FBH Robot Wars

Super Robot Wars Is the name for a mecha RPG run by FBH, Shrike, and OmegaPaladin on alternate Saturdays with Persona

Characters

SRW 2.0 Characters
SRW Old-System Characters

Background

History & Introduction

It is the year 32 of the Transtellar Era, and for 32 years, humanity has seen a state of unparalleled peace and prosperity. The Solar Federation (Sol-Fed) units the nations of Sol in a system that allows disputes to be settled by talking rather than military force, enforced by the efforts of the various agencies designed to alleviate global problems (such as hunger and disease) and the watchful efforts of the Federation and member state militaries prevent a return to the bad old days of the past.

Outside Sol, interstellar colonisation is preceding a pace, driven on the back of new fast jump capable vessels, allowing cheap land and resources to support Sol’s still somewhat too large population. In general however, the future looks bright

It was not always this way. Thirty-five years ago, the Sol system was engaged in the largest war in history. With an alliance of Earth and Martian states, together with their various space habitats and colonies on Mercury and Venus set against an alliance of outer system governments: the Space Independence Alliance.

The System War, as it became known was utterly destructive, with entire cities and space colonies being destroyed by nuclear weapons, kinetic strikes or even colony drops. Both sides made extensive use of new technology, including various new mobile suit systems such as autonomous attack weapons (“bits”) force fields and other devices.

Outside the Sol system, colonies were left to fend for themselves, some declaring neutrality, others forming their own self protection alliances to preserve themselves from the jump capable raiders employed by both sides.

The war eventually ended with the defeat of the Space Independence Alliance, but the victors agreed that, rather than allow another war in Sol which might destroy the heart of human civilisation, they would form a united and allied world structure, attempting to put and end to the causes of war so that another disaster like the System war could not occur.

Though war in Sol has been all but eliminated, and most colonies are too new to create much in the way of tension, problems such as piracy, terrorism and organised crime, as well as possible disputes between Sol-Fed and the various colonial nations remained. Military force needed to be moved to the frontiers.

INTACT

Military force on the frontier is a different business than within Sol or the more developed colonies. Due to the expense of faster than light jump drives, the numbers of military forces that can be deployed to frontier engagements is somewhat limited. Sol-Fed Space Fleet and Army units have massive firepower but cannot be rapidly deployed.

Rather than attempt to completely reform it’s space fleet and army to be able to deploy into the colonies (a move that would anyway have likely raised tensions with the League of Outer Stars and other colonial nations) the Federation Council ordered the setting up of the Independent Tactical Armoured Counter Terrorism unit INTACT. This elite unit would use military mobile suits and combat space vehicles to keep order on the frontier, hunting down pirates, terrorists and those who would disrupt the hard one peace.

You are members of this unit.

Nations

The Solar Federation (Sol Fed)

From it’s capital in Geneva on earth, the Sol-Fed rules (more or less) the entirety of the Sol system and many out of Sol colonies. The Federation is hailed by its proponents as the best society earth has ever seen, fighting poverty, oppression and war like no previous political system has.

Its critics however regard it as a device by which Earth and Mars transhuman elites rule humanity. This is due to the system of exams and tests that control appointment to the higher levels of Sol Fed Bureaucracies, the military and other civil service (and most business) positions. These tests are almost impossible for most “normal” humans to pass, but are much easier for the increasingly common transhumans.

While the civilian government remains democratic, the civil service, military and upper echelons of business are now dominated by transhumans. Humans and transhumans are now graded into an ability letter, drawn from the exam system, from F (usually normal humans) to S (the highest grade of transhuman) with S Class being given positions of extreme power and responsibility, this has led to accusations of the development of a new nobility in Sol.

Despite this, most people are happier, richer and less likely to be a victim of violence than they were before, and the Sol-Fed remains very popular even thirty-two years after it’s creation.

The New Order (The Chessmasters)

A Mysterious organization about which almost nothing is known, yet whose influence touches every aspect of known space. They field armadas of high-grade mecha, and fleets of huge, advanced warships, launched from huge, hidden fortress-cities seeded throughout space. Their motives, backing, and nature are unknown, and are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.

The Chessmasters represent the gravest threat to the Sol Federation since the end of the System War. They wage a constant, undeclared war against forces of Sol, infiltrating, sabotaging, and launching powerful naval strikes that rip savagely into Federation worlds, before disappearing into darkness.

