MJMecha

Pilots

Attributes

Body: The Body attribute measures the overall physical fitness of a character, their strength, stamina, and durability. Body is the primary determinant of the physical punishment a character can take, and also caps the effective maneuverability of a machine due to the pilots' g-tolerance.

Reaction: Reactions measures the grace, reaction speed, and agility of a character. A character with high Body but low Reactions is fast but clumsy, while low Body but high Reactions is a common purview of a wimpy surgeon or guys who paint miniatures all day long. Reactions is used for evasion and hand to hand combat.

Perception: A character's awareness and 'street smarts' fall under Perception, which is the attribute used for ranged combat.

Knowledge: Knowledge represents a character's education and "book smarts". Outside of the obvious benefits to engineering, science, and so forth, knowledge is also necessary for the use of complex equipment, such as ECM suites, Active Stealth, drone controllers, and so on.

Psyche: A character's mental toughness is measured by psyche. As all Avatars use direct neural interface and AI control, nonhumanoid machines are much harder to control than humanoid ones. Psyche caps the alteration from human norm that a machine can achieve-low Psyche characters are greatly limited in terms of the systems that can be added to their machine. Note that this is every nonhuman feature-even something as simple as a set of thrusters or an integrated gun adds a Psyche tax.

Charisma: A character's charisma is their physical and non-physical attractiveness, their ability to get along with people, and so on. In this world of half-salvaged hypertech mecha and frankenbots, Charisma adds to the amount of upgrades and the maximum technological level you can manage to scrounge up to stick on your machine. Charisma also gives characters narrative inertia.

Machines

Definitions

An Avatar is the premier war machine of the present age. Often humanoid (to minimize pilot acclimatization difficulties), piloted by neural interface, and built using components around a modular Core, which contains the primary power systems and the cockpit. These cores are then connected to extremities, such as arms, legs, gun pods, and so on, Avatars can take on lesser, non DNI using craft with ease-especially since technological degradation has made producing systems of their quality prohibitively expensive.

Avatars come in a few common forms:

• Aerospace Fighters: Although difficult to interface with, Aerospace Fighters are relatively easier to produce and can achieve flight agility unheard of in any other design.
• Tanks: Again, like ASFs, tanks are extremely hard to interface with, but relatively simple to produce, and their primary advantage is single purpose lethality. Tanks are generally specialist gun carriers, mounting single heavy ranged weapons rather than an entire arsenal of smaller systems, and are best suited for a 'sniper' role although their ability to mount thick armor and heavy defenses allows them to take a lot of punishment.
• Hybrids: In general 'hybrids' are nonhumanoid half-and-half machines, like humanoid torsos mounted on tank bases, or fighters with the ability to deploy arms and reverse-knee legs and so on.
• Humanoids: Two arms, two legs, maybe a pair of wings or other things, one head. Simple body plan. The problem is that they're expensive and difficult to produce. Although powerful jack of all trades generalists if properly designed, they do not achieve the same
• Exotics: Exotics are generally a catch all for designs which do not conform to these plans, such as transforming variable fighters, spider robots, and such.

Design Basics

The only system an Avatar technically requires is a Core, but having a disembodied torso (or equivalent) floating in space is generally not the best of war machines. Past the core, most mecha have a series of additional components that are used to expand their capabilities. Each of these components has a number of slots which can be filled with equipment, and occasionally allow external stores to be used (i.e. Hardpoints).

However, throwing on components willy-nilly can negatively impact a machine's Agility and Speed, and each component requires a certain amount of Power to use, which is generated by the core and any auxiliary generators mounted.

Components have several stats:

Connectors: The number of discrete additional components which can be added. There are three types of connectors which attach certain systems. Adapters exist to modify these connectors, but :

Limb Connectors: These are used to attach things like wings, arms, and legs.

Turret Connectors: Heads, gun turrets, and whatnot.

Drives: Drives are large, nonhumanoid propulsion systems that provide propulsion, like a tank's treads or a fighter's engines.

Space: The amount of internal space a component has.

Power: How much power it generates or uses. Most components do not use more than a trickle of power, it's internal equipment which uses most of it.

Durability: The ability of a component to resist damage. Durability reduces the effect of hits to the component in question.

Strain: Some components, being nonhumanoid in nature (i.e. tank treads, reverse joint legs, etc), add strain to a vehicle, increasing the psyche requirement. This is in addition for any strain for a nonhumanoid body plan.

Components

Armor

Armor is a cheap way to protect units from various weapons. Armor in this system is unified-there is no such thing as patchwork armor. Various armors exist, some of them providing excellent overall protection, while others provide additional benefits. An Avatar may have only 1 armor type (applique armors do not count as they are equipment, not armor).

Standard: Standard armor is your average armor, with no real strengths or weaknesses. An excellent combination of compactness, durability, and cost effectiveness.

+3 Durability to all components.

Foamed: Foamed armor is lighter but much bulkier for equivalent protection, meaning you can have more of it at the cost of internal space, providing additional durability compared to standard armor but reducing available equipment volume.

+4 Durability, -2 Space to all components.

Monocoque: Monocoque armor integrates the armored shell and the skeleton of a machine into a single unit. This drastically cuts down on durability but grants significant additional internal volume.

+3 Space to all components (maximum: Doubled space).

Smart Skin: All armor has integrated sensors and electronic countermeasure emitters, but smart skin compromises structural integrity further for additional bandwidth and local processing power. This reduces the durability benefit but greatly increases a machine's electronic warfare ability.

+1 Durability to all components, +2 Electronics.

Hyperdense: Super-high-density armor plating. Heavy, huge, and exceedingly bulky, hyperdense armor restricts the amount of equipment a machine can carry and additionally penalizes its agility.

+6 Durability to all components, -1 Space to all components, -2 Agility.

Stealth: Stealth Armor combines integrated EM countermeasures, chromatophores, and proper angling to reduce any sort of signature. However, the extremely low-radiation design of stealth armor means that various sinking systems have to be replaced by less efficient methods of dumping waste heat, which put a strain on the power system and distribution network.

+1 Durability, +3 Stealth, -1 Power.

Distortion Plating: All armor has integrated low power integrity fields which reinforce it and deflect micrometeors and other minor threats (thus meaning that daily wear and tear won't even scratch the paint) but only Omega Dust components can provide a meaningful amount of deflection against military grade weapons.

+3 Durability to all components, +1 Shield Bonus, Omega Dust

Applique Armor: Applique Armor is not actually an armor type but represents additional armoring of a component above and beyond "standard" protection. Applique Armor can be mounted either internally or externally. External applique armor is generally termed modular armor.

Size: 2 Spaces/1 Light Hardpoint, +3 Durability

Cores

Cores contain a machine's cockpit, the power distribution subsystems, and such. They can even be fit with engines, modular armor, and weapons.

Tank Core: An Avatar core intended for use by a tank. As such, it has an extremely low number of connectors but a high power rating and excellent armor thickness.

Connectors: 2 (1 turret, 1 drive)

Base Durability:

Component Space:

Base Criticals:

Fighter Core: A Core designed for an aerospace fighter. Extremely lightweight.

Connectors: 3 (2 limbs, 1 drive)

Base Durability:

Component Space:

Base Criticals:

Gunship Core: A heavier fighter Core. Similar but

Connectors: 4 (2 limbs, 1 drive, 1 turret)

Base Durability:

Component Space:

Base Criticals:

Basic Humanoid Core: Cores designed for humanoid use.

Connectors: 5 (4 limbs, 1 turret)

Base Durability:

Component Space:

Base Criticals: