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I've been thinking of a few ideas:

On a natural roll of a 20, the section hit is knocked out; it's not destroyed unless the MDC is depleted. For PBCs, on a natural roll of 19 or 20 knocks out the section due to EMP effect; unless of course, the to-hit-roll is a 20! Some common sense should be applied; a 12.7mm MG probably isn't going to take out a mecha, unless it gets a 20 to the cockpit. I thought of having a separate roll, but I want to speed up game-play.

Secondly, to include other OCCs, mecha should have a crew consisting of maybe a copilot, a tech and perhaps someone else; each mecha should have passageways inside of it allowing people to move through the Mecha's main body to monitor the engine and even conduct repairs. Each mecha should have a crew-quarters, a galley and maybe a med-lab.

Peacebringer wrote:On a natural roll of a 20, the section hit is knocked out; it's not destroyed unless the MDC is depleted.

Eh… it feels really unnecessary given that you’re already doing double damage if you roll Nat20 to strike, and the mecha in the series aren’t anything like that fragile. It’d also be too easy for a player to abuse, since the cockpit is pretty much inevitably in the Main Body and the Main Body is what you’re shooting at by default.

Peacebringer wrote:For PBCs, on a natural roll of 19 or 20 knocks out the section due to EMP effect; unless of course, the to-hit-roll is a 20!

Nah, with double damage from a Nat20 already and the above-mentioned obvious potential for game-breaking abuse, it’s really unnecessary… and something totally unprecedented within the setting.

Peacebringer wrote:Some common sense should be applied; a 12.7mm MG probably isn't going to take out a mecha, unless it gets a 20 to the cockpit. I thought of having a separate roll, but I want to speed up game-play.

Really, if common sense were applied there wouldn’t be any mega-damage small arms… I mean, come on… why bother with giant robots when a platoon of footsloggers with ordinary rifles can take down a battle pod in one melee round with rapid fire. (The idea that the Mars Gallant H90 laser hound is firing giant robot-stopping energy blasts is pretty silly considering our first look at it has it failing to do more than put a tiny divot in the bark of a perfectly ordinary tree. It was, in fact, a 9mm machine pistol replacement… essentially a laser MP5.)

Peacebringer wrote:Secondly, to include other OCCs, mecha should have a crew consisting of maybe a copilot, a tech and perhaps someone else; each mecha should have passageways inside of it allowing people to move through the Mecha's main body to monitor the engine and even conduct repairs. Each mecha should have a crew-quarters, a galley and maybe a med-lab.

Um… what?

The mecha in Robotech are NOT that big. Not even close.

I mean, hell… the Masters Saga mecha are mostly between 6 and 7 meters tall. To put that into perspective, your typical minivan (e.g. the Chrysler Pacifica) is around 5.25 meters long. Mecha like the Spartas hovertank are around 3 ½ feet taller than than minivan would be if you stood it on its rear bumper. They BARELY have room for their one-man crews… and no design drives it home quite as hard as the Bioroid, which is so cramped pilots are forced into the fetal position to fit into the cockpit. The VF-1 is one of the biggest human mecha in Robotech, and it’s about the same size as the F-16 Falcon, one of the smallest one-man modern fighters. The Destroids, excluding the Monster, are only slightly larger than a modern main battle tank. The M1 Abrams is about 9.83m long (32 ¼ feet long). The typical Destroid is 11.27m tall (37 feet). There’s often just barely enough room for a one-man cockpit. Most Robotech mecha are even smaller than that. The Monster Destroid’s pretty much the biggest mecha in the series, and its cockpit is about the size of the front row seating of a minivan, and seats a whopping three people (a driver, a gunner, and a commander).

I'm with Kaiba in that the natural 20 + the side effect by location table should suffice. A good idea to speed up play would be to have this as a telegraphic format on a custom GM screen.
(Since no official one was available... To my knowledge.)

