Nice to know I'm not the only Gundam fan around here. I'm taking a pretty k.i.s.s. approach to things. I think most of the rules work just fine for Mecha as is. I have a thread over in the setting subforum. Still need to work out stuff like mobile suit stats, but I think I'm going to use the base space fighter in the book for a Federation saberfish and work out from there.
Genesys Mecha
What about robotech
On 5/8/2018 at 6:58 PM, Tesoe said:Nice to know I'm not the only Gundam fan around here. I'm taking a pretty k.i.s.s. approach to things. I think most of the rules work just fine for Mecha as is. I have a thread over in the setting subforum. Still need to work out stuff like mobile suit stats, but I think I'm going to use the base space fighter in the book for a Federation saberfish and work out from there.
Good ol' FF-S3. Pretty decent baseline to use!
11 hours ago, Daeglan said:What about robotech
Transforming mecha in general are definitely on the drawing board. The trick there will be to make both (or however many there are) forms viable without being redundant or one being universally better than the other. Robotech/Macross machines and many other series' transforming mechs have one form be a flight type, so that's almost certainly going to be a part of it.
12 hours ago, Daeglan said:What about robotech
I know one of the FFG Freelancers is working on a Macross theme in his copious free time.
1 hour ago, DarthGM said:I know one of the FFG Freelancers is working on a Macross theme in his copious free time.
yeah... but I want it now....
I think a big part of making each mode of a Valkyrie important is really dependant on terrain, speed, and the range bands combat is happening in.
All three modes would basically have the same weapons loadout. So the same damage potential.
The fighter would have higher speed than the others though. So it would be almost universally better in space or high altitude. It would however a minimum speed it needs to maintain life inside an atmosphere.
The battleoid mode I able to take part in ground combat, and can actually stop moving to hover or stand, but has a much lower top speed. It also has hands and can perform melee attacks. You could also create an action for shooting down missiles that only a battleoid can perform. And then maybe some talents improve it.
Gearwalk would be a mid point in terms of top speed and offers most of the advantages of battleoid, but perhaps has some built in drawbacks. Maybe you can still perform melee attacks and that missile shooting down action, but the difficulty is increased.
Darn double posts
Edited by c__beckHere's what I have so far for my Titanfall mod (based off of the original game, I haven't played the sequal):
Stryder-class Titan
Silhouette:
3;
Max Speed:
3;
Handling:
+2
Defense:
2;
Armour:
1;
HTT:
13;
SST:
15
Control Skill:
Pilot (Titan);
Complement:
One Pilot;
Passenger Capacity:
0
Consumables:
None;
Encumbrance Capacity:
2
Price/Rarity:
18,750/8
Weapons:
Titan punch (Pilot [Titan]; Damage 2; Critical 3; Range [Engaged]; Accurate 1)
Hard points:
3
Atlas-class Titan
Silhouette:
3;
Max Speed:
2;
Handling:
+0
Defense:
2;
Armour:
2;
HTT:
15;
SST:
15
Control Skill:
Pilot (Titan);
Complement:
One Pilot;
Passenger Capacity:
0
Consumables:
None;
Encumbrance Capacity:
2
Price/Rarity:
19,750/8
Weapons:
Titan punch (Pilot [Titan]; Damage 2; Critical 3; Range [Engaged])
Hard points:
4
Ogre-class Titan
Silhouette:
3;
Max Speed:
1;
Handling:
-2
Defense:
2;
Armour:
2;
HTT:
18;
SST:
18
Control Skill:
Pilot (Titan);
Complement:
One Pilot;
Passenger Capacity:
0
Consumables:
None;
Encumbrance Capacity:
2
Price/Rarity:
23,740/8
Weapons:
Titan punch (Pilot [Titan]; Damage 2; Critical 3; Range [Engaged]; Vicious 1)
Hard points:
4
I'm working on something just like this, a game that's essentially mixing Front Mission, Gundam, and Armored Core to create a mercenary company operating in numerous theaters of war and putting their customizeable stompy mechs against enemy stompy mechs. Any thoughts on a system where individual parts come together to make a whole mecha? Something like your body determining your overall strain and hull trauma, legs determining how much weight you can carry and how mobile you are, arms determining your armaments and hard points for weapons? Thinking a Guntank-style "mecha with tank treads" could load out with heavy armor and heavy weapons but be really slow and not very agile, while a mech with magnetic joints and wheeled feet would allow for blitzkrieg but not allow for much in the way of armor. Not quite sure how to get that across, though, short of bolting on a Weight trait onto upgrades and parts...
