Project Knight [Mecha Design Bureau]

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Rolls for Chosen Upgrades:
Engineering Rolls: Your team will roll dice for each factor of the design they are trying to impact. The dice roll is a simple d20 modified by their level of training and experience in a given field, versus a difficulty target that must be met or exceeded. The degree of success/failure will then modify the final result accordingly.
Bonus: Well funded! Your engineers roll twice and choose the higher result.

Rolls for Central Heavy Mount:

Rolls for Frontal Auto Turret:

Rolls for Rear External Mount:

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Work on designing and integrating the weapon systems into the crawler prototype was now complete. Although it wasn't going to be easy, we had chosen to go in-house with the entire build and now our weapon techs were working overtime trying to build something suitable. Thankfully, nothing we were building was particularly challenging. Building a bespoke drone system for the mech was a challenge in its own way, but nothing your team couldn't handle. Now that our payload was decided, the chassis was really starting to look like a war machine even without any additional armour plating.

The main gun was mounted relatively far back to help control the recoil and reduce the overall length of the mech - there were concerns that mounting it further forward could affect the mobility and balance of the chassis. A simple hull extension was brought up to encase the entire upper half of the weapon system while the rest was nestled deeper into the body. The setup limited the usability of the gun compared to a turret, but it was still able to achieve an arc of fire of 72 degrees laterally, and half that vertically.

Up front, a complex turret mechanism was mounted onto the nose cone of the chassis, including a ball joint and flexible overlapping plates allowing the turret to achieve a wide arc of fire in every direction. A suite of sensors and automated targeting systems were integrated into the system, enabling the PDS on the top of the turret to automatically track, detect, and fire upon incoming threats, while the grenade launcher and machine gun ensured nfantry or light vehicles in range would suffer dearly.

Finally, we gutted the rear armour panels of the chassis to build a wide drone dock, complete with arms for catching and folding the drones into the dock and automated systems for swapping the system modules and weapons attached to each drone. The entire thing was one big vulnerable spot in the back of the mech, but the reconnaissance alone would go a long way to getting the most out of the main gun and allowing the pilot to proactively spot and avoid potential ambushes against the vulnerable rear.

With so much ammo packed into the system, we also took the liberty of installing blowout panels near each set of ammo cases, hopefully mitigating the damage risk associated with a cookoff to some degree.

With our weapon systems decided, we once again reviewed the current progress on the mech…

The project was going well so far. The emphasis on cheap, easy to maintain components had resolved many of the logistical concerns we had from earlier versions of the mech. While the components were complex and difficult to make, this was currently more of a limiter on where you would be able to set up manufacturing of the mech - maintainability was now good enough that the locals should have no problems keeping them running.

Our potential customers have reviewed our work on the Mech so far. We are happy to say that the Kingdom of Kadiri, Bethnar Republic, and Sahel Alliance are all currently interested in acquiring the mech, and are looking forward to seeing the final prototype. The Sahel Alliance and Kingdom of Kadiri are, however, also interested in the model being developed by the East African Federation which may be a rival competitor in the Second Tier market.

The SCC on the other hand has its doubts. While they recognize that you have yet to choose a final engine or allocate additional armour plating, they fear that the vulnerable drone dock on the rear of the mech will be a fatal flaw. The mech's agility is rather low, which limits its turning radius, and the SCC expect that they will be fighting opponents who are able to dominate the airspace in any conflict zone, making it easy for them to access and target the exposed rear. Additionally, given the reported speed and agility of the Zaibatsu Space's mecha force, there are concerns that the main gun will be too unwieldy to properly target and defeat them. They're shopping around for other options, but if we can do something about these weaknesses, they might change their mind.

We do have some good news. The Amazon Republic have officially expressed their interest in Project Knight!

• Amazon Republic:The vast territory of the Amazon Republic stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, encompassing fertile coastal plains, vast jungles, and the high mountains of the Northern Andes.
  • The Amazon Republic is locked into a cold war with their neighbours in the Southern States, who have long overshadowed them as the prominent power of South Atlantea. Border conflicts flare up every so often, but the real battles are in space, where the two constantly plot and maneuver against one another. They need a large number of adaptable, highly mobile system that can handle all kinds of tough terrain better than your average tank, meaning it needs to be somewhat agile, easy to maintain, quick to build, and simple and rugged enough to reduce complexity.
  • Bonus Requirements: To sell to this faction you should achieve:
    • ❌ Skeletal Agility: D- or higher
    • ✅ Ease of Maintenance: C- or higher
    • ✅ Build & Repair Speeds: C- or higher
    • ❌ Tech Simplicity: C- or higher

There's obviously a conflict between what they want and the Bethnar Republic wants - for what it's worth, the Amazon Republic are much more likely to make practical use of these things, and have a larger budget than the Bethnar do - but is it worth trying to meet their demands? That's up to you, director.

