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Tacit Ronin: The Power of Three

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Sir Plusse said:
Think maybe running a simulated battle against one of our previous enemies would work well enough to test that? I can't think of any names offhand, but I expect RS vs. Blade-class would be good enough for our purposes.
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Up to Lost in that regard I think, he can run it with Fyr in a PM or in the thread. I'm pretty ecstatic as is.
 
Captainwolf said:
I can do that, although it wont be done for a few hours. I'll do it versus Viceroy, as the most recent cat 4 that is fairly normal
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Thanks! I like having a lot of power to play around with, but I don't want it to come at the expense of Fyr's enjoyment (since if Fyr can't get into the quest, the quest ends). And if Fyr needs to minmax kaiju specifically to survive long enough to enter melee, that's pretty much guaranteed to kill his enjoyment.

Feel free to give RS a few tweaks, too; we're planning to upgrade its gear later, so it'd probably be good to simulate "RS with optimal equipment."
 
Honestly, if it turns out to be too strong, the easiest thing I could do is just have Marked For Death apply to a single attack of the players' choice. That way, it still has some synergy with All-Out Assault, but not in an "effectively slaps Positron onto every single attack" way.

We'll see how stuff goes, in any case.
 
Captainwolf said:
@Fyrstorm What are the standard range penalties for ranged weapons (ones that aren't listed as being carbines, rifles, etc)
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+1 bonus at point blank, +1 Difficulty at Medium, +2 Difficulty at Long.

They're kind of a hybrid between all three other weapon types, and are overall very good-- since they have the long range accuracy of rifles, the mid and short-range of carbines, and half the Point Blank bonus of scatter weapons. Your conventionals always use standard Ranged Weapons-- though of course having them be at Point Blank of anything is generally a bad idea-- and you'll sometimes see K-Scale weapons with the same sort of range profile.
 
@LostDeviljho We may want to rethink putting the Kinetic Guillotines on Revolver:
Charging the Guillotines takes an action, and so does mark for death. As such, if we start charging the guillotines as soon as possible, then once the Kaiju get within 30 we then have to stop charging the guillotines if we want to use Mark for Death, so a difficulty 7 toughness test is required to not lose 1 charge on the Guillotines.
 
@Fyrstorm New question, when treating armor as halved, should the resulting value be rounded up or down?
IE if Mark for Death was applied to an AV of 3, would the result be 2 or 1 AV?
 
Captainwolf said:
@LostDeviljho We may want to rethink putting the Kinetic Guillotines on Revolver:
Charging the Guillotines takes an action, and so does mark for death. As such, if we start charging the guillotines as soon as possible, then once the Kaiju get within 30 we then have to stop charging the guillotines if we want to use Mark for Death, so a difficulty 7 toughness test is required to not lose 1 charge on the Guillotines.
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The simple resolution to this is have using Mark for Death be the first thing we do always. Means we can just hang onto it for however long we want while we charge up.

Given how fights usually start we don't want to be charging it first thing anyway.
 
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BungieONI said:
The simple resolution to this is have using Mark for Death be the first thing we do always. Means we can just hang onto it for however long we want while we charge up.
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The thing is that it has a range of 30, while the Kaiju normally start further away than that. Also, if we cant start charging until the Kaiju are within 30, then we will generally have only 1-2 turns to charge up, and thats only if we wait to fire until the Kaiju is within about 10 units, giving us only 1 turn of shooting.
 
Captainwolf said:
The thing is that it has a range of 30, while the Kaiju normally start further away than that. Also, if we cant start charging until the Kaiju are within 30, then we will generally have only 1-2 turns to charge up, and thats only if we wait to fire until the Kaiju is within about 10 units, giving us only 1 turn of shooting.
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Which is fine? Especially if we got shooting in before they crossed 30 units with longer range armaments on Revolver, which they're supposed to have.

One turn of shooting is where All Out Assault comes into play and means that there is an absurd amount of gun slamming into their face.
 
BungieONI said:
Which is fine? Especially if we got shooting in before they crossed 30 units with longer range armaments on Revolver, which they're supposed to have.

One turn of shooting is where All Out Assault comes into play and means that there is an absurd amount of gun slamming into their face.
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The Guillotines would be the longest ranged weapons if we installed them, since they would replace the autocannon, and the other weapons would be grenade launchers and shotguns.
 
The way I see it, the Guillotines are pretty good even without charging; the charge just makes them better, but it takes a long time for said charge to reach full power so we'll probably be shooting them as-is more often than not.
 
It's worth noting that the current guillotines are literally mk-1 equipment. There's still refining that can be done. Such as, for instance, lowering the DC on the check to keep the charge.
 
The fact that the Ultra Autocannon is pretty functional in the meantime honestly takes a lot of the pressure off getting the guillotines functioning and installed ASAP, which means we can afford to refine them a bit.
 
Heh, I went looking back and found we made Jagdarium six months ago on Week 25. We've made wonderful use out of it in those six months. Blast of nostalgia from the past.
 
BungieONI said:
I was thinking of using the title of the Sabaton song Resist And Bite. I'll actually go back and edit that in.
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I had wondered if that was the origin of the motivation, TBH. The Bataillon de Chasseurs Ardennais has an excellent motto.
Fyrstorm said:
Meanwhile, Everett's holding a straight-up ceremony for their new arrival. The old grey and red paint is scrubbed clean, leaving the jaeger's armour bared to the sun, before a new coat of royal purple is applied, accented by crisp golden linework and stripes. In some areas, the scheme is reversed, with larger areas of gold around the sternum and upper arms, the purple adding detail to the gleaming plates. As the new rangers of the machine start it up for the first time, the announcement is made;

No longer is this the Blue Star's Elysium Praetor. Now, the Mark II is the Northwestern Protectorate's Revolver Shogun.

Elysium Praetor now renamed Revolver Shogun!
Revolver Shogun now has pilots!
New Perks added!

I'll probably draw up a new picture for Shogun, but in the meantime we'll just use Elysium's pic.
Also, here's your new perks for Revolver (in addition to Gyro-Stabilizers):
- Mark For Death (Salla): As a Standard Action, Revolver Shogun may Mark a single target of its choice within 30 units, analysing its defenses for key weaknesses to exploit. This Mark lasts until it is consumed, or until combat ends, whichever is sooner. When Revolver Shogun attacks a target that has been Marked For Death, it may choose to consume the Mark, treating the AV of all the target's armour as halved, before applying Resilience, until the end of its turn. Other combatants cannot benefit from consuming this Mark, a Marked target cannot be Marked For Death again until the existing Mark is consumed, and Revolver Shogun may only have a single target Marked For Death at any one time.
- All-Out Assault (Theodore): As a Long Action, Revolver Shogun may make an attack with up to all of its Ranged Weapons against a single target within range. Revolver Shogun may decide to fire less than the maximum number of weapons it has available, but must fire at least two separate weapons systems to make an All-Out Assault. Each attack made during an All-Out Assault suffers a non-cumulative -1 penalty, and counts as an individual attack for the purpose of the target's Reactions or relevant defenses. After making an All-Out Assault, Revolver Shogun suffers a -1 penalty to any and all Reactions until the start of its next turn.

Hopefully these perks work out, and don't have any horrible flaws in them-- besides perhaps being a bit on the wordy side, or some odd language choices. I can always modify them later, in any case.
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If they have any flaw, it's the level of synergy they have. That's one hell of a nuke button, at least once Revolver can live up to the name. Hot damn. Also, I love that you gave the gender-bent reincarnation of the White Death a Perk with "death" in the name, all without knowing the inspiration for the character.

Yes, that reveal was deliberate. I kinda didn't want to keep hold on that detail forever, and I kinda doubt anyone would guess it at this point. I modeled some of the history (as well as ancestry) of one of Revolver's Pilots on one of the greatest snipers who ever lived. Felt fitting. Personality was mostly invented whole cloth, though, so it's not that relevant to how the character acts.
Sir Plusse said:
Honestly, I'm a little worried that those perks might be TOO good. Like, Mark for Death halves a target's defenses against RS's attacks for one turn, while All-Out Assault makes an arbitrary number of attacks (from a Jaeger, with the appropriate levels of power and the ability to crit) on whatever unlucky sap we choose.

In other words, I think those combine into something that could easily lead to one-turn-kills on damn near anything. This means that, if they live up to my worries, Fyr will have to either throw disproportionately-strong kaiju at us or nerf RS.
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It does take a turn to set up, and we are making our attacks at a penalty. I think the bones are fairly sound. It's possible that adjustments might possibly need to be made to some of the values in the future. -2 instead of -1 penalty on our end, for instance.

It's also not perfect. Cat 0s and groups may be a problem. Strong enough Barriers, or Ionic Particle BS, may also cause problems. Fast, flying foes that don't give us enough time to make the shot, causing us penalties like Arkon and Vertigaunt did, highly specialized extra armor layers/coatings, and probably more I can't think of. Hell, enough bulk will do the trick.
BungieONI said:
It did occur to me that that might happen yeah. Its specifically the sequential penalties levied against the Reactions of our opponents because of the way All Out Attack is structured as a line of separate attacks, but I definitely want to give these a good and proper test run against a Cat IV so we have use cases to go off of.

E: And I don't want to get too deep in the weeds about getting concerned about it because it is Lost's baby and its been long in coming.
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Reaction thing only applies at Point-Blank, which is not the optimal place for Revolver. Or if they can React against Ranged.
Captainwolf said:
I can do that, although it wont be done for a few hours. I'll do it versus Viceroy, as the most recent cat 4 that is fairly normal
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Viceroy is really tanky. Really heavy armor. Something to consider.
Fyrstorm said:
Honestly, if it turns out to be too strong, the easiest thing I could do is just have Marked For Death apply to a single attack of the players' choice. That way, it still has some synergy with All-Out Assault, but not in an "effectively slaps Positron onto every single attack" way.

We'll see how stuff goes, in any case.
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Honestly, I think All-Out Assault is more likely to be the source of any imbalance. Marked for Death is good, don't get me wrong. But it also means spending a turn not attacking, and the decrease isn't that big in absolute terms. It's something like a +2-3 damage, assuming comparable or better armor to ours, depending on how you round it and the exact values. And only after that are Resiliences are applied.

Nah, I think the alpha strike Perk is probably more going to be the problem here. Tweaking things like the penalty all the attacks take, or the after effects, is probably a better nerf. But you're the GM, so it's really up to you how to handle it.
 
Nixeu said:
I had wondered if that was the origin of the motivation, TBH. The Bataillon de Chasseurs Ardennais has an excellent motto.
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Not exactly, the exact origins of the Motivation are the consumptive ideals of Metagaos, who is all about eating everything to the point he's described as eating time.
 
Nixeu said:
Nah, I think the alpha strike Perk is probably more going to be the problem here. Tweaking things like the penalty all the attacks take, or the after effects, is probably a better nerf. But you're the GM, so it's really up to you how to handle it.
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Fair enough. Yeah, bumping the AOA penalty to -2 or so is always an option if it turns out to over perform too badly.
 
the results of me testing on Viceroy were: All out assault + Marked for Death = multiple minor wounds, and a decent chance to cause major wounds even without a crit

Basically if a Kaiju has AV 4/2, then the U-10 Autocannon only needs a 6 or higher to get a major wound (at short or medium range, without alpha strike) or a 7 with alpha strike (8 or 9 for a second autocannon shot to get a major wound)

So, I expect that any Kaiju that Revolver can mark for death and use All out assault on will take at least 1, probably 2 minor wounds, with a good chance of a major wound, before it can get into melee. Admittedly, any Impact Resilience will do a lot to mitigate that damage, since the U-10 is Impact and the missiles are Impact/Fire.
 