On 5/10/2018 at 2:21 PM, c__beck said:Here's what I have so far for my Titanfall mod (based off of the original game, I haven't played the sequal):
Stryder-class Titan
Silhouette: 3; Max Speed: 3; Handling: +2
Defense: 2; Armour: 1; HTT: 13; SST: 15
Control Skill: Pilot (Titan); Complement: One Pilot; Passenger Capacity: 0
Consumables: None; Encumbrance Capacity: 2
Price/Rarity: 18,750/8
Weapons: Titan punch (Pilot [Titan]; Damage 2; Critical 3; Range [Engaged]; Accurate 1)
Hard points: 3Atlas-class Titan
Silhouette: 3; Max Speed: 2; Handling: +0
Defense: 2; Armour: 2; HTT: 15; SST: 15
Control Skill: Pilot (Titan); Complement: One Pilot; Passenger Capacity: 0
Consumables: None; Encumbrance Capacity: 2
Price/Rarity: 19,750/8
Weapons: Titan punch (Pilot [Titan]; Damage 2; Critical 3; Range [Engaged])
Hard points: 4Ogre-class Titan
Silhouette: 3; Max Speed: 1; Handling: -2
Defense: 2; Armour: 2; HTT: 18; SST: 18
Control Skill: Pilot (Titan); Complement: One Pilot; Passenger Capacity: 0
Consumables: None; Encumbrance Capacity: 2
Price/Rarity: 23,740/8
Weapons: Titan punch (Pilot [Titan]; Damage 2; Critical 3; Range [Engaged]; Vicious 1)
Hard points: 4
Nice! I assume Pilot [Titan] uses Agility?
On 5/13/2018 at 8:46 AM, Fumblemunky said:I'm working on something just like this, a game that's essentially mixing Front Mission, Gundam, and Armored Core to create a mercenary company operating in numerous theaters of war and putting their customizeable stompy mechs against enemy stompy mechs. Any thoughts on a system where individual parts come together to make a whole mecha? Something like your body determining your overall strain and hull trauma, legs determining how much weight you can carry and how mobile you are, arms determining your armaments and hard points for weapons? Thinking a Guntank-style "mecha with tank treads" could load out with heavy armor and heavy weapons but be really slow and not very agile, while a mech with magnetic joints and wheeled feet would allow for blitzkrieg but not allow for much in the way of armor. Not quite sure how to get that across, though, short of bolting on a Weight trait onto upgrades and parts...
I think the parts-equal-the-whole design idea is perfectly viable. It's more fiddly than I wanted to do as the base design for my own mecha, but I think you're on the right track with HT/ST being determined by the body and so on.
While I didn't go for it in the base I've been reading the crafting sections of Special Modifications and Fully Operational. It's not an article that's 100% going to happen, but the parts-equal-the-whole idea might show up by adapting those crafting rules for Custom Genesys Mecha Construction rules.
As to your not-quite-sure bit. There might be some play with the Encumbrance rules. Perhaps instead of or in addition to Hard Point Costs weapons, armor, reloads, etc. have an Encumbrance rating? If I did something like that I'd have the mecha's Encumbrance limit be equal to its Brawn + 5, just like characters, but if your machines don't have a Brawn characteristic a common-sense limit on its own would work fine (in theory, of course).
@Cannibal Halfling , for now Pilot (Titan) is Agility-based. But I am debating on changing it to be Cunning-based.
Clever design idea using Encumbrance! In that situation the legs would probably either add Brawn, give bonus Encumbrance, or negate a certain amount of Encumbrance to allow for heavier equipment. Body determining the majority of your stats (A large bulk of your Hull Trauma and System Strain, a good portion of your hardpoints, your Brawn rating), legs providing your mobility stats (Speed, Handling, the majority of your mechs unwieldiness, and potentially some negative encumbrance to represent more durable models), arms providing your combat options (either mounted weaponry or tool-wielding arms with some hardpoints, HT and SS of their own, the default punch if applicable), and your head potentially representing your computing with the Ogo's swappable modules and some System Strain and misc abilities.
Going to hammer something out by pulling apart the statblocks of the Ogo and seeing if I can make this work.