Peacebringer wrote:Secondly, to include other OCCs, mecha should have a crew consisting of maybe a copilot, a tech and perhaps someone else; each mecha should have passageways inside of it allowing people to move through the Mecha's main body to monitor the engine and even conduct repairs. Each mecha should have a crew-quarters, a galley and maybe a med-lab.

So... You want to play somewhere along the Clone era after the settling of Andromeda and have an army of diminutive SDF-1s?
I'm suggesting the Vaudell clique because they seem to be the only ones crazy enough to build such a thing.
But it seems to be going away, at great speed, from the mecha genre.
As for being robotech, If you go further the timeline than any written story before... you're officially in uncharted territory.
Which clears you up to fight with Mega Maid if you wish.
Such modifications/creations would be so outlandish, however, that they might fit better if you don't try to get RT in your way.
You might just need a whole new setting of exposition to get this down the throats of your players.

Plus, when you think of it, aren't the two idea mutually exclusive?
If the mecha used is ship-sized, why would it suffer short circuits induced by single attacks? Wouldn't that make it frail?
Considering the increase in size, what kind of damages would it cause?
Though it could be more interesting for the tech crews to play... and it would happen only about 5% of the time so...
How does it save time?

A shorter way to do this might just be to have your pilots in a prototype testing unit having A.I.s augmented variants of existing mecha.
(A bit like Zone of the Enders.)
These would thus offer a piloting bonus, and might open a possibility for critical hits on 18-20s.
When they miss however (natural 8 or less), the A.I. could experience an operating system unknown error. This would then ask for the "chosen mother ship" to deactivate the A.I. core from a distance and give back normal control to the pilots. Instead of having your technicians on board, they could then try to do software patches from the "carrier of the campaign"... maybe even being able to re-install the thing during a fight.
Of course, for what we know of the setting, you'd have to include a way for this R&D program to fail during your campaign.
Maybe the A.I.s were built around a copy of E.V.E.; and are thus inherently susceptible to tempering from the Robotech Masters / Haydonites, aside from being eventually emotionally unstable and condemned to evolve as autonomous post-singularity programs.
I don't see how this would help with game balance though.

But it might be fun to have the UEEF try to accelerate training time with A.I. assisted combat flight, only to have young pilots ending up in arguments with their mecha. Or building an arc-nemesis out of a virtual "Ghost of Zor", fleeing as an Alpha, in order to take his revenge on the Masters... after they have been eliminated.

Peacebringer wrote:On a natural roll of a 20, the section hit is knocked out; it's not destroyed unless the MDC is depleted. For PBCs, on a natural roll of 19 or 20 knocks out the section due to EMP effect; unless of course, the to-hit-roll is a 20! Some common sense should be applied; a 12.7mm MG probably isn't going to take out a mecha, unless it gets a 20 to the cockpit. I thought of having a separate roll, but I want to speed up game-play.

What is wrong with just using the old critical hit tables like in 1E? Or apply a "common sense" thing where if the MDC is reduced to below a certain percentage it just gets knocked out form the hit? There is some precedent for this as some mecha features (megaversally) get knocked out if you take to much damage but don't depelete the MDC (ex. 1E RPG's Shadow Device).

Peacebringer wrote:Secondly, to include other OCCs, mecha should have a crew consisting of maybe a copilot, a tech and perhaps someone else; each mecha should have passageways inside of it allowing people to move through the Mecha's main body to monitor the engine and even conduct repairs. Each mecha should have a crew-quarters, a galley and maybe a med-lab.

You might justify a second crew station in some mecha, but very few actually do this (VF-1). For jefferytube and quarters and such, no the mecha are to small for this to be practical. The only mecha you might get the quarters would be the Beta, and you'd have to trade out the weapon/bomb-bay. The only practical way to do something like this would be to retrofit a Zentreadi mecha's pilot cavity, but then there are probably better options in using the available space.

xunk16 wrote:A shorter way to do this might just be to have your pilots in a prototype testing unit having A.I.s augmented variants of existing mecha.
(A bit like Zone of the Enders.) [...]
When they miss however (natural 8 or less), the A.I. could experience an operating system unknown error. This would then ask for the "chosen mother ship" to deactivate the A.I. core from a distance and give back normal control to the pilots. [...]

