The Design of BCS VII: Operation Rules Odds & Ends

For today we've got a grab-bag of all the Operations mechanics leftovers, totaling 6 different subjects. That's a lot! So without further ado, let's get started. 

Terrain

Given that the game plays without maps, you'd think that there wouldn't be Terrain rules, or that they'd be barely relevant, and I would be lying if I said that I didn't consider either idea. Howevre, I didn't want to do that, as manipulation of the battlefield and tactical use of the environment are important factors in many of the more grounded (pun not intended) mecha series. 

Fortunately, making the movement and Terrain rules was relatively simple. By default, the whole battlefield is Plain Terrain, but if there are any special Terrain conditions you can use a Secondary Action to move into it (or out of it). If you create Terrain under someone, it acts as a buff or debuff, and Engaging them means you share any buffs or debuffs currently on them.

So far, so good. The only question was in how the Terrain effects themselves should work. What the hell does Difficult Terrain do, in a game without Movement speeds, after all? This gets even trickier when you consider that I wanted to balance them all to be: 

• 1) Worth spending a Turn setting them up.
• 2) Making them balanced with each other. 

I couldn't just write down an effect that makes sense and leave it at that, I had to try to make that effect into a worthwhile buff or debuff. Some of those were easier than others, as we'll see.

Onwards to the Terrain types themselves!:

• Plain Terrain: I only bring this one up for completeness' sake, as it doesn't do anything mechanically. I actually copied and pasted this entry from BCGR, and that was a mistake, because it states that outer space is Plain Terrain, which is not the case. Oops! It'll be fixed by the next update.

• Defensive Terrain: This started out preventing 2 Damage, exactly the same as the Guard Action. It was decent, but not quite worth a Turn of setting up as a Support user, especially if you only get two targets. So I buffed it juuust a bit to prevent 3 Damage and grant an Advantage to Maneuver Tests. Setting up Defensive Terrain under 3 people for your Turn is very effective in a ranged fight or if you can otherwise keep enemies out of your Terrain spot.

• Energizing Terrain: Energizing Terrain heals 2 HP at the beginning of your Turn then restores 1 Energy at the end of it. It's pretty simple, and directly comparable to Defensive Terrain. The Energy restoration effect is one of the few ways you can gain Energy on the fly to use Reactive Defenses after spending your maximum during your Turn, which is interesting, and arguably better than the extra 1 point of prevention that Defensive Terrain grants, though you need to have Reactive Defenses to use it with, otherwise you're wasting the value it offers. I will probably not buff this in the future, for reasons that will become clear a few minutes from now.

• Obscuring Terrain: Obscuring Terrain grants Invisibility, which in Turn protects you with 2 Disadvantages to single-target attacks against the user. Definitely the weakest of all the defensive Terrain types, and worthless in the face of enemies with Multitarget Weapons. Worse, if you set up invisibility for your whole Squad, it only increases the chances that the NPCs will use a Multitarget Weapon. It is currently limited by the fact that Invisibility would be too strong if buffed further, but I think I will buff this Terrain itself by making it give Invisibility plus something else. Not quite sure what that extra bonus could be yet.

• Wasting Terrain: Wasting Terrain doubles Energy costs. Depending on your build this can either be barely noticeable, an annoyance that makes you be very careful about your actions, or entirely ruin your life and turn you into a sitting duck. As far as I'm concerned, that's pretty good balance for a debuff.

• Difficult Terrain: Difficult Terrain is probably the most common type of Terrain from a fluff standpoint, but also the least obvious for how to execute it. My first attempt was to make it punish Movement Actions with 3 Damage. This was flavorful and made it clear that crossing Difficult Terrain was to be avoided. There were two problems with this: 

• 1) The first is that Difficult Terrain often ended up being more damaging than Extreme Terrain, which felt like an inversion of how things should be. 
• 2) The second is that the optimal thing to do when someone creates Difficult Terrain under you was often to just... Sit there and ignore it until it goes away. 

That's when I decided to change it to its current form, which only does 1 Damage but penalizes you with a Disadvantage to all Tests and grants an Advantage to all enemy Tests targeting you. This keeps the flavor of it being damaging to traverse, but also helps represent that it's much harder to do anything while in there and that it turns robots into targets at a shooting gallery. This is one of the few times I make a buff or debuff grant an Advantage to all Tests, rather than just to Offensive Tests, to allow Support users to get in on the fun. Given that they create Difficult Terrain in the first place, it's a good change.

