The Design of BCS V: Operation Basic Rules

The rules for Operations are more than twice longer than those for Intermissions so we're splitting them into not two but THREE updates, because there's THAT MUCH to talk about here. Without further ado, let's get started.

Operation Structure

For the first time in many editions and updates, the Operation Structure is in two-column format instead of single-column. It used to be single-column because it had more information than it could be fit comfortably in the left side of the page, but not enough to cover even half the right side of the page. Now, it's packed with a lot more information, to the point I had to apply some editing to make it all fit in one page. 

Operations are divided into the following steps:

0) Determine Ambush: An ambush is an optional circumstance that happens before all the normal battlefield setup happens (thus, Step 0). Like in most RPGs featuring turn-based combat, it's pretty much a free turn for the characters that benefit from it. Whether there's a surprise Round or not is entirely up to the plot and the GM, because if this were something the PCs could mechanically trigger on their own it would be very broken. It's best to leave it in as an optional thing that can happen (or not) for story reasons. 

1) Describe Starting Conditions: The GM describes the Enemies in the field, the Terrain, any Reinforcements present, and whatever conditions the battle might be under such as secondary objectives, circumstantial penalties, etc. This is a new Step to BCS, because describing things was taken for granted in my earlier systems. In a game without maps, stating things as clearly as possible from the start is crucial to making things run smoothly.

2) Choose Equipment: This is a simplified form of the old Deployment Step. Here the PCs decide which of their Forms they will use and if they want to start the fight Airborne or Invisible (if they can access those status conditions). If you're wondering about Combiners, those always deploy precombined in this system. We'll talk about them more in detail in like... 25 more updates? Yeah we're going to be doing this for a while.

3) Establish Initiative: In addition to rolling for Initiative (which we'll get to in the next section as it is a subsystem of its own), there is a robust system for breaking Initiative ties in BCS. If there's a tie between PCs and NPCs, the PCs go first (this is opposite from how Monsterpunk does it, because BCS is meant to be a lot less brutal). Then, allies tied with each other either go clockwise around the table if playing live or down the user list alphabetically if playing online. Ties are much more common in BCS than in earlier games, so this is necessary.

Alternately, allies tied with each other can simply agree to go in a specific order like adults... But who does that? If we don't follow an arbitrary system of rules that offers a semblance of impartiality but can be exploited by those who know how it works, we might as well be freeforming, you know, like cavemen. Finally, lowering your Initiative result is something you can do at any time as a Free Action, in lieu of having "Delayed Action" rules.

4) Begin the Round: We set Tension to 1 at the beginning of the first Round of combat (Ambushes have 0 Tension). This part is pretty much identical to how it works in BCG, the only notable addition is a GM TIP in bold to remind everyone of the current Tension at the beginning of their Turns. We now proceed with the usual Turn structure seen in these kinds of games.

4.1) Setup Phase: The Setup Phase is the beginning of the Turn. At the beginning of their Turn the current player regenerates Energy, executes triggers that happen at the beginning of a Turn, and can activate Setup Ace Tricks (Mistakenly referred to in the current pdf as "Setup Genre Powers"). If multiple triggers were to occur, the player chooses the order they go in, just like in BCG. This time though, there's less ways to exploit the order of operations (...Or so I think., at least).

4.2) Action Phase: Things change a little more noticeably from BCG here because Units get a Primary Action and a Secondary Action, instead of just one singular Action that lets you move as a bonus. You can still Engage and Attack as in BCG, but now you can also Aim and Attack, or Guard and Maneuver, or Transform and Use a Repair Upgrade, or Use Two Support Upgrades. 

Giving everyone a free optional move was my way of trying to keep things simple in BCG, because movement is the most common action after attacking in these games, and just doing things that way made the system as a whole simpler and flow faster. My opinion has changed with time. After enough years of the BCG structure, I think it's better to have Secondary Actions to help give a formal structure to things that used to be optional free actions at the beginning of a Turn (Spending Energy to Transform, Spending Energy to use a Support Upgrade, etc.). This, in addition to being much more elegant and simpler in general, also helps prevent potential exploits with tricky ordering of Free Actions at the beginning of a Turn. 

