Heya,

I wanted to implement a walker for use in a sawmill. Looking through the books I came across the A-11 Burrower and the Dug Digger from Suns of Fortune (pages 106 and 107), which I could repurpose, but instead of beamdrills, it would have arm-mounted saws.

The question now is, what skill should I use to operate the saws? Gunnery works for the beamdrills because they are kind of like guns, but those saws are more like melee weapons, but using the Melee skill would still be weird (or maybe Melee with Agility instead of brawn?). I was thinking maybe Mechanics, or simply Piloting Planetary, because it is basically operating heavy machinery. Any thoughts?

Piloting. The wheel bike from KtP has a vehicle 'melee' which uses piloting.

By the general rules it would probably be piloting, although Mechanics (being the skilled labour skill) would also be a good fit.

1 hour ago, Blackbird888 said:

Piloting. The wheel bike from KtP has a vehicle 'melee' which uses piloting.

Awesome, that was the confirmation I was looking for, an official vehicle with a melee attack. Thanks.

22 minutes ago, Sturn said:

That's what I had in mind, only bigger, and meaner .

My players have had fun with this house creation. For the arm and torch we used Pilot skill without much thought. Note that the weapon descriptions where you see "Pilot" wasn't about the skill, but the crew position. Gunnery was still used for the Blaster Cannon.

Never considered Mechanics, but that could make sense also.

Mechanics are great for the intended use, such as cutting up trees (or other large inanimate objects). But for attacking, yeah, Piloting (Planetary) is good. It's agility-based and has to do with controlling vehicles. And you're gonna need some control to use this vehicle to make melee attacks!

Definitely throw some setbacks in there, too, for an Innacurate rating. A Breach rating of 2 would probably be smart.