• Extreme Terrain: In the beginning, Extreme Terrain was Tension-based. You rolled a Utility Test and depending on the result it did either 0 Damage, half the current Tension, the current Tension or 1.5x Tension Damage. This, while a nice idea conceptually, made Extreme Terrain often feel underwhelming, even when it hit twice (for like 2 Damage each time). It also made Extreme Terrain worthless in Round 0, when conceptually few things should be more effective during an ambush than getting the enemy to walk into a Surprise Minefield. This was a complete failure, so I gave it fixed Damage values. Now your Utility Test is basically an evasion roll against a Weapon with Base Damage 6, which is on the higher end of power for weapons. Added to the fact that it potentially triggers twice, it's much more dangerous than before, and in the right place powerwise IMO.

• Anti-Air Terrain: Instead of having Anti-Air variants of various Terrain types like in BCGR, BCS simply has Anti-Air Terrain, which does nothing to most units but functions like a combination of Difficult and Extreme Terrain against Airborne Units. It's much more uncommon, as it can't be created through Support Upgrades and only really hurts Units that fly but can't land, so it hurts them extra hard.

• Underwater Terrain: Finally, after years of implying that you could make underwater terrain have custom rules in sidebars, I straight up made Underwater Terrain have a unique effect. It works like Difficult Terrain PLUS inflicts two Disadvantages to all Beam Weapons, referencing how it works in Gundam, Super Robot Wars, and a few classic super robots. Underwater Terrain cannot be created through Support Upgrades and is very harsh on most builds, but extremely harsh on Beam specialists, which is borderline too much for how much Terrain can make one person's life suck... But it's also very rare, so it should be fine to keep it this way. There are ways to play around it that we'll see later.

• Space Terrain: This was the hardest one to get right. I tried a combination of Difficult Terrain and Wasting Terrain, Difficult Terrain but instead of doing Damage the Advantage/Disadvantage effect is doubled, and finally the current version where using a Movement Action, Speed Shift, Guard or Maneuver costs 3 Energy. This is harsh, but not too harsh. It represents that giant robots can float around in space just fine but precise movement needs appropriate equipment. More importantly, it gets the job done without making it a miserable experience for people who don't spend the MP on an Astro Module. Like Anti-Air and Underwater Terrains, Space Terrain cannot be created through Support Upgrades and is not intended to be used a lot in most campaigns, so it needs to be something that characters can power through if they want.

I will write a sidebar later on the intended use of Anti-Air, Underwater and Space Terrains, and things that campaigns that intend to make large use of them should watch out for balancewise. The intended experience is to do most of your fighting on the ground, having 3-4 Space battlefields, and maybe 1-2 Underwater battlefields, then include a single gimmick battlefield that is within the range of a dozen Anti-Air batteries or something like that. If you want to use them more often than that, you need to build around that which can hurt the fantasy of building your own mech for some players

I also need to write a sidebar at some point about doing more interesting things with Terrain, like flammables (Blasts and Beam Weapons create Extreme Terrain) consumable supplies (you can resupply a One Shot, repair HP, regen Energy, etc. once before it is spent), generators that one can attach to themselves to power up Beam Weapons and ice that is both slippery (like Space Terrain) and can break with Blasts to become aquatic Terrain. I might even write up a full page of rare Terrain types, if these ideas pan out. Look forward to it. 

In general beneficial Terrain is a bit weaker than harmful Terrain. While the effects themselves aren't bad, they have a problem in that the enemy can walk into your spot and Engage you to also get their benefits. After that point re-creating the conditions is rather pointless as it helps the Enemy just as much as it helps you.

I could buff the beneficial Terrain conditions but they might be oppressive at low PLs when there's less ways to get rid of or play around them. Maybe I will make them a resource that is spent when used so that Enemies can no longer benefit from them? It's something to think about.

Damage

We already talked about how Damage works way back in the Core Mechanic blog post, but there's three things that this section mentions that are changes from how BCG does them and are worth elaborating on. The first is that Maims are handled in a simpler way:

• If the result of the Offensive Test dealt was odd, the defender chooses the Area to be Maimed.

• If the result of the Offensive Test was even, the attacker chooses the Area to be Maimed.

• If the Damage was not the result of an Offensive Test, was inflicted by the environment or was self-dealt, then the owner chooses the Area to be Maimed.

We no longer care about the total of Damage dealt, just the result of the attack roll, and only if there was an attack roll. All Damage that is dealt during the same Action is one instance of Damage as a whole. We no longer treat Weapons and Tricks that do additional Damage on a hit as separate instances. In the case that a single instance of Damage would take down multiple Levels of HP, the defender and attacker alternate who gets to choose.

The second thing is that PCs get a +1 to Tension and an Ace Point when losing the first three Levels of HP, and this time I remembered to make it explicit that losing the fourth HP Level just takes you out of the fight.