The Seraphim

Originally part of the Space Independence Alliance around Saturn, the Seraphim Organization has become an increasing part of the Solfed military industral complex, supplying cutting-edge equipment to the Solar Federation. Rumors persist of darker connections however.

The Seraphim reach through every aspect of the Solar Federation. Their influence is felt from the very tip of the spear, in INTACT field units, to every aspect of the defense industry. Seraphim personnel comprise a larger percentage of the SolFed military every year, and their presence in the defense industry, unknown a decade ago, has ballooned enormously, rendering them by many estimates the single largest defense contractor in known space. Their overt assets range from core worlds, to Sol itself, to hundreds of distant colonies bent on research and discovery in the name of their mysterious rulers.

Other Powers

League of Outer Stars (LOS)

The development of jump drive some hundred years ago allowed practical exploration beyond Sol, opening up the wide vistas of the galaxy to human kind. Over the century numerous explorers, colonists and those who wish life on the frontiers have set out in search of adventure, profit or a new life.

Due to the relative slowness of initial FTL ships, these colonies were left to develop without contact with earth for long periods, developing their own unique cultures and sensibilities in the decades before jump drives became fast enough to allow practical trade and continual communication between them. It was the System War that really caused the development of the League of Outer Stars however, various independent colonists who traded with one side or the other faced punitive raids, unrestricted warfare on commerce and other. This caused several of the stronger independent colonies to band together into the League of Outer Stars, a diverse group committed to the goal of keeping the colonies free of Sol’s interference or control.

In the post war world, the League watches the new Solar Federation with suspicion and continues to build up its military forces, ready for a possible confrontation. Many of these military forces are based around mobile dolls, automated mobile suits operating independent of human guidance, which the League’s Space Armada plans to use in vast numbers to counter earth’s high end transhuman pilots

The White Rose Colonies

A political dynasty stretching over several star systems. The White Rose has existed for decades as an oligarchical ruler of many billions of colonists. Now equipped with large numbers of second-line mecha, the White Rose is a rising contender amongst the multitude of distant colonies at the edges of Sol Fed space.

Mecha Construction

Mecha are broken down into a short list of stats, like a character, with the power of the mecha determined by how many Mecha Creation Points they are built with. Their stats are as follows:

Melee: A holistic grading of both your melee weapons and how responsive your machine is in face-to-face combat. Machines with high levels of Melee will have massive and/or powerful arrays of beam sabers, GN blades, Gefjun disturbers, chain mines and whatever else comes to mind.

Firepower: A combination of your various weapons, targeting systems, etc. How well your robot can blow shit up from a distance.

Defences: Armor, ECM, maybe physical or projected shields, anti-missile gatlings; all are Defences. How well your mecha can resist damage, primarily from ranged weapons.

Speed: Another combination, this one of speed and agility. How fast your giant robot can zip around, dodge giant beam cannons, hide behind trees, etc.

Special: Some machines have more unusual systems; psychoframes, powerful forcefields, remotely-operated weapons, stealth systems, extended-range targeting, deployable megacannons, regenerating armor – the list is limited only by one’s imagination and the GM’s willingness to allow unique snowflaking. Rarely seen on rank 1 and 2 mecha, though specialist designs like the GM Sniper would have it.

General design commentary
Most conventional mecha have a good balance between Melee, Firepower, Defences and Speed. They can generally shuffle points around a bit by equipping special weapons or other systems. More specialized mecha such as Guncannons will be biased towards one stat, but will still be solid in other stats. They may have levels of Special as well.
Of course, truly single-role craft like the Gable and Correl are possible, if rare.

Mobile Armors are much more powerful than an equivalent mecha, but sacrifice Melee to do so. Mobile Armors cost 5 MCP, but scale Firepower and Special upwards relative to a regular machine. They also tend to be physically large machines, though with the speed to evade warship fire.

Super Robots are also much more powerful than equivalent mecha, but have Speed as a dump stat; while they can cleave a battleship in half with their beam sabers and take a pounding on their chest armor, they are sluggish. They cost 5 MCP and scale Melee, Firepower and Defences upwards. Like Mobile Armors, they are far larger than conventional mecha; unfortunately they are much more sluggish and need their armor to withstand warship fire.