... that is a downgrade if ever there was one, it's as stable as a biscuit raft.

Never mind the reams of expert opinion from modern science and almost literal mountain of speculative fiction explaining at great and tedious length why it's an absolutely terrible idea to install a self-aware AI into a weapon of war.

Mind you, the kinesthetics of the bipedal form are such that it's pretty much guaranteed that there's already at least one, and more likely several, "traditional" realistic AIs already built into the mecha for the purpose of handling all the complex, fiddly tasks that the one-man crew can't be reasonably expected to divide their attention across while fighting like reactor control, balance and limb motion, aiming, etc. (Quite a few old mecha shows explicitly acknowledge this fact, like Gundam's AMBAC[sup]1[/sup] and learning computer systems, or Macross's ANGIRAS[sup]2[/sup] integrated airframe management and control AI that acts as the main system computer for VFs. There's no way the pilot of any one of those giant robots is controlling the limbs manually, or they'd never be able to fight effectively... or at all.

xunk16 wrote:Maybe the A.I.s were built around a copy of E.V.E.; and are thus inherently susceptible to tempering from the Robotech Masters / Haydonites, aside from being eventually emotionally unstable and condemned to evolve as autonomous post-singularity programs.

Quite apart from the fact that E.V.E. doesn't exist in Robotech thanks to Carl Macek disowning the movie in '86 and then Harmony Gold losing the rights to Megazone 23, self-aware AIs are a technology beyond human achievement in Robotech. The unused development materials for Shadow Chronicles suggest Janice Em was not truly self-aware until she downloaded herself into a Haydonite-designed replacement body in extremis in 2044 and was only starting to become self-aware in Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles itself. She's one of a kind and beyond the tech-savvy of even Dr. Lang to replicate thanks to her body incorporating so much Haydonite technology.

xunk16 wrote:I don't see how this would help with game balance though.

It wouldn't... and considering the OP was looking to streamline play, that's headed in entirely the wrong direction.

ShadowLogan wrote:You might justify a second crew station in some mecha, but very few actually do this (VF-1).

And even then it came at a cost... the VF-1D had to sacrifice part of its life support systems to make room for that second seat.



1. Active Mass Balance Auto Control, the AI system that handles sensor fusion and controls limb motion to help the bipedal robot keep its balance, maneuver like a human being, aim its guns, and use propellantless inertial maneuvering in space.
2. Anti-Neumann-type Generalized Integrated Renormalization Aided System, the supervisory AI that manages all onboard systems on a VF. Kind of a contrived acronym, the term is actually the name of a Vedic sage in Hinduism who was a mediator between men and the gods. Variants of ANGIRAS were used on the first three generations of VFs, with the 4th Generation and beyond using a new AI system called ARIEL that appears to be named for the spirit of air and fire from Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Seto Kaiba wrote:

xunk16 wrote:A shorter way to do this might just be to have your pilots in a prototype testing unit having A.I.s augmented variants of existing mecha.
(A bit like Zone of the Enders.) [...]
When they miss however (natural 8 or less), the A.I. could experience an operating system unknown error. This would then ask for the "chosen mother ship" to deactivate the A.I. core from a distance and give back normal control to the pilots. [...]

... that is a downgrade if ever there was one, it's as stable as a biscuit raft.

Never mind the reams of expert opinion from modern science and almost literal mountain of speculative fiction explaining at great and tedious length why it's an absolutely terrible idea to install a self-aware AI into a weapon of war.

