will be given a set of mission choices (typically around three, which should provide meaningful choice and not cause me to die inside), with a description of the mission and a view of the offered rewards for each mission (which consist of scrap, and occasionally pilots or parts and/or equipment). In the Contract Phase, you will vote for which mission to choose, and in the case of missions that allow for choices in their rewards, you will also vote for which of the offered rewards to take.
It’s worth noting that progression in this game is essentially entirely narrative; the more you do missions for the same faction, the more they will consider you as a friend and ally, and the more grasp they potentially get over the system they’re in. This means that the Sommet Sector will actively change as time goes on, and eventually the political situation may settle into something… climactic. Until then, missions provide you with opportunities to establish yourself and build up your group.
Before going into the Design and Revision Phase itself (which is, on the whole, a bit of a doozy), I’ll quickly explain the dice system: I’m stealing MoP’s dice setup with slight adjustments. Two dice are rolled, and plus or minus a difficulty modifier (Simple [+4], Trivial [+3], Very Easy [+2], Easy [+1], Normal [+0], Hard [-1], Very Hard [-2], Theoretical [-3], Ludicrous [-4]
Utter Failure (2-): The design fails so catastrophically it is completely unusable and can’t even be revised, but you do still get some experience.
Buggy Mess (3): The design functions and can be deployed (and revised), but crippling bugs make its usefulness marginal at best.
Poor (4): The design works, and does even fulfill its purpose, but major bugs or poor quality still majorly impair it.
Below Average (5): The design unambiguously does what it is meant to do, but performance is still hindered by minor or moderate bugs, or by unmet specifications.
Average (6,7,8): The design functions in the role it is meant to function, in the way it is meant to function. There might still be bugs, or trickier specifications may not quite be met, but these will be minor.
Above Average (9): The design works free of bugs and meets even fairly difficult specifications or exceeds less difficult specifications.
Superior (10): The design exceeds most of its specifications.
Masterwork (11): The design exceeds its specifications significantly, and either gains some sort of additional functionality in line with the original design or gets a very large return on one of its specifications.
Unexpected Boon (12): Not only is this design a Masterwork, but the design offers an additional benefit. This can be a major functionality not written in the design, a research lead into a promising new technology, a piece of tech gained on the side, or other possibilities.
The Design and Revision Phase consists of performing two Design Actions and a Revision.
Design Actions (which both cost Scrap, albeit in different ways) come in two varieties: Jury-Rigs and Blueprints.
Jury-Rigs basically involve tearing apart a few parts and slapping them together into something brand-new. When performing a Jury-Rig, you select which pieces of Scrap you would like to use for the Jury-Rig and write something up combining them together. This can take the form of a totally original design, or a design-scale revision of some part that you’re upgrading (by using that part and other Scrap or parts). Although Jury-Rigs do produce only one part, they’re much less limited by experience and tech type than are Blueprints: you could, for example, stick Organic Scrap onto a Mech gun to create a hybrid sort of cyborg gun, even if you’re a Mech faction without any Organic experience, even if perhaps it’s difficult at first.
Blueprints are how you do major projects that will form part of your baseline going forwards. Instead of selecting Scrap and then making a design from what you’ve chosen, you create a design to your heart’s content, and you will be given a list of pieces of Scrap; this Scrap is what is required to manufacture the design, which can be done in the Deployment Phase. For example, you might create a laser gun, and need to find a piece of Scrap with laser components, a piece of Scrap with advanced electronics, and a Mech gun. Blueprints can’t be made using things you have no experience with, although you can take something you have experience in and extend it further. Blueprints don’t disappear when you create what’s on them, either – they instead can be used any time you have the requisite parts, as many times as you want.
Revisions alter one of your previous designs to a minor or moderate degree. In the case of a Blueprint, you can alter a Blueprint, in which case you can make a change to it of fair size, so long as it’s not a total overhaul that essentially could just have been another Blueprint. In the case of altering a part that you can use (whether it’s a starter part or something you manufactured or Jury-Rigged), you can only really make relatively small changes or fix bugs, without being able to install new kinds of tech. This is because Revisions are the only totally free action in the Design and Revision Phase: when you perform a revision, the results are instantly applied and you do not pay any Scrap.
