Say, for example, I built an Iron Monger-esque mech suit for my Inventor character to pilot during combat. What skills do you feel would be most relevant for piloting the mech? I'm assuming Operating would be used instead of Piloting or Driving, if the GM were to decide to treat the armored mech as a vehicle rather than just a power armor. If that does happen to be the case, what would the combat skill be? Brawl? Melee? Most vehicles use Gunnery, but this 'vehicle' would be fighting with fists instead of guns. Should I just use Operating for the combat skill? Or should I just make up a new skill?

Using Operating for attacks would overempower the skill, I'd say; Brawl (for want of a weapon) does sound better, perhaps with a different characteristic.

Did you have a look at the BattleTech thread yet?

As GM I would have a few issues with allowing a vehicle (essentially) as armour/armament in regular hand-to-hand combat, for scaling reasons (damage, soak, ranges). How about just emulating a power armour with a few nice HP attachments:

Soak 3, Defence 1, Encumbrance 3, Strength +1, Athletics +1, Vaccum Seal or Amphibian, Reinforced Gauntlets (Dam. +1, Crit. 4, Close, Disorient 3), Stun Matrix (when hit by Melee/Brawl, may use opponents 2 Threat to activate Disorient 2); when out of power: Encumbrance +9, no Strength increase, no Defence.

Operating is a poor choice of skill: it's specifically for large vehicles. If the GM were to treat it as a vehicle, Drive would be appropriate if it were ground-based (and it might be, depending on the version of Iron Monger you're referring to) or Pilot if it flies. But since most Starktech-derived suits do both, I'd create a separate skill. And speaking of which version, can you clarify which it is, please? The one from the Iron Man movie would just be a large power suit that uses Athletics and Brawl (see page 155, Admiral Arthur's Astounding Amplimotive Armor for an example of this). If you're thinking of the one from Iron Man: Armored Adventures that's several stories tall, that would be Drive (since it's a ground-based vehicle that doesn't fly).

As for which attack skill, Gunnery is only for ranged attacks, so that skill is out. If it's a powered suit, Brawl sounds best, but if it's the IMAA mecha, I'd make a new mecha melee skill.

Brief tread hijack: One of the biggest complaints about the Star Wars vehicle system, especially with fighters, is it's basically rocket tag. In my observation, the low hull and system strain levels play a lot to that. If you ignore the scaling of personal>vehicle, the standard weapons on vehicles are equivalent to blaster pistols, so not very powerful, but the HT/SS and armor of fighters is equal to a very squishy character. A shot from a medium laser cannon with a successful activation of Linked is good enough to take out a lot of fighters.

So if you're custom making mechs and plan to focus a game around them, would raising the HT/SS to be roughly equivalent to a starting character (so in the 10-15) range or a little beyond it help to extend the life of the vehicles a bit?

I've not had a lot of experience with SWRPG vehicular combat, so I can only speak to how it's setup in Genesys.

The example aerospace fighter in the book (page 231) has a main weapon that does 2 damage and the autofire quality. The ship itself has 2 armour, 10HT and 10SS. So each hit would do (Success) damage; an average hit of 2 successes would do a net 2 damage. That sounds about right for a 3–4 round combat, yes? Especially if you can trigger autofire to hit another time…or two!

25 minutes ago, c__beck said:

I've not had a lot of experience with SWRPG vehicular combat, so I can only speak to how it's setup in Genesys.

The example aerospace fighter in the book (page 231) has a main weapon that does 2 damage and the autofire quality. The ship itself has 2 armour, 10HT and 10SS. So each hit would do (Success) damage; an average hit of 2 successes would do a net 2 damage. That sounds about right for a 3–4 round combat, yes? Especially if you can trigger autofire to hit another time…or two!

That sounds very different from the stats I expected coming from Star Wars

2 hours ago, Doctor Xerox said:

That sounds very different from the stats I expected coming from Star Wars

In a good way, I hope!