Sphere Robot Wars Zeta Mechanics

Mecha Resolution

Mecha and other war machines are unsurprisingly a core part of Sphere Robot Wars Zeta and have their own statlines, and for the following section 'Mecha' can be taken to read as any vehicle-sized object such as tanks, airplanes, giant robots, etc. Starships and similarly-sized entities are broadly similar with a few additional rules to reflect their size.

Mecha Stats

The following stats are the core values for mecha and serve to describe the platform itself.

Agility: Agility is a measure of how responsive a mecha is to its controls. Agility adds a positive modifier to to-hit rolls made against the mecha, as pilots will naturally take advantage of a machine's agility to avoid shots. Agility also adds a negative modifier for melee attacks' to-hit rolls.

Speed: Speed is a measure of how fast a mecha moves. Speed can also be used to Zoom and Boom (see Advanced Actions below).

Strength: Strength is a measure of how strong a mecha is. It acts as a negative modifier for melee damage and additionally is the size limit for any non-fixed weapons - weak mecha can't exactly carry around 500mm hyper mega autorails.

Output: How much Power the mecha's onboard power system generates per turn. This may be 0 for vehicles or mecha with fixed-output power systems or battery-powered units.

Battery: The maximum amount of Power a mecha's onboard power system can store. The amount of Power in a battery may temporarily exceed its maximum value - the hyper mega beam cannon is being powered directly by the reactor while also drawing down the battery. Any excess at the end of the turn is removed.

Electronics: This is a measure of the generalized onboard electronic gear of a mecha, ranging from sensors to targeting equipment to ECM. See the Special Moves section for the full effects of Electronics.

Stealth: This is a measure of how difficult a vehicle is to detect with sensors. See Advanced Actions for more detail.

Armor: Armor is a measure of how difficult is it to breach the physical defenses of a mecha. Armor subtracts from the damage inflicted by weapons strikes.

Durability: Durability is a measure of how resilient a mecha is to internal damage. More durable mecha can fight longer.

Carrying: This is a value for how much 'stuff' a mecha can carry externally, such as mecha-scale assault rifles, missile packs, sensor pods, etc etc. Most giant robots and aircraft have high carrying values as they use externally-fitted weapons. Carried weapons and systems provide flexibility, but the downside is that they are much easier to lose.

Weapon Stats

Weapons have their own distinct statline with several values as follows.

Accuracy: Accuracy is a measure of how easy it is to hit with a weapon, and it adds a negative modifier to to-hit rolls.

Burst: Burst is a measure of how fast a weapon can fire and adds its value to the dice pool on to-hit rolls.

Slow: This is for weapons with extremely long cooldown periods; a weapon with Slow must wait for that many rounds to fire again.

Range: This is how far the weapon can fire accurately. Going up to double this imposes a -2 Accuracy modifier, tripling -4, so on.

Penetration: Penetration is the dice pool rolled to penetrate Armor on a successful hit.

Strength: Strength is how much additional Durability damage a weapon can inflict. Generally speaking, Strength also correlates to explosive power/area of effect; Strength 0 is pure kinetic/energy impact and increasing levels represent some form of explosive effect.

Draw: How much Power a given system needs per turn simply to remain active. Systems can be activated or deactivated as desired, though they can only be on or off during a specific turn.

Charge: How much Power a given action takes; for example a flash shield might have a Draw of 1 for standby and then have a Charge of 1 per attack blocked.

Weapon Abilities

Hardened: The weapon is strengthened with integral forcefields and energy-dissipating alloys. It can be used to parry/block Overpower weapons without being destroyed.

Disruptor #: The weapon has enhanced ability to penetrate non-physical defenses. It reduces the Shield rating of a target by the Disruptor rating.

Armor Piercing #: The weapon has enhanced ability to penetrate physical defenses. The difficulty on Penetration rolls is reduced by the Armor Piercing rating.

First Strike: The weapon can strike from beyond normal melee range and consequently gets an extra attack upon entering melee combat.

Entangling: Can be used to disable an enemy's weapon (normally melee). Specifics TBD

Grapple: If an enemy fails the first roll (Seek Opening) in a Melee Lock situation, the Grappler may immediately make a counterattack as per normal rules.

Overpower: The weapon will automatically destroy any non-Hardened, non-Overpower item used to block it. Crunch!

Limited Ammunition #: How many shots the weapon has before it needs to reload (available seperately). This typically represents weapons that have bulky, heavy ammunition.

Precise #: The weapon is optimized for high-precision attacks, including enhanced targeting equipment, accurized barrel, etc. For every # successes above those required to strike, the weapon gains +1 Penetration.

Scatter #: The weapon has a variable-aperture muzzle, adaptive focus or some similar feature that lets it 'spread' its shot widely at the cost of terminal effectiveness. For every point of Penetration spent, the weapon gains # Burst.

Assault #: The weapon has an extremely high rate of fire and can easily put a large number of beams or shells on a target in a short period of time. For every # successes above that required to hit, the weapon scores an additional hit, resolved as per normal rules.

Advanced Actions

The rules above cover basic combat as portrayed in most scifi, with intense close-range furballs and madly jinking attack craft. While these will suffice for games that do not have a strong vehicular combat component, for ones centered around military units or other situations where giant robot combat is common the following rules provide greater depth and diversity.

Melee Lock

Mecha fighting each other with melee weapons can be likened to humans doing the same. And like their small counterparts, a mecha trying to disengage from a melee fight risks getting hit before it can open the intervening distance. This is Melee Lock, the tendency of melee combatants to stay in melee.

Breaking Melee Lock is an action, with associated penalties if multiple actions are taken. It is an opposed roll, Mecha Fighting modified by Agility. If this roll is failed, there is no effect; an opening is not found. If it is successful, the initiator must now roll Piloting/Speed against the enemy's Mecha Fighting/Agility. If this second roll succeeds, the initiator can immediately make a normal move. If the roll is failed, the enemy can immediately make a counterattack at current penalty (if any), and then the initiator can immediately make a normal move.

If any time a melee combatant botches a melee weapon strike roll, the enemy craft can disengage from Melee Lock with no roll and move its remaining move away, if desired.

Zoom and Boom (aka Lightning Strikes)

While the normal flow of combat assumes that fightercraft will be engaged in turning contests and complex, high-agility maneuvers to gain position, in some situations high-velocity craft will instead perform rapid strikes before pulling away to come about for another pass. This is common in air combat and rather less so in vaccum.

In space, a Lightning Strike allows the performing unit to accumulate excess velocity above the norm and essentially 'slash' past the target(s), firing all weapons then (hopefully) coming about outside of the target's defensive envelope. For every turn a unit is Lightning Striking, it may increase or decrease its maximum move by 100% (one 'level'); however, its minimum move is also increases (or decreases) by one full level. EG, a mobile suit with move 5 doing a lightning strike can move between 6 and 10 spaces on its first turn. Machines doing Lightning Strikes must also move their minimum distance before making a turn of no more than one side.

A craft doing a Lightning Strike has other advantages; it replaces its Agility with its Speed for offensive

Dive Bombing (aka landing on a spaceship and shooting the crap out of it, point-blank)

Mecha that are at 0 or 1 range from a ship are assumed to be 'dive bombing', which allows them to ignore many defenses a ship has as well as precisely place their shots in weak spots.

Serviços com Armas Federais São Galvão Mobile Weapons

Aircraft

Condor

Primary Operator: Serviços com Armas Federais São Galvão Força Federal do Espaço

Role: Aerospace Fighter

Agility: 3

Speed: 6

Strength: 2

Output: 1

Battery: 4

Electronics: 2

Stealth: 2

Armor: 2

Shields: 0

Durability: 2

Carrying: 4

Fixed Armament

• 1 Pulse Gun
• 4 Light Missiles

Special

• Transatmospheric (Fast)

