Engineering on a personal scale - Suggestions.

[Crucifix]

There are two things I really, really love about Gearhead.

1: Mecha Engineering.

I love Mecha Engineering, just love it. I will literally spend hours of any particular Gearhead campaign buying parts, scavenging a decent core chassis to build on, breaking apart half a dozen mecha or more for whatever I couldn't find, all in the goal of manufacturing some form of super mech that can survive a nuke to the face, and retaliate with about three of the same.

It is partly because of the afore-mentioned Nuke survival that I have to wonder.... Why is it that I myself regularly disintegrate these mecha entirely with nothing more than a spanner, frequently at points when I actually rolled exactly the number needed. This does little more than annoy, and strain my computer as I grumble and reload yet again, as I'm sure many do.

I suggest a less arbitrary system, where a roll failed by a small amount could damage, or even destroy (though not disintegrate) a component by a degree determined by amount missed by, and also fail to install/remove the component in question. Only a massive failure, or failing on an already destroyed item should permanently destroy an item. As it stands it's a "reload until you get it right", the consequences are so severe and easy to suffer from. Worst case, if I get stuck, I'd like to just walk up to the nearest mecha designer and pay him a few million to put in that part I just. can't. fit.

Thing # 2 I like?
Personal scale adventuring.

I feel like my game experience isn't complete unless my character can climb out of their mecha when their opponent's blows up, and just keep on pounding them until they get the message. And, like my mecha, I like to supe those fellas up with cybertech, the best armour and gear you can get, and, of course, skills out the wazoo.

The thing that thwarts me here is the comparative limitation of personal scale combat versus mecha warfare - in part, that's fine, this is, after all, all about the mecha, but there's so much that could be done in personal scale considerations that could just as well be attained just by looking at what mecha already have. Something as simple as a weapon mount - taken for granted in a mecha, where any-weapon, any spot is the norm, would drastically broaden personal scale combat (and for my next opinionated, rambling suggestion - the weapons blister, simultaneous firing at the expense of accuracy, something of a standard in some giant robot shows).

First off, how would such changes be enacted?

Part of any personal scale gear modification would be, of course, from a pure engineering standpoint, same as with mecha (at least those mecha that weren't cybernetically linked to you and happened to be bio-weapons); you have a piece of armour, you want to put something in it, you do so, voila, you now have a helmet with a double-lance sticking out of it.
Awesome.

But if you were to use the current "component menu" for humans the same way it is with mecha, you could very easily look at humans in greater detail, which would open the way for a much broader application of the cybernetics and bioengineering skills.

Cybernetics

Off the top of my head, a component based cybernetics system would allow the following handy dandy implants and doubtless more I've not even considered:

- Heavy Actuator equivalent limb specific muscle enhancers to improve melee DCs with that limb, and artificially increase the weight carryable by that limb, or increase walking speed. Potentially these could have fractional +BODY stats attributed, so a full set - one in each limb would have a BODY bonus, taking away the need for a specific muscle bonding item.
- Special movement, or sprint improving implants.
- Cybernetic specific weapons actually mountable in the limbs themselves (and, via suspension of disbelief, your wolverine claws - admit it, that's the first thing you thought of - don't tear open your space suit).
- Cybernetic power supplies, and of course, computers into which actual programs could be stored.
- Fiber-optic tattoos - No real reason, they just look pretty.
- Subdermal armour plates - And in addition to sheer health improvements, some of the bulkier models might make you look a bit creepy, advanced models might, in the same vein as the allure suit, actually make you look better. This might even be a way to get that enviable "sealed" status without wearing a space suit.
- And of course, the ever popular generic stat boosters would still have a place as body or head specific (most fall into those two categories) implants with overall skill and stat bonuses that are incompatible with further addendums of their equivalent type.