(Note: I've never really built with Genesys before but I'm really enthralled by trying to make this work, so apologies if I get any design ideas wrong)
So I think I've gotten an idea on taking apart the Ogo and representing it as its component parts for those people who want to hot-swap bits and bobs and customize their mech. The design philosophy I'm going with is that legs should have 50% of the Body's Hull Trauma and each arm should have 25% of the Body's Hull Trauma, rounding in whichever way gets you to 100%. When a part is destroyed your body takes that much Hull Trauma. Legs have (body's armor)-1 and arms have (body's armor)-2.
The goal I'm going for is that you should have incentives to attack any given part; the body is easiest to hit and has to be destroyed to destroy the enemy mech but it has the thickest armor. Legs reduce mobility and can turn enemy mechs into sitting ducks but you're not making them less able to kill you back and you can't beat a mech JUST by destroying the legs unless it's a pure melee mech. Arms remove an enemies ability to do effective damage and they have little armor on their own but they're harder to specifically target than other parts. My end goal is for fights to involve tactical choices in not just who you're shooting and with what, but where you're shooting.
That said, here's my first attempt at a Modular Ogo. Of note specifically for the Ogo: You need to have all "Ogo" parts to take advantage of the Loadout system. Other parts I'm planning will have some additional traits-as-freebies included in their parts, but the Ogo should keep its one and only edge even in a modular game.
THE MODULAR OGO
Modular Mecha can be assembled from four main parts; a Core, a pair of Legs, and two Arm units. Damage to a Mecha's Core is handled per the normal Genesys vehicle rules. Damage to the Arms or Legs is reduced by the individual parts armor score and deducted from its Hull Threshold. Held shields and other defenses still apply normally; a shot to a shield-bearing arm still gains Deflect/Defense from the shield when attacked from appropriate angles. When a part takes damage exceeding its Hull Threshold it is considered disabled and the Core takes damage equal to the parts hull threshold. (An arm has 4 hull and is destroyed by 6 damage, the arm is disabled and the Core takes 4 damage)
CHM-01 CORE
Silhouette:
3
Crew:
1 Pilot
Hull Threshold:
15
Strain Threshold:
15
Brawn Characteristic:
2
Armor:
3
Ranged Defense:
0
Forward,
0
Rear
Melee Defense:
0
Forward,
0
Rear
Hard Points:
3
Encumbrance:
0
A Mecha's Core represents its torso, head, central power source, and typically its cockpit(s). It provides the entirety of the Hull and Strain thresholds, the Brawn characteristic, the Armor statistic, and the majority of the vehicles available Hardpoints. For a mecha to be disabled its torso must exceed its Hull Threshold in taken damage. A 'normal' core like the Ogo should have 0 encumbrance, similar to equipped armor, but heavier cores should have Encumbrance to offset being more durable.
CHM-01 ARM
Hull Threshold:
4
Armor:
1
Ranged Defense:
2
Forward,
2
Rear
Melee Defense:
2
Forward,
2
Rear
Hard Points:
1
Traits:
Hand
Encumbrance:
1
Why encumbrance for the arms? Well it will be balanced out by the legs later, but I figure that in order to have options lighter than the Ogo it has to have some sort of encumbrance. As for the defense and hull, this is specific to the arm itself; since it's much harder to target a skinny arm than the giant body or legs I put two points here so targeted shots are upgraded twice. I don't envision any arms getting much harder to hit than this unless they have built-in shields (physical or energy), but big bulkier arms might be easier to hit. Damaged arms usually don't remove your ability to fire hand-based weapons, but impose huge (currently unspecified) penalties on the accuracy and would likely cause inbuilt weapons to cease functioning. Damaged shield arms can only apply a maximum of 1 defense or deflect if the shield itself hasn't been destroyed. The Hand trait? That's to show it's a hand that can use weapons. I intend to have some arms that are weapons, or shields, or tools that can't use hand-held objects.
CHM-01 LEGS
Hull Threshold:
7
Armor:
2
Ranged Defense:
1
Forward,
1
Rear
Melee Defense:
1
Forward,
1
Rear
Skill:
Driving
Encumbrance:
2
Traits:
Unwieldy 2, Load 4, Bipedal
Handling:
-1
Speed:
3
What's Load? Load subtracts from your overall Encumbrance. In this case the 2 Encumbrance and 4 Load is the "Norm" for Bipedal mechs. Particularly light or agile mechs would have less load but higher speed, heavier or tank-style would have more load to offset having so much encumbrance on its parts. Bipedal? I intend to include Tank legs, Wheeled legs, and multi-legged models with their own benefits. When legs are destroyed your speed becomes functionally 0 and you can only move very, very slowly (possible taking system strain in the process.) Attacks against you get upgraded in a similar fashion to taking a knee but you don't get the benefit; you essentially become an unstable weapons platform.