Players can trade down their Primary Action for another Secondary Action, but not trade up a Secondary Action for a Primary Action.

4.3) End Phase: Finally, people describe narratively what happened during that Turn, take note of any effects that trigger or end at the end of a Turn, and move on to the next Unit. This is identical to how BCG does it.

5) End the Round: This is also identical to how BCG does it.

6) End of Operation: This is almost identical to how BCG does it. There is one difference now in that players have to record Structure and Health points lost during the Operation into their Character Sheets. 

Initiative

The Initiative and Priority subsystem is perhaps the most experimental rule new to BCS. I'm going to explain how Initiative works first, then why I changed it.

At the beginning of an Operation, everyone rolls PL, getting one of four possible results: 1st Priority, 2nd Priority, 3rd Priority or 4th Priority. Characters of a higher priority move before those of lower tiers, with 1st being the fastest and 4th the lowest, and all combatants sharing a tier use the tiebreakers explained earlier. Additionally, there's abilities that let NPCs move at a special 0th Priority that goes before everyone else, and there's ways to debuff someone to 5th Priority to delay their Turn until after everyone else's. There's also a "Speed Shift" Secondary Action that can be used to increase or decrease one's Priority.

Initiative is thus much more dynamic than it used to be. If you're in a 1v1 situation, it's possible to manipulate the Priority system to get basically two Turns in a row, either by accelerating yourself from a lower Priority to overcome your opponent or by decreasing a faster opponent to make them slower than you. 

But there's another reason to want to manipulate Priority: Actual, tangible mechanical bonuses. 0th, 1st and 2nd Priority give you an Advantage to Offensive Tests, while 3rd, 4th and 5th give you an Advantage to Utility Tests. Offensive Tests are, obviously, attack rolls. Utility Tests are things like using Support Upgrades, Repair Upgrades and Maneuvering. Utility specialists and other characters who really want that Utility Test bonus can choose to automatically fail the Initiative Test to get 4th Priority, or, at the beginning of a Round, lower their Priority by one tier as a Free Action.

It takes some time to get used to, but I like what this system adds to the game. 

• First, it makes Initiative a more interesting mechanic. Generic Initiative rules are... Okay. They're functional, but I have wanted to improve upon them for years. This is my best attempt at that so far. 
• Second, it helps replace some of the depth that combat has lost with the removal of maps. BCG always had an element of timing your attacks thanks to the Tension mechanic, and Priority manipulation adds to it.
• Third, it mechanically reinforces the narrative tempo and pacing of a fight, as faster Units have momentum on their side and are poised to be more aggressive, while slower Units start on the backfoot but have more information to work with and are better at looking for openings to turn the battle to their favor.

Having said all of this, it does come with some some potential drawbacks. Because most combatants in an Operation will generally be the same PL, and because many Units will probably lack the Upgrades or Perks that give them bonuses to the Initiative Test, Units will often be rolling with the same bonuses, and likely get the same Priority as a consequence. Meaning, rolling for Initiative can sometimes feel pointless as it's the tiebreaker rules that will decide who goes first, not the dice.

Luckily for the PCs, they go before NPCs do in case of a tie. This is a huge advantage, basically guaranteeing they get to strike first (thus being the guaranteed winners in a perfectly even match) unless their enemies spend points in improving their Initiative bonuses substantially (and the PC's don't do the same). This prevents ties from being frustrating to the PCs, because the bug might as well be a feature from their side of the conflict. Therefore, this is only potentially a problem for the GM, who can build enemies around this factor by giving them Initiative bonuses.

I originally wanted to make the bonus Advantages gotten from Priority to be a scaling Tension bonus. You'd get a +1 Tension bonus at 2nd Priority that would climb up to +3 Tension bonus at 0th Priority. This, while a nice idea, didn't work out. A +2 Tension bonus at the start of the battle that becomes +3 after a single Secondary Action made some abilities super exploitable while a +1 to Tension is kind of worthless for anyone who didn't build to exploit Tension. So, if +1 is too little and +3 is too much, I opted to just make it a binary mechanic where you'd get a single Advantage (a virtual +2) to either Offensive or Utility Tests.