Mobile Suits

Puma

Primary Operator: Serviços com Armas Federais São Galvão

Role: Mass Production Combat Frame

Agility: 4

Speed: 4

Strength: 4

Output: 2

Battery: 5

Electronics: 1

Stealth: 1

Armor: 2

Shields: 0

Durability: 2

Carrying: 4

Fixed Armament

• 1 Beam Saber
• 2 Light Missiles

Black Bear

Primary Operator: Serviços com Armas Federais São Galvão

Role: Assault Combat Frame

Agility: 2

Speed: 2

Strength: 4

Output: 2

Battery: 8

Electronics: 2

Stealth: 1

Armor: 4

Shields: 2

Durability: 2

Carrying: 5

Fixed Armament

• 1 Beam Saber

Mecha Fighting

Alpha Edge Sword

Accuracy: 3

Parry: 3

Burst: 0

Range: M

Penetration: 5

Strength: 0

Size: 1

Draw: 0

Charge: 0

Special: Hardened, Disruptor: 2

Alpha Edge Pole

Accuracy: 4

Parry: 4

Burst: 0

Range: M

Penetration: 5

Strength: 0

Size: 2

Draw: 0

Charge: 0

Special: Hardened, Disruptor: 3

Beam Saber

Accuracy: 3

Parry: 3

Burst: 0

Range: M

Penetration: 5

Strength: 2

Size: 1

Draw: 0

Charge: 0

Special: Armor Piercing: 4

Mega Beam Saber

Accuracy: 1

Parry: 1

Burst: 0

Range: M

Penetration: 7

Strength: 3

Size: 2

Draw: 1

Charge: 0

Special: Armor Piercing: 4

Slash Harken

Accuracy: 3

Parry: N/A

Burst: 0

Range: M

Penetration: 5

Strength: 0

Size: 1

Draw: 0

Charge: 0

Special: First Strike

Electro-Whip

Accuracy: 0

Parry: N/A

Burst: 0

Range: M

Penetration: Special

Strength: 0

Size: 1

Draw: 0

Charge: 1

Special: Entangling

Gunnery

Kinetic Weapons

These shoot solid hunks of metal at other things to do damage. Generally low tech.

Compact Autorail

Accuracy: 0

Burst: 3

Range: 5

Penetration: 5

Strength: 0

Size: 2

Draw: 0

Charge: 1

Autorail

Accuracy: 0

Burst: 4

Range: 8

Penetration: 6

Strength: 0

Size: 3

Draw: 0

Charge: 1

Gatling Array

Accuracy: -1

Burst: 8

Range: 5

Penetration: 5

Strength: 0

Size: 4

Draw: 0

Charge: 0

Special: Limited Ammunition: 6

Assault Gatling Array

Accuracy: -1

Burst: 10

Range: 5

Penetration: 6

Strength: 0

Size: 6

Draw: 0

Charge: 0

Special: Limited Ammunition: 4

Heavy Railgun

Accuracy: -2

Burst: 0

Range: 12

Penetration: 12

Strength: 0

Size: 5

Draw: 0

Charge: 2

Shotcannon

Accuracy: 1

Burst: 0

Range: 3

Penetration: 6

Strength: 0

Size: 3

Draw: 0

Charge: 0

Special: Reduces target's Agility by 3 (to a minimum of 0)

Smart Grenade Launcher

Accuracy: 1

Burst: 0

Range: 5

Penetration: 4

Strength: 2

Size: 3

Draw: 0

Charge: 0

Special: Limited Ammunition: 6

Bazooka

Accuracy: -2

Burst: 0

Range: 4

Penetration: 10

Strength: 5

Size: 3

Special: Limited Ammunition: 3

Panzerfaust

Accuracy: -2

Burst: 0

Range: 3

Penetration: 10

Strength: 5

Size: 1

Draw: 0

Charge: 0

Special: Single Shot (disposable)

Energy Weapons

Pew Pew Pew. The favored way of dealing death for PACT.

Beam Pistol

Accuracy: 0

Burst: 0

Range: 6

Penetration: 5

Strength: 0

Size: 2

Draw: 1

Charge: 2

Special: Armor Piercing: 2

Pulse Gun

Accuracy: 0

Burst: 3

Range: 8

Penetration: 5

Strength: 0

Size: 3

Draw: 1

Charge: 2

Special: Armor Piercing: 2

Burst Gun

Accuracy: -1

Burst: 8

Range: 6

Penetration: 5

Strength: 0

Size: 5

Draw: 1

Charge: 4

Special: Armor Piercing: 2

Beam Gun

Accuracy: 0

Burst: 0

Range: 10

Penetration: 6

Strength: 0

Size: 3

Draw: 1

Charge: 3

Special: Armor Piercing: 2

Heavy Beam Gun

Accuracy: -2

Burst: 0

Range: 15

Penetration: 4 [2]

Strength: 1

Size: 5

Draw: 2

Charge: 4

Special: Armor Piercing: 3

Sniper Beam Gun

Accuracy: -2

Burst: 0

Range: 15

Penetration: 7

Strength: 0

Size: 4

Draw: 1

Charge: 3

Special: Armor Piercing: 2, Gains +1 Penetration for every success on the to-hit roll.

Particle Accelerating Supercollider Cannon

Accuracy: -3

Burst: 0

Range: 25

Penetration: 6 [3]

Strength: 3

Size: 10

Draw: 5

Charge: 10

Special: Armor Piercing: 3

Artillery

Kinetic Weapons

MISSILES.

Light Missile

Accuracy: 2

Burst: 0

Range: 20 (max)

Penetration: 6

Strength: 1

Size: 1

Draw: 0

Charge: 0

Special: Single Shot (disposable)

Heavy Missile

Accuracy: 1

Burst: 0

Range: 30 (max)

Penetration: 10

Strength: 3

Size: 2

Draw: 0

Charge: 0

Special: Single Shot (disposable)

Remote Weapons

You want your funnelspam? Too bad, Its 2185, they haven't been invented yet.