Many of these things can have tiered ability levels just as assuredly as a mecha could - cyber-muscle 01 might have no body boost at all, and might barely increase limb capacity, but cyber muscle 05 might increase BODY by 1 all on its own (and cost about a million per muscle group). Cybernetics with tiered components suddenly ceases to become a mid-late game tech and makes early cybernetics characters possible and fun, yet still viable later on.

And of course, through the wonders of your own cybernetics skill, you can always work on your friends and loved ones. Love interest won't stop dying? Turn them into a walking, talking war crime. Even on yourself, only the most invasive of cyberware would actually require you to visit a cyberdoc (working a scalpel without bones would be an impressive feat, granted), most simple operations you could pull off DIY, taking damage and injuries on bad rolls of your cybernetics skill of course.

Something else that would be newly available would be that these new toys, like those internals on a mecha, would now be subject to damage, leading neatly to:

Maintainence and injury with the component menu:

A mecha doesn't much care that an actuator is slightly dented, it might interfere with movement of that arm slightly, but a human whose fragile human nervous system has been compromised is going to potentially lose use of a limb until the tissue involved has been restored.

Even minor damage to a major organ, such as the heart, can have serious lasting consequences if not treated. With the aforementioned heart wound, as soon as the heart takes damage, there could be several potential, and immediate, injuries that might occur: Haemhorrhaging, losing a few HP every round until you drop like a sack of wet potatoes, weak heart - your heart's newfound inability to pump blood severely messes up your stamina levels, anaemia - blood loss from the wound left you severely lacking in iron.... Even "stealth" injuries - a shard of metal remains lodged in the wound, eventually you're going to have a major heart attack and suffer massive damage on your everything if untreated....

And most of these would be fixable through medicine; only the most severe would make it mandatory to use cybertech (or, with biotech, cloning a replacement organ). Injuries would become more frequent, but in most cases, less catastrophic. As a result, personal combat becomes more dramatic than simple numbers.

So how does this extend to cybertech and biotech?

Well, for the most part, damage to a cybernetic implant of any particular import would be just as potentially serious as damage to the biological organ that they replace, and the parts themselves would hold a consequence beyond mere stats.

For example, a lightened skeleton might naturally lower body mass, and with that lowered weight bring about increased SPD and REF scores, but along with the decreased BODY from it, each bone would have a lower durability stat than their biological original, breaking more easily.
The strain on a cybernetic heart and its larger volume pumped makes it more prone to rupture from less damage, or start pumping out of control, placing a temporary large boost on your physical stats and stamina, whilst at the same time damaging tissue across your body....
And let's not forget the calamity/hilarity that can ensue from even the tiniest malfunction in the piece of machinery you were silly enough to trust into your brain meats....

And to repair cybernetic components, you'd need the cybernetics skill. No longer would cybernetics be essentially a mandatory, yet passive, skill (and the extropian talent similarly so) for anyone who wanted to even dabble in cybernetics and didn't want the side effects every hour on the hour.
To maintain a certain status quo with the current system, cybernetic components could also gradually deteriorate over time even outside of combat. Repair (with general repair tools), and maintenance, a true cyber-warrior could do themselves, but less dedicated cyborgs would need regular trips to their local cyberdoc for maintenance, much like, as mentioned briefly above, hopefully one day mecha engineering won't be a mandatory part of being a viable mecha pilot, merely make life much, much easier to do so.

For the related talents - Extropian could quite easily switch into something like: You are experienced in the care and maintenance of cybernetic implants. (May make a cybernetics check for each item installed - difficult level dependent on item - to prevent that item from decaying) or even make that a standard use of the skill and, given the high cost of a talent, make Extropian - Your cybernetic components do not degrade outside of combat.
Only in-combat would the dedicated cyberknight suffer any damage to their systems.

Cyberpsycho, on the other hand, since it's a talent based off BODY could just be retooled into a more widespread: Action Hero: You shrug off injuries with willpower alone (Spend MP to prevent injuries.). - Your tough as nails character might have just taken a bullet to the brain, but they're a true action hero, it's just a flesh wound with no special injury (up until they run out of MP, or an organ is flat out destroyed).