Also, in the very first iteration of it, you didn't even roll for Initiative. Your Initiative was a static value derived from adding up your Systems and your Speed but making Speed count double, because you still had stats back then. It was a neat idea, but the removal of mecha stats in favor of PL killed it. I'll talk more about why mecha stats got canned when we finally reach the Mecha chapter.

I don't think this system is revolutionary or amazing or anything like that, but I think it's more interesting than the default and that's all it really needs to be.

Tension

Ah, good old reliable Tension. You know Tension and you love Tension. It works a little differently here than in my previous robot anime systems, but the spirit is the same. Tension is added as a bonus to Offensive Tests, but it only directly affects accuracy. It does indirectly affect Damage because it helps turn a Graze into a Hit, and a Hit into a Crit. Techniques do get to add Tension to Damage though, which is where their flavor is preserved. And speaking of flavor, now everyone gets the better half of the old Limit Engine Upgrade, granting a +1 bonus to Tension with each Level of HP they're missing, giving everyone guts on the level of a super robot pilot by default.

Utility Tests were going to benefit from Tension, but they don't. The reason of why is Extreme Terrain. Resisting Extreme Terrain (a Test called Extreme Resistance) is a Utility Test, and adding Tension to it would make Extreme Terrain less threatening as the fight goes on, instead of more, which was particularly bad for the weapons balanced around triggering an Extreme Resistance roll.

Because of this, Utility Tests confer results generally worse than Offensive ones, as they struggle to keep up with Offensive Tests after the first two or at most three Turns. This is not inherently a bad thing, as it keeps the pace of combat from stalling and prevents things like the old Guardian of Steel builds from being able to stall with impunity. Also, it makes sense for combat Tension to only help attacks. Still, it makes low level Utility specialists (Healers, Support users, Tanks) feel very weak at low PLs as they simply need more MP to get going. I might change this in the future, adding Tension to Utility Tests but explicitly singling out Extreme Resistance to not get it. Maybe I'll even do a poll! We'll see.

Because it's expected that everyone will have different Tension bonuses after a few Rounds of combat now, we now return to using the old term "Your Tension" that was scrapped in the early days of BCG. What can I say, sometimes the old becomes new again.

But also, sometimes things just keep advancing in a specific direction instead of looping back to the past. A long, long time ago, losing a Level of Threshold gave you nothing. Then, it gave everyone a Genre Point. Now, losing a Level of HP gives everyone an Ace Point and a Tension bonus. 

This progression of everyone getting bonuses as they take Damage improves the chances of all PCs of making a comeback when they're losing, further cementing the action anime style that is the heart of the game. The mechanic also affects Rivals, but not Grunts or Bosses, further tilting things towards the PCs. Player-controlled Units are not just expected to get beat up a bunch before they win, but they must get beat up a bunch if they want to be at the peak of their performance. 

This has been a slow progression over many years, but a purposeful one. This way of doing things is much more dynamic (not to mention cinematic) than the usual flow of "tactical combat" TRPGs in which you spend as many resources as you can on Turn 1 to try and put the enemy in a position from which they cannot win, if they even survive it.

This comeback aspect and how it synergizes with cinematic gameplay is going to become relevant later, when we talk about how Boss fights have been changed.

A Note on Theatre of the Mind

There's a sidebar in this page that briefly gets into the mindset of how Theatre of the Mind combat works. This is the primary reason I wanted to make BCS, so that I could run (or dare I say play) my dumb robot cartoon campaigns without having to use maps. It explains how melee attacks and aerial combat can work for people who don't naturally think of things like distances, ranges and movement speeds in the abstract.

I think I could have gone more in depth here, but I also wouldn't know how to do it. And also, the tyrant of limited page space forbids me from writing more here unless I want to spread the contents of this page over a larger pagecount instead.

And that's all we've got to talk about today! Next time, we're going to cover the Actions system, the various Action Types and what each and every possible Action in combat does and why it works that way.

Gimmick Out.