Finally, the Deployment Phase is where you prepare for the mission, and it’s likely the “chunkiest” in terms of keeping track of things quantitatively – this phase deals with choosing which Titans you will send on the mission you’re deploying on, which pilots you’ll send in those Titans and what their orders are, what you’ll equip onto these Titans, if you would like to assemble something from Blueprints, and if you would like to use scrap to repair damaged mechs.
The first of these things is the simplest: you will choose which Titans to send on the mission. There may be limitations on which to choose on certain missions.
As for pilots, you’ll need to put one in each Titan that you are deploying, as well as give them a set of instructions for the way you would like them to approach the mission’s combat – but we’re not talking GalactiRace levels of tactics. While freeform, these instructions should be extremely brief, consisting of just a single sentence or so.
To facilitate making things a bit easier, your previous loadouts for Titans will be “remembered” and listed in a spoiler in the Deployment Phase Post, and a spoiler containing individual descriptions of the equipment and parts that you currently own (parts and equipment with special restrictions on replacement will have such noted in their descriptions in this spoiler, which is also present in the previous phase).
What Scrap you have will be listed in more or less all phases, but here you have the option of using it to repair damaged Titans; Titans can be damaged in combat, and though they’re usable while damaged, they will require repairing to re-reach full combat capacity. This takes no time, and is simple: each Titan will have a repair cost. These will usually just be generic Scrap requirements, but particularly severe damage to parts and equipment may require specific kinds of Titan parts or Scrap with certain descriptors to fix (or, if you’re feeling creative, working around the damage with a Jury-Rig, which you’d do in the Design and Revision Phase).
Finally, you can also decide to create one of your Blueprints this phase and equip it, if you’ve got the correct Scrap listed by the Blueprint.
This all seems like a lot, but the only mandatory parts of it are choosing Titans and pilots and giving the pilots instructions; all of these other things can be done and should be at some point or another, but you don’t have to put them in some sprawling votebox that is mostly empty most of the time; just vote for things as you feel the need to do them.
I don’t want to have a series of preliminary phases that drags on for months and months – while I don’t say this to be rude to the many GMs who have chosen to do extended preliminary phases, I feel it can detract from the start of the game. So I’m going to take things from a very nearly symmetrical state at game start, and make the preliminary phases a lightning-fast set of small phases mostly meant to provide your team an identity, not an armory.
Preliminary Phase One: You’re just going to choose which Tech Type your faction uses, here. This can be one Tech Type or a combination of two, but it can’t be three. (I’ll explain this in more detail in the team threads.)
Preliminary Phase Two: This is a purely lore phase – you are going to vote for a description of the home faction that created your mercenary group. This doesn’t have to be long (it can be just a paragraph or a couple of sentences long if you so wish), and I’ll extend on it and explain your faction’s history with the other faction.
Preliminary Phase Three: This is the second purely lore phase; in this phase, you will vote for a description of your group specifically. Are they mercenaries, a paramilitary force, some sort of plain military unit, or something else? How were they created? How did they come to fame? Why were they chosen to be the ones spreading your home faction’s influence in the Sommet Sector? Once again, there aren’t many strict requirements, but keep in mind that this phase and the previous will determine a lot of the flavor with which I write the game for you.
Preliminary Phase Four: This is the only real design phase of the preliminary phases. In this phase, you will create a single Blueprint for a Part or piece of Equipment, though this cannot be an entirely new Titan or a Torso. This starting Blueprint will determine which things you have experience with (and thusly what you find easier to do in the immediately following Design and Revision Phases), and it will be present on your starting Titan in as large a quantity as can fit on it – in other words, you’ll get two Arms if you create an Arm, multiple Small pieces of Equipment if that’s what you design, but only one Head if that’s what you design, or Large piece of Equipment. You will also start with this Blueprint ready to assemble. All of your other gear will be generic gear equal in performance to the other side’s gear.
The preliminary phases are completely open, both in terms of the forum threads being freely viewable, and the faction threads being open to all. This is because the preliminary phases contain so little actual mechanical action, and in order to give players a chance to see what both sides are going for before joining, as well as allowing players to make formative input without being locked to a side. After the preliminary phases, full opsec will be put into place.
Oh, and tonally... I'll be trying to take this with a mixture of serious/epic and absolute batshit silliness. Don't expect just one or the other, hahaha. (Though you can feel free to make your own faction lean heavily into one or the other, I'd just have to figure out how to write it the other way at times.)
Links:DiscordKnights Reliquar ThreadRivalla's Retinue Thread
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