Mind you, the kinesthetics of the bipedal form are such that it's pretty much guaranteed that there's already at least one, and more likely several, "traditional" realistic AIs already built into the mecha for the purpose of handling all the complex, fiddly tasks that the one-man crew can't be reasonably expected to divide their attention across while fighting like reactor control, balance and limb motion, aiming, etc. (Quite a few old mecha shows explicitly acknowledge this fact, like Gundam's AMBAC[sup]1[/sup] and learning computer systems, or Macross's ANGIRAS[sup]2[/sup] integrated airframe management and control AI that acts as the main system computer for VFs. There's no way the pilot of any one of those giant robots is controlling the limbs manually, or they'd never be able to fight effectively... or at all.

If you read me correctly, I wasn't implying it was a good idea. Hence the Mega Maid reference.
But the whole army of small ship-sized mecha wasn't either in context of RT.
(If you want to play on ships... Play on ships. Unless you want to re-write the whole damn book and have hundred hours more of game preparation to make.)
Plus, the original idea posted here was also to have more interactions between pilots and other OCCs.
And more effective / numerous critical hits would also need a reason to be put in play. One that obviously can be retracted if it unbalance an ongoing campaign.
This was a direct attempt at paving the way toward a failed project, that could bring development in a game depending on how it goes.
After all the dumb you pointed out of the ASC and the UEEF, certainly, you wouldn't deprive an RPG campaign to exploit their recklessness?
Especially while prototyping a unit in order to fix the "under 8" roll issue.

Seto Kaiba wrote:

xunk16 wrote:Maybe the A.I.s were built around a copy of E.V.E.; and are thus inherently susceptible to tempering from the Robotech Masters / Haydonites, aside from being eventually emotionally unstable and condemned to evolve as autonomous post-singularity programs.

Quite apart from the fact that E.V.E. doesn't exist in Robotech thanks to Carl Macek disowning the movie in '86 and then Harmony Gold losing the rights to Megazone 23, self-aware AIs are a technology beyond human achievement in Robotech. The unused development materials for Shadow Chronicles suggest Janice Em was not truly self-aware until she downloaded herself into a Haydonite-designed replacement body in extremis in 2044 and was only starting to become self-aware in Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles itself. She's one of a kind and beyond the tech-savvy of even Dr. Lang to replicate thanks to her body incorporating so much Haydonite technology.

Titan's Robotech #22 directly mentions EVE.
#21 Ask for Rick on board the SDF-1 to react ASAP.
#23 has him dealing with a rogue Minmei A.I. impersonation.
All of this pointing to a use of the concept of EVE as intended by its first incarnation in "no longer canon" material.
If we're to include these, then EVE was also the basis of a reconstitution of an interactive Zor and a fake pop idol.
Once again, if you are to try and find a way to increase critical hit ratios to have more system failures inside a campaign, and maybe doing it with a way out in mind... EVE looks to be kind of legit enough to attempt something.
It's certainly less work to keep her RT, than a whole army of spaceship size transformable mecha (yet needed to be designed one by one!).
I was just trying to roll with the idea here.

Seto Kaiba wrote:

xunk16 wrote:I don't see how this would help with game balance though.

It wouldn't... and considering the OP was looking to streamline play, that's headed in entirely the wrong direction.

Nonetheless, more critical hits means more damage and would fasten combat.
It would also bring the "side effects by location table" in play faster and more often.
But hey... if you prefer the EMP missile frenzy explanation, be my guest.
It is going to be hell on the canon of anything after that point though.
And the idea presented has the potential to be adapted to the taste of the original poster. If one would prefer "unknown errors" to happen less often, then why not "under 4", or "natural 1". Creating these kinds of events is what game-mastering is all about. The "under 8" was to go with the shooting rules and give two things :

1. A hint that the "unknown error" is frustration from the part of A.I.s that misses, something they shouldn't have.
2. A number that give space to improvements of the program during the campaign; as "unknown error" are provided with more and more fail-safe and corrections to the code. Thus leaving the players with a sense of progression while the story moves along to the point where the bad idea is revealed as such and opens the way for a climax which might decide to keep a simplified A.I.[sup]1[/sup] (protect the house rule that satisfy the players and Gm), or forget the idea entirely (return to a game that is more in tune with itself).