Technologies

Solar Federation Mobile Suits

The Solar Federation mobile suit force remain the among the most powerful and technologically advanced in human space, despite the recent advances in technology and tactics made by various colonial powers, especially the League of Outer Stars.

Members of INTACT tend to be first in line for the new, top of the line mass production units being produced at the Federation mobile suit plants around Earth, Mars and Jupiter, leaving behind less capable suits after training. Type One Federation Mobile Suits Despite being the mass production suits of the Federation Space Force, Type One mobile suits are still extremely formidable, with performance and features matching many of the limited production units of the last war.

Modern mobile suits are powered by fusion reactors and equipped with advanced anti radar and anti thermal stealth and ECM measures. They are protected by composite armour, and capable of both ranged and close in engagements.

Most mobile suits also have the ability to enter the atmosphere unaided, however leaving an earth type gravity field requires some form of booster, or at least, mid air refuelling. Standard Equipment for Type 1 Sol-Fed Mobile Weapons

Beam Weapons
Replacing the automatic cannons and early rail guns employed by suits at the beginning of the System War, particle beam weapons (just beam weapons in common usage) are a standard feature of all Federation Mobile suits, and offer huge benefits in terms of penetration and damage done over their projectile counter parts.

Close combat beam weapons (called beam sabres) also exist.

Anti Beam Smoke
To defend against the beam weapons they now carry, Sol-Fed mobile suits carry one or more salvo of anti beam smoke grenades, which are capable of defeating most long range particle strikes. Physical attacks or even the more focused, short-range attack of a beam sabre are unaffected by anti beam smoke. Decoys
Pop up decoys are another piece of new defensive technology. They consist of mobile suit shaped gasbags that rapidly inflate after being deployed from a mobile weapon’s counter measure’s pod, designed to confuse an opposing pilot or targeting computer.

Some are also mines.

Mirage field
The most radical new piece of technology fitted to new Sol-Fed suits is the Mirage Field, a remarkable piece of active camouflage technology that renders the suit very hard to detect visually. While an alert pilot may be able to spot the plume from the suit’s engines or the blur of its outline, the Mirage Field gives Sol-Fed pilots a major advantage when bouncing enemy suits.

Type Two Federation Mobile Suits
Type Two Mobile Suits are those used by elite units such as INTACT. While still being effectively mass production, they include many high performance (and expensive) systems that put their over all performance a step ahead of that of a Type One.

This is the level of mobile suit that PCs will be flying at the beginning of the campaign.

Standard Equipment for Type 2 Mobile Suits
(In addition to that carried by type 1s)

Super Capacitor
A super capacitor is fitted close to the mobile suit’s fusion batteries and allows for a short (few minutes long) burst of very high performance, then requires several hours to recharge. Side effects of using a super capacitor include increased engine flame and even a visible red glow across the mecha’s surface as it loses the additional heat generated. This tends to ruin stealth.

Flicker shield
The prototype “hero” units of the last war often carried force field systems designed to deflect incoming energy and kinetic strikes. These force field units are expensive in both energy and manufacture, far too expensive for a general production unit. Rather, type 2 mobile suits are fitted with flicker shields, which stay on line for only an instant at a time when they detect an incoming attack.

This flicker allows for a far more efficient use of energy and a far cheaper unit, however it cannot practically defeat long lasting effects or multiple attacks hitting almost (but not quiet) at the same time.

Semi autonomous bits
Autonomous weapons (“bits”) were widely used by elite units in the System War, and it’s no surprise they’re being used on Sol-Fed elite suits. Semi autonomous bits lack the very expensive independent tracking and Aleph controls of the very best “bits” but they’re still formidable, aiding a mobile suit on both offence and defence.

Specialist Equipment (Feel free to create your own)

Aleph Matrix
Aleph Matrix cockpits are less expensive and capable than some, more elaborate booster arrangements but they are cheap enough to be used by any capable enough pilot, and add greatly to a mecha’s responsiveness, ease of control and ability to rapidly transit between manoeuvres

Blood Curtain ECM
The Blood Curtain is an unsubtle form of countermeasure, working by flooding local space with a massive number of energised particles, blinding most forms of radar, thermal and even lidar or sight based sensors, which are unable to see through the bright red mist it generates.

Blood Curtain units are generally deployed ahead of an assault to blanket an area over the target with particles to allow other strike craft to move in unimpeded.