Finally, when a Unit has its HP reduced to 0 it explodes if it's a robot or dies if it's alive, UNLESS it is either a PC Unit (in which case they are disabled) or the attacker took the care to disable the Unit. Also, when a PC Unit is Defeated, they always eject their Core. This is a change from how BCG used to give everyone Cores, and made them automatically eject most of the time, which was a huge hassle if you actually bothered to put Cores in the battlefield afterwards.

On another note, I'm considering changing the default Areas on Mecha to be Head, Torso, Left Arm and Right Arm. Despite Maims not being necessarily the full loss of a limb, it's how most people choose to depict it, and renaming the default Areas like this gets rid of those awkward moments when you have to explain to new players that no, the enemy is not completely helpless despite their Legs getting Maimed. Making the legs an Area of its own was meant to facilitate silly super robot Weapons like Drill Knees and I've had that conversation way more times than I've seen said silly super robot Weapons so I'm taking the L and adapting to the circumstances.

Characters vs Mecha

Another thing that has changed is how characters on foot fighting mechs works. Because there's no Match rules, I am no longer futilely trying to make character stats integrate into the Operations rules. Now they get custom rules which are as follows:

• All Tests made by PCs against Mecha (whether to attack them, hide, run away, etc.) suffer two Disadvantages.

• Mecha do 1 point of Health Damage to a PC for every 4 points of Damage they would do to Mecha.

• PC Mecha straight up kill NPCs on foot if they do any Damage at all.

• PCs attacking Mecha have their own Action table, in which they roll either Combat or Interfacing for one of the following results (in order from best to worst): Do 6 Damage to the target, do 3 Damage to the target, accomplish nothing, or suffer a Disadvantage to the next Test they make this Scene.

Combat is for attacking on foot, Interfacing is when using something like a vehicle or a mounted gun emplacement (I don't think I've made this explicit in the page itself and I probably should do that). I might actually change the "Twist" result to grant an Advantage to the Mecha to attack you instead of penalizing you further as well, which is less frustrating and emphasizes the risk of the action undertaken more. 

Otherwise, the new rules make it clear that fighting mecha on foot is a dumb idea even if you're an ultra specialist. Still, you can do it, and it makes Grunt Mecha an effective on-foot Miniboss that the PCs can take on as a group if the narrative calls for it, and a fight with a Rival is pretty much a raid Boss that can and will wipe them out if they're not prepared for it  Fighting a Boss is, obviously, suicide-by-NPC.

The Core

Unlike in BCG, the Core is no longer mobile and is now completely defenseless. I really liked the idea of enabling situations like a character making a comeback with a Jet Pilder from Mazinger or the armored suits from Muv Luv, but this mechanic had a negative impact on the balance of the rest of mecha combat. Notably, The Beast builds were preposterously powerful, so I had to get rid of the Core keeping Internal Upgrades which kinda made it as a Unit useless at doing much of anything and a vestigial rule at best.

So, now Cores are defenseless and unarmed, have a mere 5 HP and their destruction causes the loss of 1 Health and 1 Structure, further emphasizing that you really want to use Live Another Day before that happens. Still, very stubborn or suicidal PCs can use the Characters vs Mecha rules to step out of the core, stay in the battlefield and help their teammates at great cost to themselves. The Health rules are fairly generous right now so this isn't as punishing as it could be, but that might change in the future. More on that next week!

Incidentally, I have a sidebar with "Mobile Cores" as an optional rule in the next page, which... Well, I have no idea what I was thinking there. It was written so early in development that it still references the no longer existing Speed Attribute. But even ignoring that sentence, they are not stated to have Upgrades or Weapons (which they shouldn't have, as that repeats all the problems from the past) so this is a largely pointless mechanic. I'll see if I can come up with a solution for this but there probably isn't one, so I'll probably end up deleting this sidebar entirely.

Status Conditions

Status Conditions in BCS are a far cry from what you'd see in videogames. The heading of the section would make you expect stuff like "Overheating", "Hacked" or "EMP" to be a Status Condition. 

But no, those are just things that mechs do. There's no need to make them a Proper Noun. Proper Nouns are reserved for things that the rest of the system interacts with, of which there are six, but really only five should count because one of them is "Defeated".

• Dueling: Dueling is the condition you get when you Engage another Unit in a Duel, or another Unit Engages yours. Duels have two different effects on both Units (the manual says three, that's another thing to edit added to the list!): Both Units automatically Mark each other and they cannot use Movement Actions other than Disengage for as long as the Duel lasts.