1 : The kind Mr.Kaiba pointed to himself, simply improved from the standards given... if a group of players were willing to keep 18-20 critical hits legit for the reminder of their own campaign. Without the UE penalty by this point.

xunk16 wrote:If you read me correctly, I wasn't implying it was a good idea. Hence the Mega Maid reference.
But the whole army of small ship-sized mecha wasn't either in context of RT.

You realize I wasn't replying to any part except the AI bit, right?

xunk16 wrote:And more effective / numerous critical hits would also need a reason to be put in play. One that obviously can be retracted if it unbalance an ongoing campaign.

There's a much more straightforward and effective solution than trying to increase the frequency of critical hits or critical failures.

Put simply, the RPG stats represent the "hero" version of any given mecha or piece of equipment. The version that a player character would get if they were playing an appropriate character class. All you need to do to speed up combat if you're potting at NPCs if you're trying to recreate the slightly frantic, asymmetric combat of the series is either halve the MDC of NPC units or double the damage they take from player characters. That way, not only do the cannon fodder go down like cannon fodder, when you introduce a proper baddie who's supposed to be tougher than the grunts, the players will get a proper wake-up call. Fudging the numbers to either end combat quickly or draw it out for the sake of adding tension is a proud DM/GM tradition spanning every RPG. The GM is a cruel god who giveth and taketh away in equal measure.

xunk16 wrote:After all the dumb you pointed out of the ASC and the UEEF, certainly, you wouldn't deprive an RPG campaign to exploit their recklessness?
Especially while prototyping a unit in order to fix the "under 8" roll issue.

That's reckless and insane on a completely different level... what madman would take an "augmentation" system that has a ~40% chance of failing and disabling them at any given second? That's not fighting, that's playing Russian roulette.

xunk16 wrote:Titan's Robotech [...]

Isn't.

Also, you're assuming this EVE even exists in the same context as the one HG can't legally use... (it was decanonized fully 15 years before anything else was, by Carl Macek himself, well before HG lost the rights to the source material).

For the Mecha with additional crew, I was only thinking of destroids; any of the other books beyond Macross I usually disregard (save for the Invid).

I want to stray away from critical-hit charts: I've had combat rounds like for a whole hour (almost as bad as Battletech).

Double-damage is nice, but in some instances, it won't be effective.

Seto wrote:Also, you're assuming this EVE even exists in the same context as the one HG can't legally use... (it was decanonized fully 15 years before anything else was, by Carl Macek himself, well before HG lost the rights to the source material).

Mostly immaterial given the reset in 2001, but it does appear that EVE survived in RT products past TUS (IIRC Novel #19-21 from the mid-ish 90s are supposed to "borrow" stuff from comics, one of which was an AI called EVE).

Seto wrote:Put simply, the RPG stats represent the "hero" version of any given mecha or piece of equipment. The version that a player character would get if they were playing an appropriate character class. All you need to do to speed up combat if you're potting at NPCs if you're trying to recreate the slightly frantic, asymmetric combat of the series is either halve the MDC of NPC units or double the damage they take from player characters. That way, not only do the cannon fodder go down like cannon fodder, when you introduce a proper baddie who's supposed to be tougher than the grunts, the players will get a proper wake-up call. Fudging the numbers to either end combat quickly or draw it out for the sake of adding tension is a proud DM/GM tradition spanning every RPG. The GM is a cruel god who giveth and taketh away in equal measure

I think you might have just made a case to just use the 1E PB RT RPG there, for all practical purposes this is how the mecha end up stated in terms of MDC protection resulting in faster combat.

Peacebringer wrote:For the Mecha with additional crew, I was only thinking of destroids; any of the other books beyond Macross I usually disregard (save for the Invid).

