GH2 Idea: Unlockabe Faction Mecha

[Joseph Hewitt]

One of the big changes in GH2 is the fact that all mecha are now aligned with particular factions. Aegis Overlord will no longer use OvaKnights and Harpies, and the Federation Defense Force will no longer use Chameleons and Chimenteros.

Here's an idea to improve on this: After the completion of some plot event (likely tied to the core story or a high-level quest), a faction can be given access to its advanced mecha. Aegis Overlord is working on a biotech mecha; that's why they were so interested in Cetus and Typhon, as well as the reason for their presence in Amazonia. After a certain plot event, their advanced mecha can be activated... The next time the PC faces Aegis, he may have to deal with their new biotech units.

Both the PC's enemy faction and any allied faction can have events of this type. If an allied faction gets this event, then the PC will be able to purchase the advanced mecha for his own use from that point on.

This idea was inspired by countless mecha-of-the-week TV shows, and also by the GP Evas at the end of Evangelion. What do you think?

[Phil Munoz]

I like the idea.  It would be nice if some activations causes chain reactions of mecha activations... so it would seem like factions are reacting to new enemy models and such.

[draconuszero]

An excellent idea!  another thing would be faction-specific weapons/equipment.  The thieve's guild can give for example goggles to improve pickpocket skill by seeing what potential items those they steal from have.  The guardians, being a peaceeping force can use stun rods or items to arrest high-level perps.  

Oh btw, would there be some equivalent to an assassins guild?  Seeing the political structure, the factions with less scruples would call up the assassins guild to do their dirty work.  The said guild would rely on stealth suits and poison weapons to kill their targets.  

Also, will the mercenary guild be a standalone faction with its own plot, or will it be like it is in gh1 where they aren't joinable and just give you missions?

[Epsilon]

Sounds interesting. It could also represent the advancement of an oncoming war from scouts to seige engines.

Here's a similar idea: as time progresses, new marks/models of mecha are created/released. If you though the Chimentero was bad, wait for the Chimentero Mk2, specifically designed for space use...

[macksting]

That's a good point. I'm definitely a fan of the idea of upgraded models hitting the market, sorta like the Zeta Daum was introduced after the success of the Daum. Could that be an example unlocking plot event in the game? As it happens automatically, it shouldn't unlock anything really super, but it should certainly make the news and might be useful.

It should be pointed out that, to a mild extent, faction-specific equipment does exist; for instance, upon reaching Private or so, I was very, very glad to have a Military Uniform to replace my Ceram Breastplate. Mobility has been, for the first time in my gameplay history, more imperative than weight capacity, so that uniform was quite the AC upgrade.

Also, just to point it out, if the Argoseyer and Gladius aren't in the Design stuff, this means that other mecha can also appear in the game with similar lack of market availability in GH1. Probably only usable as one-time encounters like Cetus and Typhon, or as player-character available gears through the completion of a quest like stealing/procuring a critical bit of information for your faction which was the final key in mass producing this model of mecha which will only be available by specifically requesting it from the head engineer...

"Howdy, Madigan! What brings you to Kettel's ironworks?"
"I wanted another Bluposeyer."
"That'll be $12,000,000, a bargain just for you."
*Pay money, spawn new mecha Argoseyer-style.*

[Anticheese]

I support this idea, Adds to realism and gives flavour and incentive to join a faction...

Say you work for the guardians and have picked up a Luna II after a battle, Would there be any consequences of using an enemy Mecha? (I.E the inbuilt IFF in most Mecha would identify you as "TARGET AQUIRED")

Quoting: Epsilon

Here's a similar idea: as time progresses, new marks/models of mecha are created/released. If you though the Chimentero was bad, wait for the Chimentero Mk2, specifically designed for space use...

Bearing in mind that your average game of Gearhead I can be finished in two weeks of gametime, That would mean that the corps have a really good R&D outfit...

Of course, GH II might be different, (I.E Space voyages taking a week/month)

All the same it sounds like a great idea, Would there also be potential for new Mecha designs (as in totally new) appearing during random (or not so random) events like pirate raids or the odd arena event?

"My Mecha is one of a kind, Yours will crumble like the weak ones before me"

Anyhow, Two thumbs up!

[Sabin Stargem]

Maybe a type of standardization for the namings of the units can help tell the player what kind of mecha they are going up against.   Basically, letters tell something specific about the unit that sets it apart from others, making it non-standard in some way.