[Crucifix]

Bio technology

A ways back, you may have caught that I mentioned bio technology a few times, how would that fit in?

Well, with cybernetics, we have access to many potentially big things - powerful muscle upgrades, armoured skeletons, subdermal body-armour.... Yet with metal rusts; the body simply does not regenerate it, actively damages it in some cases....

Bio tech offers another path to self-improvement, from something as subtle as an improved efficiency stomach, to something as obvious as an extra limb, such as:

- Efficient organs - Not so extreme as a cybernetic replacement, merely efficient hearts and muscles would operate similarly to cybernetic equivalents, only as a less valuable, less potent, alternative. An efficient digestive system would increase the sustenance gained from a meal (or reduce the rate at which hunger builds). A hyper efficient nervous system would increase REF and SPD in a way that cybernetics couldn't, and a hyper immune system would provide bonuses to Resistance.
- Limbs - A rather extreme case, but cloned and implanted limbs serve to both replace destroyed limbs (this could lead on to there being no more "oh, you get those destroyed body parts back by a trip to the doctor for $20", if a limb is destroyed, it's gone, along with any expensive cyberware/organs in it). Not enough? Add some more. A tail would carry with it an inherent balance bonus (acrobatics), more arms either another set of hands or a new set of natural weapons, or even martial arts compatible super-enhanced limbs to flat out replace the originals, or wings to give your character a stamina sapping flight movement option.
- Traditional bio-weapons - All those biolaser toting monsters will be surprised when you open fire in kind. Everything and anything a bioweapon could conceivably bring to the party, so could a dedicated bioknight, just as assuredly, bring their own arsenal of biological weapons and power sources. Venom sacs, acid sprays, ink clouds, sharpened replacement teeth.... The possibilities are endless.

Much like cyberware, these traits could also have associated tiers, allowing would-be bioknights to flourish from day 0.

Why would you necessarily pick biological over cybernetic?

They're weaker, but biotech implants would have specific advantages and features to differentiate them from biotech:

1: Weight; an enhanced muscle would have essentially no added weight compared to a regular muscle. Intersperse the muscle fibers with silico-carbonate powered contraction rods and you're going to be looking at an increase on your natural body mass; and like a mecha, increasing body mass would give them penalties to movement, speed, and accuracy. This would be a major difference to current cybernetics, where as soon as something is installed, it weighs nothing. Even dense bone armour plating would be, though less durable than the metal, far, far lighter.

2: Maintenance; as a biological organ, likely as not cloned from your own DNA (I'll go into the suggested mechanism for this next section), a biotech implant would not decay, nor would it necessarily even need any particular maintenance with biotech (for replacement limbs and organs at very least).

3: Unique effects; Limbs, unique bio weapons, organs that give boosts in ways that cybernetics can't quite manage...

4: Optional extras: Unlike inorganic cyberware, biological organs can be implanted to secondary locations. A second heart in place, or a backup brain in your stomach, and suddenly losing the head is no longer instantly fatal. A third eye would negate any penalty losing one might bring, and might even give an additional perception bonus.
However, there's also one major disadvantage of bio tech organs - permanence and exclusivity. You might replace a cyber heart with a newer, better model and pass it on (ew?), but a heart outside of a body dies, the investment is lost.

Going one or the other would work to differing degrees, mixing and matching would require more skill investment, but end up with the best available tools of both.

The spread and transfer of biotech.

Since Gearhead is not a game that would lend itself to making a custom organ from scratch (Well, at least not in-game), how would bio-tech function?

This is actually fairly simple - unlike Cybernetics, where specific organs and parts are sold, bio tech sells portable cloning vats, each keyed to take a part of the user's DNA and clone it into the desired organ through careful manipulation during the growth process.