I want to stray away from critical-hit charts: I've had combat rounds like for a whole hour (almost as bad as Battletech).

Destroids other than the Monster (which already has multi-crew) don't really have the room for extra crew as they are sized closer to the VF-1 in Battloid mode, which will restrict just what you can add in terms of crew (extras, rooms, etc).

If you want to stay away from Critical hit Charts, then simply have the weapon (and/or features) knocked out when it takes some percentage of damage.

ShadowLogan wrote:
If you want to stay away from Critical hit Charts, then simply have the weapon (and/or features) knocked out when it takes some percentage of damage.

I thought of Cyberpunk's ACPA rules of chances of systems-failing due to damage, but less rolls the better.

Peacebringer wrote:For the Mecha with additional crew, I was only thinking of destroids; any of the other books beyond Macross I usually disregard (save for the Invid).

Yeah, Destroids are way WAY too small to have anything like “Jeffries Tube”-style internal crawl spaces or crew compartments besides the (extremely cramped) cockpit.

One of the more interesting design touches about the 04 and 07 Series Destroids is that they’re heavily modularized. The entire powertrain - the body from the waist joint down - is designed as a sealed module containing the compact thermonuclear reactor and the transmission needed to drive the legs. The torso above the waist is packed pretty tightly with the backup power system, internal weapons systems, and ammunition. It’s so densely packed that the cockpit was placed all the way at the top of the body. It’s directly behind the “head” on the Tomahawk, right in front of the radar mount on the Defender, under the searchlights on the Phalanx, and right in front of the AA gun on the Spartan. There’s just nowhere to go in the body, even if the mecha did have some kind of crawlspace. Pretty much everything from the bottom of the shoulders down is an enormous block of machinery and ammunition storage. In some cases, like the Phalanx, it’d be a distinctly unhealthy place to go… the terrifyingly overpowered radar system in the Phalanx is dangerous to its own crew at maximum power, and they’re in a radiation-shielded cockpit!

(This modularity is a legacy of their original design concept, in which EVERY part of them was modular... being able to swap between configurations by detaching any part of the body except the core of the torso. The modularity was scaled back a bit in the final design, when the hand-to-hand variant of the Destroid became a standalone design and not a variant of the Tomahawk.)

The 00 Series Monster’s interior is mostly given over to two high-output thermonuclear reactors and the positively gargantuan ammo magazine and feed system for the 40cm cannons.

Peacebringer wrote:Double-damage is nice, but in some instances, it won't be effective.

Well, there’s always tweaking the MDC of the enemy mecha to make them softer targets.

I’ll admit I’ve always liked critical hit charts for locational damage, similar to the ones made for Dark Heresy. It’s very theatrical if you take a crit and all of the sudden there’s a chunk of your mecha missing because ammo cooked off or the armor melted under the weight of fire or it was simply blown off completely.

ShadowLogan wrote:I think you might have just made a case to just use the 1E PB RT RPG there, for all practical purposes this is how the mecha end up stated in terms of MDC protection resulting in faster combat.

It’s what I’ve always done… NPC enemies take double damage, and if I really want my players to sweat the NPC aces take half.

Seto Kaiba wrote:

xunk16 wrote:If you read me correctly, I wasn't implying it was a good idea. Hence the Mega Maid reference.
But the whole army of small ship-sized mecha wasn't either in context of RT.

You realize I wasn't replying to any part except the AI bit, right?

I thought you were also replying a lot to the proposed "on top of my head with no real math involved" house rule.
To be fair though, it is part of the proposed "destined to failure" A.I.
If nothing else, it would put the pressure on the tech characters to perform better than their chief of project.

Seto Kaiba wrote:

xunk16 wrote:After all the dumb you pointed out of the ASC and the UEEF, certainly, you wouldn't deprive an RPG campaign to exploit their recklessness?
Especially while prototyping a unit in order to fix the "under 8" roll issue.