What do you think?
Edited by FumblemunkyI got a few vehicles stated up for my Gundam game. I've posted them over in my setting thread, to keep things tidy. Here's a link to the post if you're interested.
On 5/16/2018 at 12:04 PM, Fumblemunky said:(Note: I've never really built with Genesys before but I'm really enthralled by trying to make this work, so apologies if I get any design ideas wrong)
So I think I've gotten an idea on taking apart the Ogo and representing it as its component parts for those people who want to hot-swap bits and bobs and customize their mech. The design philosophy I'm going with is that legs should have 50% of the Body's Hull Trauma and each arm should have 25% of the Body's Hull Trauma, rounding in whichever way gets you to 100%. When a part is destroyed your body takes that much Hull Trauma. Legs have (body's armor)-1 and arms have (body's armor)-2.
The goal I'm going for is that you should have incentives to attack any given part; the body is easiest to hit and has to be destroyed to destroy the enemy mech but it has the thickest armor. Legs reduce mobility and can turn enemy mechs into sitting ducks but you're not making them less able to kill you back and you can't beat a mech JUST by destroying the legs unless it's a pure melee mech. Arms remove an enemies ability to do effective damage and they have little armor on their own but they're harder to specifically target than other parts. My end goal is for fights to involve tactical choices in not just who you're shooting and with what, but where you're shooting.
That said, here's my first attempt at a Modular Ogo. Of note specifically for the Ogo: You need to have all "Ogo" parts to take advantage of the Loadout system. Other parts I'm planning will have some additional traits-as-freebies included in their parts, but the Ogo should keep its one and only edge even in a modular game.
THE MODULAR OGO
Modular Mecha can be assembled from four main parts; a Core, a pair of Legs, and two Arm units. Damage to a Mecha's Core is handled per the normal Genesys vehicle rules. Damage to the Arms or Legs is reduced by the individual parts armor score and deducted from its Hull Threshold. Held shields and other defenses still apply normally; a shot to a shield-bearing arm still gains Deflect/Defense from the shield when attacked from appropriate angles. When a part takes damage exceeding its Hull Threshold it is considered disabled and the Core takes damage equal to the parts hull threshold. (An arm has 4 hull and is destroyed by 6 damage, the arm is disabled and the Core takes 4 damage)
CHM-01 CORE
Silhouette: 3
Crew: 1 Pilot
Hull Threshold: 15 Strain Threshold: 15
Brawn Characteristic: 2
Armor: 3
Ranged Defense: 0 Forward, 0 Rear
Melee Defense: 0 Forward, 0 Rear
Hard Points: 3
Encumbrance: 0A Mecha's Core represents its torso, head, central power source, and typically its cockpit(s). It provides the entirety of the Hull and Strain thresholds, the Brawn characteristic, the Armor statistic, and the majority of the vehicles available Hardpoints. For a mecha to be disabled its torso must exceed its Hull Threshold in taken damage. A 'normal' core like the Ogo should have 0 encumbrance, similar to equipped armor, but heavier cores should have Encumbrance to offset being more durable.
CHM-01 ARM
Hull Threshold: 4
Armor: 1
Ranged Defense: 2 Forward, 2 Rear
Melee Defense: 2 Forward, 2 Rear
Hard Points: 1
Traits: Hand
Encumbrance: 1Why encumbrance for the arms? Well it will be balanced out by the legs later, but I figure that in order to have options lighter than the Ogo it has to have some sort of encumbrance. As for the defense and hull, this is specific to the arm itself; since it's much harder to target a skinny arm than the giant body or legs I put two points here so targeted shots are upgraded twice. I don't envision any arms getting much harder to hit than this unless they have built-in shields (physical or energy), but big bulkier arms might be easier to hit. Damaged arms usually don't remove your ability to fire hand-based weapons, but impose huge (currently unspecified) penalties on the accuracy and would likely cause inbuilt weapons to cease functioning. Damaged shield arms can only apply a maximum of 1 defense or deflect if the shield itself hasn't been destroyed. The Hand trait? That's to show it's a hand that can use weapons. I intend to have some arms that are weapons, or shields, or tools that can't use hand-held objects.