In game terms, these organ modules would be, except for the most basic, like a generic replacement organ (with at most a minor improvement), highly rare, illegal goods locatable in black markets and chop shops (where the mad doctors who would be the ones to implant the most invasive biotech organs and repair them hang out).

Installation would be a case of an apply skill - biotech to the item, which would give a brand spanking new "X". A bad roll, the organ starts out damaged, or even worse, at a lower tier than the original product intended, a particularly good roll, the organ might even gain a tier (and certainly, the highest tier should be exclusive to a high grade organ kit and an amazing roll). When the item is thusly made, it would take a Medicine roll to implant it (you or the doctor, and here with an extra skill to maintain is another balance between cyber and biotech), and, optionally, a medicine roll to remove any additional limbs (with the potential for damage on a bad roll once again on all levels).

Preventing Over-Modification

One of the main methods in place to prevent a character from going all the way into cybernetics currently is trauma, the more bodyparts, the more mods, the more you're going to suffer. With this, notionally with resources and time, especially with biotech, a character could add a great deal of stuff to themselves. In a way, great, this is intended to make personal combat broader, increasing the potential of enemies and heroes alike (cybernetics at very least would become rather simple to apply as a template to random cyborg compatible NPCs, such as, say, police officers, or mercenaries, or cyberdocs etc).
On another level however, let pseudo realism reign with Frankenstein syndrome. The more extreme, the more obviously abnormal, and generally the more outlandish a character is, the less favourably normal folks are inclined towards them, the more likely guardians are to open fire on sight... Each additional limb, particularly obvious cyberware and other obvious features from either skill discipline increases their Frankensteinium level decreasing charm and applying heavy social modifiers to all things, to the degree it becomes awkward to even progress in the core story until you stop being silly and go take some of those things out.

Likewise, certain features, potentially those even specifically designed for such purposes - pretty face, pretty flourescent tattoos, luxurious hair implants et cetera, would reduce Frank levels and increase charm/social benefits.

Another, more mundane limitter to improvement is sheer body mass. By applying similar rules concerning speed, maneuverability and accuracy as those found in mecha (starting at 0, and being determined as a function of body stat, rather than some constant). Not only will this inherently manage some of the changes that are currently brought about by stat boosts, but this could potentially, with only minor tweaking replace the speed and reflex penalty of being overloaded. If I'm not mistaken, these penalties do not reduce accuracy with heavy weapons or martial arts, only small arms and armed combat.

If, when entering a mecha, the mecha's bonuses/penalties in this area could override those of the character, then only those traits which would actually impact on mecha pilotting need make a difference to mecha piloting (those which actively improve/interfere with how fast someone's brain and body can react), because only those that actively changed those traits would increase or decrease Speed/reflex, an armoured spine might carry a maneuverability penalty, but it would have no impact on how you piloted a mecha. Likewise, weight could give massive penalties to movement speed, targetting, and evasion, but in a mecha, with your junk all laid next to you, your ability to fly the mecha is not impeded by your own personal scale problems.


In the end, in my opinion (and I'm open to discussion on it), a true personal scale expert with the best weapons and armour they can buy, and the best combination of cyberware and biotech possible, and the bulk of their talents dedicated to perfecting this should not necessarily be compared with personal scale monsters (unless similarly focused around the same tenets); they should be compared to targets that match their PV (after all, that's how Exp is granted isn't it?), and that is, by that level, small mecha.
I wouldn't mind much if you had to try harder, pay more, work longer to achieve those kinds of end for personal scale individuals, or if mecha could simply reach a point where they surpassed anything a human could conceivably reach (I'd rather expect it to be that way), but that would be the balance I'd love to see realised in GH2.