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Sub-Project 'Heavy Fireside Crawler' (Codename: Bushfire):

Current Prototype (Rough Draft, Slice View w/o Outer Hull):

Displayed above is a Rough Draft Profile of your Heavy Fireside Crawler standing at full height (maximum line of sight for weaponry.) A slice view is used to expose the internals as you outfit it, the exterior hull will be displayed later.

Project Requirements & Ratings:

Tech Specs & Ratings:

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We've outfitted the weapon systems as best as we can. There are a couple of minor issues - the weak point in the rear of the hull and the limited ammo supply for the main gun come to mind. Additionally, one of the annoying quirks about the weapons layout we've chosen is that the main gun presents a blind spot for the PDS in the turret directly below it. We can sort of get around that against most targets through movement and adjustment of the gun and turret, but it's inconvenient. As long as we leave some tonnage left at the end, though, we should be able to figure out some kind of solutions for this.

Now we're at a crossroads. The Mech's Engine, Armour, and Subsystems still needed to be chosen - and worryingly, there still wasn't any sight or sound of the promised Cockpit. You queried the Senior Directors as it was getting difficult to plan cockpit space in an increasingly shrinking mech, and got the feeling they were agitated by the lack of progress on a working model. You did your best to escalate the risks to your superiors.

Now, you had a simple decision ahead. You had money left in the contingency budget - you could probably spend some of it on addressing some of the current problems with the mech now before moving onto the Engine. Doing so would come with its own pros and cons. Spending that funding now would reduce the amount of contingency you had later - but the longer you left problematic issues in the mech and did not address them, the more expensive and/or technically challenging it would be to resolve them, potentially removing the opportunities altogether.

Your Chief Engineer, Charlotte Lanza, was arguing that the flaws could probably wait. There was nothing about the mech so bad that it couldn't be fixed later. But she did note that once we set up the engine and drive controls, it would make it much more difficult to apply further adjustments to the limbs and actuators. If we wanted to tackle the issue of the Mech's agility and turning radius to try and please the SCC and Amazon Republic, it might be easier to do that before we design and install the engines.

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New Vote: Your Engineering Team has increased in skill while working on the development of the current project. One of the skills your team has gained sufficient experience in will be improved:

[] [Skill] Materials Science +2 to +3
[] [Skill] Structural Engineering +2 to +3
[] [Skill] Weapons Development +2 to +3
[] [Skill] Ballistics Expertise 1: Once per turn, reroll a failure when rolling to develop the (Ballistics) tag on any skill.

New Vote: What step of development do we focus on next?
Approval voting is used to represent some level of chaos and unpredictability in a large project like this - not everything is always going to come out perfect, and you'll have to do your best to make it work at each stage of development. The top vote from each category will win - ties will be resolved with a coin flip/die roll.
Remaining Funding: 2

[] [Develop] (Free) Let's settle the Engine question now - between the right drive setup and whatever benefits the cockpit's Neural Link might unlock, we might be able to hit those agility targets without a limb refactor.
[] [Develop] (Free) We're not even close to our Combat Potential, this thing is very vulnerable to fire. Let's decide how we're going to armour this thing and figure out how much weight we're going to allocate to it.
[] [Develop] (-1 Funding) Screw it, let's spend some budget on refactoring our existing setup now. We can address flaws in the recently implemented weapons systems, and the Kinematics team can look at more potential improvements to the skeleton while we're at it.
[] [Develop] (Gamble for -1 to +1 Funding) Trying to build this thing without a working cockpit is getting ridiculous. Petition the board and convince them to let us work more closely with the Neural Link department - maybe we can help unblock their issues in building the cockpit and get this project back on track.

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Voting is open until Voting will be open until Jan 26, 2025 at 5:00 PM .

Not 100% I captured everything in the rolls list 100% accurately so if you spot an error, please let me know - I'll be double checking them with fresh eyes before we advance to the next stage either way.