CHM-01 LEGS
Hull Threshold: 7
Armor: 2
Ranged Defense: 1 Forward, 1 Rear
Melee Defense: 1 Forward, 1 Rear
Skill: Driving
Encumbrance: 2
Traits: Unwieldy 2, Load 4, Bipedal
Handling: -1 Speed: 3What's Load? Load subtracts from your overall Encumbrance. In this case the 2 Encumbrance and 4 Load is the "Norm" for Bipedal mechs. Particularly light or agile mechs would have less load but higher speed, heavier or tank-style would have more load to offset having so much encumbrance on its parts. Bipedal? I intend to include Tank legs, Wheeled legs, and multi-legged models with their own benefits. When legs are destroyed your speed becomes functionally 0 and you can only move very, very slowly (possible taking system strain in the process.) Attacks against you get upgraded in a similar fashion to taking a knee but you don't get the benefit; you essentially become an unstable weapons platform.
What do you think?
Ahhhh, sorry for the slow response! Infants, I'm telling you.
This looks like solid stuff! You also really seem to be thinking about all the fiddly bits that come from different parts getting wrecked, and I'm really interested in what you can cook up with the variety (weapon/tool arms, wheeled/tracked legs, etc.).
One thing that will need to be straightened out is exactly how much harder it is to target specific parts, but that's what Setback dice and upgraded difficulty is for. There might also be some room for having an attack hit a part randomly a la Dark Heresy, but that would take a tch extra bit of design effort.
Been pondering putting together my own mecha conversion for Genesys, just gave this thread a proper read through. Some really solid work here
@Cannibal Halfling
, I'm enjoying it a lot. Keep it up!
If you're looking for other solid mecha games for inspiration, I can't praise
Battle Century G
enough. It's a little indie game, product of a small Kickstarter. The actual game mechanics wouldn't be overly compatible, but there's definitely some design inspiration you could mine out there.
Alright, so Genesys Mecha has a decent spread of machines and the pilots to smash them together, but I really wanted to make that smashing part a bit more interesting.
So this month we have Genesys Mecha Critical Hits !
This involved splicing together the table from the Genesys Core Rulebook, the Critical Injury table, the Vehicle Critical Hits table from Age of Rebellion, and a few new things that can go wrong when someone shoots your machine with an Ogo Bazooka. I think this will make the combat more varied and interesting, but let me know what you think! As always, thanks for reading.
I'm working with the idea that to attack the legs is a one die setback and to attack a specific arm is a two die setback for two reasons. A: since destroying the arms of a mecha tend to drastically lower its ability to fight back, and they can potentially be destroyed in a good hit, they should be harder to hit. B: this mirrors the design of Front Mission where attacking a Wanzers Core was the easiest, the Legs was slightly harder, and the arms were much harder. The trade-off in accuracy is also rewarded by having much lower armor and a much more important effect on combat; a wanzer with a broken Legs unit can still (barely) move but fights at full accuracy, while a wanzer with a broken Arms unit has its accuracy with the weapon in that arm utterly devestated.
(Broken in this case being an operative for "heavily damaged and only barely functional", not "actually missing from the mech")
I'll work on pulling the other defaults apart and then start figuring out how Treads and Spider Legs should operate in Genesys terms.
I was thinking, in regards to the Minion problem you identified earlier (where mechs are way too sturdy to make for satisfying minion squads), would it be worthwhile having some kind of special rules for mechs when they're put into minion squads? Maybe a flat reduction/division of their hull threshold? Might be easier than providing Minion level stats for the various suits.
****, I'm really liking all of the stuff here. Was trying to make a mech game on my own, but I think I'll use the rules here instead.
Was messing with the idea of beam weapons and breach, since I was making a vaguely Gundam SEED-esque game. I had the idea that while everything had at least a Breach of 1, beam weapons had maybe 2 or 3 breach and I was thinking of maybe the not-Gundams having to spend system strain to basically nullify Breach on physical weapons and lower Breach ratings on beam weaponry.
8 minutes ago, satkaz said:****, I'm really liking all of the stuff here. Was trying to make a mech game on my own, but I think I'll use the rules here instead.