Captainwolf said:
the results of me testing on Viceroy were: All out assault + Marked for Death = multiple minor wounds, and a decent chance to cause major wounds even without a crit

Basically if a Kaiju has AV 4/2, then the U-10 Autocannon only needs a 6 or higher to get a major wound (at short or medium range, without alpha strike) or a 7 with alpha strike (8 or 9 for a second autocannon shot to get a major wound)

So, I expect that any Kaiju that Revolver can mark for death and use All out assault on will take at least 1, probably 2 minor wounds, with a good chance of a major wound, before it can get into melee. Admittedly, any Impact Resilience will do a lot to mitigate that damage, since the U-10 is Impact and the missiles are Impact/Fire.
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What equipment setup did your test use? I'm assuming that you tested with its current loadout, but...
 
Sir Plusse said:
What equipment setup did your test use? I'm assuming that you tested with its current loadout, but...
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I'll just link the doc that I had notes in. It wasn't exactly rigorous and scientific, I'll admit, but it should give an indication

docs.google.com

Jaeger Combat Test

Starting Distance: 60 units from each other (same as original fight against Viceroy) Revolver has paired kinetic Guillotines instead of its U-10 Autocannon SRSE-1 Kinetic Guillotine 2000 Resources Built-in Ranged Weapon (F) Attack Dice: 1d10 (pairs) Armour Penetration: 2 Damage Type: Edged Damag...
docs.google.com docs.google.com
 
Fyrstorm said:
Elysium Praetor now renamed Revolver Shogun!
Revolver Shogun now has pilots!
New Perks added!

I'll probably draw up a new picture for Shogun, but in the meantime we'll just use Elysium's pic.
Also, here's your new perks for Revolver (in addition to Gyro-Stabilizers):
- Mark For Death (Salla): As a Standard Action, Revolver Shogun may Mark a single target of its choice within 30 units, analysing its defenses for key weaknesses to exploit. This Mark lasts until it is consumed, or until combat ends, whichever is sooner. When Revolver Shogun attacks a target that has been Marked For Death, it may choose to consume the Mark, treating the AV of all the target's armour as halved, before applying Resilience, until the end of its turn. Other combatants cannot benefit from consuming this Mark, a Marked target cannot be Marked For Death again until the existing Mark is consumed, and Revolver Shogun may only have a single target Marked For Death at any one time.
- All-Out Assault (Theodore): As a Long Action, Revolver Shogun may make an attack with up to all of its Ranged Weapons against a single target within range. Revolver Shogun may decide to fire less than the maximum number of weapons it has available, but must fire at least two separate weapons systems to make an All-Out Assault. Each attack made during an All-Out Assault suffers a non-cumulative -1 penalty, and counts as an individual attack for the purpose of the target's Reactions or relevant defenses. After making an All-Out Assault, Revolver Shogun suffers a -1 penalty to any and all Reactions until the start of its next turn.
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Ahahahahaholy Shit. This is some Perk incredible synergy.

From 30 units out, so there should be at least one turn between Marking the target and them reaching RS, meaning there should be enough time for an All Out Assault before the enemy can Charge unless they can fly.

Yes, this is definitely some good shit.

Fyrstorm said:
Fair enough. Yeah, bumping the AOA penalty to -2 or so is always an option if it turns out to over perform too badly.
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A -2 penalty is definitely more hefty than a -1, but All Out Assault would still be one heck of a Perk from a damage perspective. At worst, we'd need to switch focus from a mid-range Carbine/Rifle loadout to a Scatter/Carbine-focused one.

Marked For Death also doesn't have a time limit, so we can Mark a target as soon as they're within 30 units and just wait for a good moment an All out Assault. Marked For Death also doesn't specify the attack has to be Ranged, so Phenom can always intercept anyone trying to Charge in and Expose them to whatever Melee Weapons Shogun has, if he has the spare Advantage points.

I recommend a Georgius Blade on a Jaeger Sheath, if possible.
 
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