That's reckless and insane on a completely different level... what madman would take an "augmentation" system that has a ~40% chance of failing and disabling them at any given second? That's not fighting, that's playing Russian roulette.

Hence I was proposing a prototype entering the practical testing phase so that it could be improved by testing and reprogramming in mostly training conditions.
With either the funding individual aware that some more development would be needed, or unaware that it would be so problematic.
If we take your previous argument, one could guess they would have been assured that the program wasn't sentient.
And maybe it reacted better while plugged into a simulator... (Infecting it and using the raw data to cheat it.)
Is there a critical point R&D should reach, before prototype testings are approved, that would be higher?
Was there never such paper developments, that proved far from complete once tested in prototype phase?
If so, I'm sorry to have sinned by ignorance.

I did a thought experiment and test on changing the MDC of everything, providing 'Scale' to the system. It kept the weapons in check IIRC, but halved or more the MDC of targets. But what it did do, was utilize something like SDC was supposed to be, for everything the hero was. Bigger than life. Natural 20's would bypass the SDC, and go directly to the MDC of target. Allowing people to run around outside of mecha and still fight on the same scale, but at an extreme disadvantage. While allowing a 'Mook' setup within the game. Nameless NPC's would be cannon fodder, while Players could go through them like a hot knife through butter.

Edit: Oddly enough the post is still there: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=57046&p=1119407

Tiree wrote:I did a thought experiment and test on changing the MDC of everything, providing 'Scale' to the system. It kept the weapons in check IIRC, but halved or more the MDC of targets. But what it did do, was utilize something like SDC was supposed to be, for everything the hero was. Bigger than life. Natural 20's would bypass the SDC, and go directly to the MDC of target. Allowing people to run around outside of mecha and still fight on the same scale, but at an extreme disadvantage. While allowing a 'Mook' setup within the game. Nameless NPC's would be cannon fodder, while Players could go through them like a hot knife through butter.

Edit: Oddly enough the post is still there: https://www.palladiumbooks.com/forums/v ... &p=1119407

Thanks. An interesting, fast to apply, mod if my group ever run into that "problem".
For the record, how would you rate old style tanks, "ordinary" vehicles and spaceships under your system?

xunk16 wrote:

Tiree wrote:I did a thought experiment and test on changing the MDC of everything, providing 'Scale' to the system. It kept the weapons in check IIRC, but halved or more the MDC of targets. But what it did do, was utilize something like SDC was supposed to be, for everything the hero was. Bigger than life. Natural 20's would bypass the SDC, and go directly to the MDC of target. Allowing people to run around outside of mecha and still fight on the same scale, but at an extreme disadvantage. While allowing a 'Mook' setup within the game. Nameless NPC's would be cannon fodder, while Players could go through them like a hot knife through butter.

Edit: Oddly enough the post is still there: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=57046&p=1119407

Thanks. An interesting, fast to apply, mod if my group ever run into that "problem".
For the record, how would you rate old style tanks, "ordinary" vehicles and spaceships under your system?

ADC is applied to only the Heroes, so your talking about SDC values of vehicles and AR.

SDC values would be halved (per the rules for a character). So the question is, how does AR work with the vehicle and body armor.

There are two options I can think of:

Option 1: Use AR as is, and in reality it only works for Mooks or heroes who have ran out of ADC.
Option 2: Use it as some sort of Damage Reducer, applied after the ADC has been bypassed or depleted.

I like the latter myself, but it would end up probably with values ranging from 5 to 25 depending on how large of an object it is. Where something like a 9mm shooting at a tank all day long would never penetrate even with nat 20 rolls.

I like the modular-designs.

Perhaps destroids are too small, but I can always try! But, it is doubtful I will ever run a Robotech-game again.

I love critical-hit charts too, but I want to get the show on the road.

My favorite tactic to take down mecha is right from Tiberian Sun; no player would ever suspect someone Mecha-jacking them and stealing their destroid!