Was messing with the idea of beam weapons and breach, since I was making a vaguely Gundam SEED-esque game. I had the idea that while everything had at least a Breach of 1, beam weapons had maybe 2 or 3 breach and I was thinking of maybe the not-Gundams having to spend system strain to basically nullify Breach on physical weapons and lower Breach ratings on beam weaponry.
For my Gundam game I'm actually going a different direction. Beam weapons are going to have a lower breach than a lot of other weapons, and instead have crit of 1. It keeps beam weapons very leathal, but I don't have to mess around with outrageous breach and armor ratings. I'm also going to have them ingore the defense and deflection qualities. Anti beam coating will increase the crit rating, and let the defense and deflection qualities apply.
Of course I'm doing the original series. Seed treats beam weapons really differently. The don't really treat them like anything special. I'd probably ignore the idea of them being energy weapons altogether if I did Seed. Just use normal weapon stats.
13 minutes ago, Tesoe said:For my Gundam game I'm actually going a different direction. Beam weapons are going to have a lower breach than a lot of other weapons, and instead have crit of 1. It keeps beam weapons very leathal, but I don't have to mess around with outrageous breach and armor ratings. I'm also going to have them ingore the defense and deflection qualities. Anti beam coating will increase the crit rating , and let the defense and deflection qualities a ppl y.
Of course I'm doing the original series. Seed treats beam weapons really differently. The don't really treat them like anything special. I'd probably ignore the idea of them being energy weapons altogether if I did Seed. Just use normal weapon stats.
Hmm, considering just about everyone carries beam weaponry by the end of Seed, that might be a good idea to treat them like normal. I might have stuff like Phase Shift armor increase the critical rating for a certain amount of system strain, but not sure how much system strain I should spend for that. It could just be used as another point of Defense.
4 minutes ago, satkaz said:Hmm, considering just about everyone carries beam weaponry by the end of Seed, that might be a good idea to treat them like normal. I might have stuff like Phase Shift armor increase the critical rating for a certain amount of system strain, but not sure how much system strain I should spend for that. It could just be used as another point of Defense.
I could see that working. If you're currious what I'm doing I have a thread over on the setting subforum.
On 6/11/2018 at 12:15 AM, Tom Cruise said:I was thinking, in regards to the Minion problem you identified earlier (where mechs are way too sturdy to make for satisfying minion squads), would it be worthwhile having some kind of special rules for mechs when they're put into minion squads? Maybe a flat reduction/division of their hull threshold? Might be easier than providing Minion level stats for the various suits.
Hmm, interesting. I'd have to try a couple of formulas to see what feels best, but I think you're onto something there!
As to beam weapons @satkaz , @Tesoe , you've both got some solid thoughts. How common they are definitely effects things. If they're plentiful or have become the main type of weapon featured, than you don't have to design around them being 'better' or 'special'.
For my hack I'm operating under the idea that energy weapons are pretty rare, which colors the design choices a fair bit. At the moment I'm thinking that they will require a machine to have a specific trait; certain mecha will have that trait built in, and others all the way down to the Ogo will be able to attain it with an attachment.
I will say that the idea for something like SEED's Phase Shift armor, a la a gradually drained defense or ablative armor sort of situation, has sparked a thought or two that will probably end up incorporated in the next batch of Gundam-esque mecha.
14 hours ago, Cannibal Halfling said:Hmm, interesting. I'd have to try a couple of formulas to see what feels best, but I think you're onto something there!
As to beam weapons @satkaz , @Tesoe , you've both got some solid thoughts. How common they are definitely effects things. If they're plentiful or have become the main type of weapon featured, than you don't have to design around them being 'better' or 'special'.
For my hack I'm operating under the idea that energy weapons are pretty rare, which colors the design choices a fair bit. At the moment I'm thinking that they will require a machine to have a specific trait; certain mecha will have that trait built in, and others all the way down to the Ogo will be able to attain it with an attachment.
I will say that the idea for something like SEED's Phase Shift armor, a la a gradually drained defense or ablative armor sort of situation, has sparked a thought or two that will probably end up incorporated in the next batch of Gundam-esque mecha.
There's also the feel and tone of the game to consider as well. We've been mostly all talking about Mecha in real robot genre. I was thinking this morning about how I might handle a Mazinger Z styled super robot game. Or something based on Transformers. Game like that would be a lot more loose with mixing energy weapons with more conventional ones.