In fact, I would love to see slanted combat in both directions, taking my mecha against actual armies of infantry (a la LAPD Future Cop). In fact, I'd love to face off against just one guy who was so tough I needed a mecha to fight him on even terms. And in a mecha versus me - where other characters might try to evade the mech, or use their skills to repair some abandoned mech they found, lure them into a hidden lava pit et cetera, I'd like to run up dodging explosions and machine gun fire, and flat out bust its sensor array with my high power hand cannon (Grey Fox, Metal Gear solid, or let's face it, pretty much any other Metal Gear), and of course, vice versa.

I've babbled long enough I'm sure, thanks to anyone who actually read all this. I hope if you didn't find the ideas good, you'll at least find them interesting or thought provoking.

[Daemonward]

On that note, it would be kind of cool to see scale 0 or scale 1 mecha usable in personal scale combat. Like in the latter part of the Exosquad TV series when E-frames(powered armor) are going head-to-head against Neosapien Lords(big, winged, clawed, genetically engineered super warriors).

[macksting]

That was a surprisingly good TV show. Oh, sure, technologically it wasn't exactly Babylon 5 for attempts at verisimilitude, but a children's show which discusses the horrors of fighting a clean-up war against an enemy which has already lost? A mission to destroy your opponent's ability to breed? And there's always Marsala, who watched over the course of fifty years his revolution become a jihad.
Yet it was occasionally infuriating in how it presented these themes in a way which painfully straddled a line between devestating and youth-friendly. That cheap stunt of having Marsh's E-frame talk to him as he set it to detonate and destroy the Olympus Mons facility, for example, always struck me as poorly written. At best a Schroedinger's Gun, when it shoulda been a Checkhov's.
Really more of an Ass Pull.

[Rowanthepreacher]

Necro!

I'd be happy enough to choose whichever mode of transportation I feel like, all the time. Next time that merchant refuses to talk to me, I want to be able to calmly walk away and return to the exact spot in my mech (assuming that there isn't a roof, or that I've torn the roof off, somehow) and unleash several tonnes of ordnance upon him.

Conversely, I've been wanting to perform the (perhaps mythical) act of a WW2 pilot, namely, to get right up close to my foe, open up the cockpit, pop him in the face with a pistol and drive away in his mech.

[cowofdoom78963]

Conversely, I've been wanting to perform the (perhaps mythical) act of a WW2 pilot, namely, to get right up close to my foe, open up the cockpit, pop him in the face with a pistol and drive away in his mech.

I would like to see mecha hijacking. I think that you should have to damage the cockpit holding bodypart a good deal, grapple the mech, then enter and kill the pilot. Of course you have to be careful not to destroy the mech while making an entrance. It would also make for an intereting mechanic in bounty hunting missions.

It would be kind of like reverse pokemon with giant robots.
(also being able to grapple enemies would be interesting)

Though I doubt that's actually plausible, it's still fun to dream.

A ways back, you may have caught that I mentioned bio technology a few times, how would that fit in?

Biotechnology is highly illegal in gearhead though(in exactly what ways I am not 100% sure). So it would not make sense with the plot for people to be just selling it. Although one thing that I thought might be intereting is if there were prezero biotech cyberware that can work as a line of cybernetic artifacts. I have always thought that cyberware could use artifacts.

I guess the main thing about them is they would not cause trama like regular cyberware, their artifacts though so that would make sense.

[Rowanthepreacher]

Biotechnology is highly illegal in gearhead though(in exactly what ways I am not 100% sure). So it would not make sense with the plot for people to be just selling it. Although one thing that I thought might be intereting is if there were prezero biotech cyberware that can work as a line of cybernetic artifacts. I have always thought that cyberware could use artifacts.

I require that you bed me immediately, sir.

[Otherlander]

You know who climbed into a mech, threw out the pilot and took over?

The same man who goes beyond the impossible and kicks reason to the curb every damn day: Kamina!

[Rowanthepreacher]

If I ever hear his name or see those god damned sunglasses on another character EVER again, I swear you're going to hear about it on the news of whichever country you live in.

[Otherlander]

More seriously, I was using that as a demonstration of how awesome it could be. I support this hostile takeover.