Slice of Life

[Michael]

So, I was reflecting a bit on the responses here, and two thoughts came to mind.

First of all, it looks like a "metaproblem" with GH1 is that mission payouts are linearly scaled to the PV of the opposition.  Late game players who are embarrassing Joseph by rolling in the dough have pushed him to make the slope shallow and boost the cost of mecha.  But that shallow slope means, for a starting non-combat-optimized player, mecha missions simply don't pay enough for the risk of mecha loss. 

(They should pay much more, since the whole reason a player would accept a mecha mission is to turn a profit.  If every penny of mecha mission pay goes into your Next Replacement Mecha fund and cannot be spared for, say, Robotics experiments, then you're really just doing slave labor.)

To fix this, we need to use a function of lower degree, such as a square root or logarithm.  Then milk runs can pay adequately without getting crazy at the high end.

Second, with the point about the power player having all skills in the teens, that puts some new perspective on the players who feel compelled to buy every accessory combat skill (Spot Weakness, etc.).  If Joseph intended it to be a tight decision whether to take Spot Weakness +6 or save the skill slot for something else, then it becomes very lopsided if Spot Weakness +15 is practical.

One other note about skills.  Presently, GH1's skill cost formula follows an almost (1 1 2 3 4 5 8 instead of 1 1 2 3 5 8 ) Fibonacci pattern for the first 15 levels, but then goes quadratic.  As Fibonacci is close to exponential, that's a decrease.  If the skill costs were Fibonacci all the way through, absurd skill levels would be harder to attain.  In fact, there would be an effective cap at about level 37, as the next level skill cost would then exceed what can be represented in 32 bits...

[Joseph Hewitt]

The game does make the assumption that whatever other interests your character may have, mecha piloting is going to be one of the big ones. This leads to a bit of a paradox: players who are good at combat can succeed with noncombatant characters, while players who are less good at combat will do better with a heavy combat character. Adjusting the mission rewards at lower levels may help with that; as far as I can tell from the history file, the reward calculator hasn't been recalibrated since it was introduced.

In recreating the content for GH2, how much should this assumption be challenged? If the game can be finished by means other than combat, how do we make those means more fun than just making skill rolls? What does a noncombatant character risk if not their mecha?

One other note about skills.  Presently, GH1's skill cost formula follows an almost (1 1 2 3 4 5 8 instead of 1 1 2 3 5 8 ) Fibonacci pattern for the first 15 levels, but then goes quadratic.  As Fibonacci is close to exponential, that's a decrease.  If the skill costs were Fibonacci all the way through, absurd skill levels would be harder to attain.  In fact, there would be an effective cap at about level 37, as the next level skill cost would then exceed what can be represented in 32 bits...

Vacuously true. A Fibonacci sequence does increase faster than quadratic but the equation used in GH will still require more XP than it up to Rank 31. Since the highest skill rank I've ever seen in a victory file is 17 I don't think this is something to worry about. AFAIK most players finish with skills of Rk10 to Rk15.

[Rowanthepreacher]

Before I realised that you could just ignore the next part of the story, I finished the game with skills ranging from 3 to 7. If you don't grind renown, the enemies are easier, so the whole thing works out neatly. (I've never seen a Savin, let alone piloted one)

[Joseph Hewitt]

Before I realised that you could just ignore the next part of the story, I finished the game with skills ranging from 3 to 7. If you don't grind renown, the enemies are easier, so the whole thing works out neatly. (I've never seen a Savin, let alone piloted one)

But the core story's difficulty rating is independent of your renown, so keeping your renown low doesn't make it easier (and getting your renown high doesn't make it harder). The only advantage a low-renown character might get is having fewer personal enemies in the final battle, if they haven't made any personal enemies yet.

[LomLom]

In recreating the content for GH2, how much should this assumption be challenged?

I would say that it's the core of the game. I think the Gearheads are fundamentally mecha games and should remain so. That's not to say that inherently mecha = combat.

If the game can be finished by means other than combat, how do we make those means more fun than just making skill rolls?

Technical characters could have to create something complex to some kind of broad specifications. E.g "OK, I'll stop the conflict but I want compensation for my losses: a custom Savin with two burning guns, blinding missiles, a thrown melee weapon and ground wheels!".
 
Another concept is a spin on the current final battle. Typically this currently involves the Big Bad hiding in their battleship until the player trashes it, and then they spring out. Maybe technical characters go inside the battleship instead of fighting a huge battle outside it and have to solve some kind of puzzle, like activating different computer panels at different times and in different combinations, spoiling the Big Bad's day in some spectacular fashion (disabling the battleship, turning the battleship's weapons on the Big Bad, remotely causing the Big Bad's mecha to self-destruct, etc). Or to make it a little more mecha-based, the technical character has to race around the exterior of the core enemy's home spinner/hidden asteroid facility, entering various locations to shut down or tinker with systems, again with some kind of puzzle element.

Conversation/Taunt/Intimidate chars could maybe try to assemble a coalition of factions that are enemies of the core story enemy's faction. Not all these factions will get along of course - the Silver Knights and Blades of Crihna both hate the Rocket Stars but they also hate each other -  which gives the player choices to make. Factions may require favors from the player in return for their help, with immoral factions asking for immoral favors. A faction might be persuaded to ally temporarily with hostile factions, but the risk is that the coalition falls apart from internal squabbling. The player would have to try to balance things. In all cases their skill level should help significantly but not be the sole determining factor. So, once the coalition is assembled, the player can try to make the core enemy back down or take the assembled force into battle (the player can always just hang around at the back away from the fighting... even though those 'Charm' custom mecha variants can be bloody mean)
 

What does a noncombatant character risk if not their mecha?

I would have said their Renown, slamming it right down if they fail, but some players here don't seem to care about their renown at all! (Personally I can't stand being wangta) It would matter a lot more for a non-combat character though, I would say. They'd want a good reaction from NPCs.

[Michael]

In recreating the content for GH2, how much should this assumption be challenged? If the game can be finished by means other than combat, how do we make those means more fun than just making skill rolls? What does a noncombatant character risk if not their mecha?

I'm not asking for a way to "finish the game" entirely bloodlessly.  Rather, I'm protesting that the story easily gets derailed in an unsatisfying way if you aren't obsessed with combat.  At low renown, replacing a destroyed mech is too hard, yet the game assumes you will be mounted most of time (at least one XRAN chapter can lock out a city until you win an SF2 battle).