Originally, BCS also had the rule saying Units in a Duel were in such close quarters that outsiders risked hitting their Allies when interfering with the Duel. I got rid of that (all friendly fire rules are gone, in fact), and instead made Duels an aggro management mechanic. Duels now grant outsiders using a Melee Weapon with an Advantage to attacking someone that is in one, facilitating ganging up on Bosses and helping Melee Weapons stay competitive with Shooting Ones that get two Advantages for Aiming, as Aiming while attacking a target that is Dueling with a Melee Weapon also gets two Advantages.

• Docked: Docking grants you Energizing Terrain, because you are getting quick repairs done, in addition to the expected effect of being isolated from the outside. Because Docking and Undocking are Secondary Actions now the idea of jumping into or off your Base Unit is much more elegant. Docking is still very powerful, but it's harder to build a Unit for pure tanking now and Remora Frame no longer exists, so if you want to make the Base Unit the Squad's tank, well, that's a risk you're choosing to take.

Docking is the reason that I've allowed Energizing Terrain to remain relatively weak. Temporary invulnerability means that the 2 HP effect is plenty. I guess I could, arguably, divorce both effects from each other and make Docking Heal 2 HP by itself, allowing me to make Energizing Terrain stronger though. It's something to consider.

• Invisible: This went through a few series of changes, and I ended up at invisibility penalizing Offensive Actions with two Disadvantages when using single-target Weapons. It's a good defensive option, especially if you have evasive Reactive Defenses and the enemy lacks Multitarget Weapons, but is easily countered enough that you can't rely entirely on it to keep you alive.

If you think to yourself that this doesn't sound too strong, that's because at a mechanical level this buff needs to both have an element of counterplay to it and also be powerful but not oppressive. If it was stronger, the buff would need a higher cost and it would feel even worse when it inevitably gets countered. But because it's not excessively powerful, more builds are likely to not bothering with effective counters and thus to be fighting the user at a disadvantage.

Also, conceptually, giant robots are harder to keep hidden than humans, and their enemies have better sensors to detect their targets with. Plus, spreading lasers in a cone or swinging a wide sword should make invisibility a lot less useful. 

Finally, this section also makes it explicit that the GM is allowed to exclude NPCs who start the battle invisible from battlefield descriptions until those make their presence a known factor, in case anyone ever wondered that was or wasn't permitted.

• Airborne: Airborne lets you ignore the negative effects of Difficult, Wasting and Extreme Terrain, as well as the Damage reduction effect of Defensive Terrain that Enemies are on. This is at the cost of no longer benefitting from any Defensive, Energizing or Obscuring Terrain you might have been on top of. It's a needed element of possible counterplay for harmful Terrain conditions, which are very powerful and potentially devastating as debuffs.

It leaves beneficial Terrain conditions in an awkward spot, however, as high PL Units will probably want to spend most of their time Airborne to avoid hazards, further disincentivizing the creation of beneficial Terrain conditions. This added to how bad it feels to be Dueling an Enemy that shares good Terrain with you, means you might as well fly all the time and not bother with trying to use cover and the like.

• Marked: Marking punishes you whenever you attack anyone other than the Unit who Marked you, letting them Attack you as a Free Action. This interrupts your own attack, making it possible to destroy or disable you before your action does anything. Marking ends after one Round, when the Marker is Defeated, goes Invisible, Docks or somehow leaves the battlefield. Marks do not stack and new instances replace older ones, except for Dueling which overrides all other Marking instances.

Making Marking its own thing helps clean up the Dueling condition text, which in turn helps clean up the Engage Action text. It also helps to make tanking builds viable by allowing them to apply the Status without necessarily having to lock on to a target in Melee, though that certainly is the easiest way to draw aggro from someone.

• Defeated: I made Defeated its own Condition to make it extra clear that there is no way to get back into the fight once it happens. Well, actually, there is technically a single way to return Defeated PCs to the fight very much later in the book in the Reinforcement Rules, but you shouldn't expect it to happen frequently, or ever.

The Dramatic Finish

Finally, we have the Dramatic Finish, which is almost identical word-by-word to how it is in BCGR. That's because I originally wrote this section for BCS, then I adjusted the damage values and conditions for each description then put it in BCGR 

The Dramatic Finish is a "rule" that is pretty much just there to encourage getting in the right mindset for the combat in this game. I call it a "rule" in quotation marks because it doesn't really change the gameplay, and also nobody forces you to use it which is kind of the definition of what a rule is, but it only costs me a single page of space and it conveys the intended tone better than a hundred flavor text descriptions would.

WEW. That was a lot! Next time, we're finally talking about one of the better low-key changes to the game in the Downtime rules!

Gimmick Out.