EX1
Psychoknight MK-IIIS (Space-Type)
Doombeetle v102A (Air-type)
Buruburu 71G (Ground-type)
Biomantis B10W (Bionic water-type)
Doppelganger AIC-v01 (Artificial Intelligence, Customized)
Luna II (standard version)

Also, it just occured to me that maybe an new kind of pilot could be introduced into the game.  AI pilots, most of which are either based on alien technology, or built upon the combat data of mecha driven by pilots.  It could create an new storyline type for Gearhead, about the player being one such 'test pilot'.  It could be interesting in that as time goes by, the player could encounter machines that emulates the player's statistics and abilities, perhaps becoming more deadly as new advancements are made for the AIs.  Heck, maybe the data could be bought and added into the player's own robots, so that he or she could have more of themself to go around?...

[Anticheese]

Quoting: Sabin Stargem

Also, it just occured to me that maybe an new kind of pilot could be introduced into the game. AI pilots, most of which are either based on alien technology, or built upon the combat data of mecha driven by pilots. It could create an new storyline type for Gearhead, about the player being one such 'test pilot'. It could be interesting in that as time goes by, the player could encounter machines that emulates the player's statistics and abilities, perhaps becoming more deadly as new advancements are made for the AIs. Heck, maybe the data could be bought and added into the player's own robots, so that he or she could have more of themself to go around?...

Something in there reminds me of one anime show I once watched..

Anyhow, Its caled Robot Pilots and Experience Points, Once in a blue moon a robot you build will become sentient and will be capable of piloting a Mecha (as all sentient lancemates are), Unfortunatly most 'Bots come into existance with only weapon skills.

Quoting: Sabin Stargem

Maybe a type of standardization for the namings of the units can help tell the player what kind of mecha they are going up against. Basically, letters tell something specific about the unit that sets it apart from others, making it non-standard in some way.

Could be, The only problem I can see is that most casual players wont be able to tell much of the difference, Much the same with the complaints about the SDL relationship meter.

All the same, Interesting suggestions.

[peter]

Quoting: Anticheese

Once in a blue moon a robot you build will become sentient

Actually, if you drop 10 or 20 million credits on robotics training at Wujung University, you can fairly consistently build sentient robots.  (use three or six mecha welding sets as ingredients.  That helps too.  See my robotics guide on the wiki.)

 That actually seems like a bit of an inconsistency in the GearHead universe.  If you can build sentient robots after a one-day multi-million credit training course, why aren't there more sentient robots running around.  Once you know how to build one, you can do it in less than an hour (two minutes, actually) and for a cost of less than 10000 credits.  The corporations have the resources to make tons of them.

(this is a giant tangent, and maybe should be in a new thread?  Advice, oh mighty moderator?)

e.g. Knowledge 30, Robotics 20 (I awarded myself a bunch of XP with the "enter debug code" thing.  I'm going to restore my savegame after this!).  Ingredients: 6* mecha patch kit.  1 micro PC.  1 class 10 sensor.
robot: Re:34 Bo:25 Sp:42 Pe:35  Cr:42 Eg:38 Kn:37 Ch:40.
some good skills (Dodge 14, Small Arms 13, Martial Arts 14, among others.).
three extra arms, one turret, and a second head.  So basically a _totally_ kick-ass robot that's good at everything.

 The cutoff for sentience is all stats > 10, so I easily made it with this robot.  (and with several other robots).

 With Robotics 40, the first robot I built (using a class 10 sensor and 9 mecha patch kits) has: Re:38 Bo:25 Sp:41 Pe:72  Cr:73 Eg:65 Kn:84 Ch:49
2 extra arms, 2 extra heads, a tail, and three turrets.
Armed Combat 23, Heavy Weapons 27, Martial Arts 33, Small Arms 20, Code Breaking 9.)

 Do robots this far superior to humanity exist in the Gearhead universe?  Did the corps build some and then find out that the robots didn't want to do their evil deeds for them?  So the robots ran off and joined the Cyclopses (what is the plural of Cyclops?  Joseph, aren't you an English teacher?)  Or were they able to make them sentient but aligned favourably for the corp and willing to work for not much pay?  They don't eat, they don't sleep (but neither does anybody else...), and they're super tough.  Why aren't all corporate pilots super-robots?

 These super-robots are within reach of the PC.  For 34.4 million credits and 11 hours of game time, Wujung University trained my Robotics skill up from 8 to 20.  With a similar amount of money, you can get your Leadership way up there and lead a decent sized robot army...  Mwahahaha!

[Anticheese]

Quoting: peter

(this is a giant tangent, and maybe should be in a new thread? Advice, oh mighty moderator?)

Sure, If you want to then go ahead.

If you also want I can delete your post in this thread so that your new topic is more unique.

Quoting: peter

Do robots this far superior to humanity exist in the Gearhead universe? Did the corps build some and then find out that the robots didn't want to do their evil deeds for them? So the robots ran off and joined the Cyclopses (what is the plural of Cyclops? Joseph, aren't you an English teacher?) Or were they able to make them sentient but aligned favourably for the corp and willing to work for not much pay? They don't eat, they don't sleep (but neither does anybody else...), and they're super tough. Why aren't all corporate pilots super-robots?

Yes, there is a plot-canon sentient robot in the storyline, I wont give up much (SPOILERS) but if you want to know more, Talk to a monk.

I'm pretty sure that the corps would agree a robot would make a logical choice for a mecha pilot, and that they would be friendly towards the corps (The ones that I build allways start with "I love you" stregnth relationships) and the chances of them unionising should be pretty low...

[Joseph Hewitt]

I've started a new thread about sentient robots over in the Plot and Game World forum.

[SharkD]

Quoting: peter

These super-robots are within reach of the PC. For 34.4 million credits and 11 hours of game time, Wujung University trained my Robotics skill up from 8 to 20. With a similar amount of money, you can get your Leadership way up there and lead a decent sized robot army... Mwahahaha!

In my current game, I have seven followers, and three of them are robots.

[SharkD]

Why not extend this idea to personal weapons, as well?

[Joseph Hewitt]

By applying it to mecha, it should automatically affect personal scale equipment as well.

[Aquillion]

Quoting: peter

Actually, if you drop 10 or 20 million credits on robotics training at Wujung University, you can fairly consistently build sentient robots. (use three or six mecha welding sets as ingredients. That helps too. See my robotics guide on the wiki.)

That actually seems like a bit of an inconsistency in the GearHead universe. If you can build sentient robots after a one-day multi-million credit training course, why aren't there more sentient robots running around. Once you know how to build one, you can do it in less than an hour (two minutes, actually) and for a cost of less than 10000 credits. The corporations have the resources to make tons of them

Quoting: Anticheese

Bearing in mind that your average game of Gearhead I can be finished in two weeks of gametime, That would mean that the corps have a really good R&D outfit...

Both of those things remind me of a saying a friend of mine once had about Vampire.  When asked how player characters who were, in theory, thousands of years old could build up fifty times the skills they'd had in their centuries of life (and far beyond the skills of anyone else in the world) in a few short months of adventuring, his universal response to describe their previous years of life was:

"You were doing it wrong."

Timelines and advancement in RPGs never make sense.  If you look at any of them closely, you're always forced to conclude that the PC learned virtually nothing until the player started controlling them, at which point they began learning at a rate vastly faster than anyone else in the universe...  and that all the really interesting events in history, up until now, were scattered over at most one every few decades, but now happen on the order of weeks or days.

According to Gearhead, starting at the age of 30 as opposed to 16, a difference of 14 years, gives like a thousand or so extra xp to work with.  Given how much more the player goes on to earn in 14 days, does that make any sense at all?  No.  But it's necessary for gameplay.

Gearhead is a bit better about the timeline issue than most games, but you can't really escape it completely.  At the end of the day, the player is Bruce Lee in a Giant Robot.

...and, on another note, all this is appropriate to the source material:  the main characters in most giant robot anime learn things absurdly fast compared to everyone else, while R&D always pulls new experimental equipment out on whatever schedule is necessary to advance the plot, with absolutely no regard for common sense.

Some explanation for rapid R&D advancement can be given.  Although it's been 140 years or so since the Night of Fire, the period we're playing in is the first real major conflict, isn't it?  So all the corps are rolling out things they've been working on for a while, seeing their first field experiences, and making quick touch-ups to account for the results.  We're actually seeing the results of years of research being pulled out really quickly to account for the suddenly violent situation.

Usually anime uses some other explanation, like a sudden discovery of alien or lost technology that makes for rapid advances.  That wouldn't work so well in Gearhead unless we're talking about biotech, though, which is (IIRC) the only technology that hasn't gone far beyond pre-Night of Fire levels.