Battletech AKA "Game of Thrones with big stompy robots"

Started by ThisOneGal, October 02, 2015, 10:20:09 PM

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ThisOneGal

So, ever since the Battletech kickstarter went up, I've been obsessing over a mech RP. I'm not intimately familiar with the setting (my experience is pretty much limited to blowing stuff up in Mechwarrior 4), but the summary they used of the 3025 era was interesting: 'Game of Thrones with big stompy robots'.

So yes, I wanna know if anyone else is interested in something like that.

I'd be playing fast and loose with the canon, since I'm not very familiar with it. Key things I'd want to work in:

* Battlemechs are rare, old, and handed down through noble lineages.

* All mechwarriors are nobles or have noble backing; the nobility are the only ones who can afford to maintain/service/resupply/repair battlemechs.

* Most player characters are mechwarriors, and most are part of a mercenary lance. There's wiggle-room for non-mechwarrior characters (mentor, scheming politicians) and non-ercenary characters (more-noble noble rivals), but most players should be part of the lance.

* The Clans have not shown up yet, and won't show up the RP. Since we're playing fast and loose with the canon though, you can run around in an Inner Sphere mech that looks and acts suspiciously similar to a Clan mech. (I'm fond of the design of the Omen, myself.)

* System is mostly freeform, at most will be something simple like this. I would want players to explicitly list their mech's weapon loadout, but sarna.net level info about engine types is unnecessary. A mech's class, role, armaments, and what it does well/poorly is all the mechanical info I'd want.

I'm not sure of my ability to GM this, hence it being in players seeking groups. I could give it a shot if there's enough interest in the RP but no volunteers to GM.

Ero content is optional. By default, I'd roll with having a main plot thread and having ero stuff happen in side threads. If you're getting up to ero stuff in the cockpit of your mech while in battle... I guess spin the ero stuff into a side thread while the big stompy robot stuff stays in the main thread for pacing and clarity.

So yes. Anyone interested in this?

Ralhend

Im a little late it seems, but I could do with a mech RP


My idea is as follows: (And If need be I can DM this easilly.  I have played Battletech since the mid eighties.  Loose canon is fine, I just want the mech combat.)

As said, the players will be part of a mercenary unit.  The unit itself will be a single lance of 4 players, consisting initially of light and medium mechs.  They are dropped into a hot zone, but later become separated from the main force and their communications cut off, forcing them to survive on what they can steal, salvage, or barter for as they make thier way to tier mission objective, and then later escape.

It would not be unlike the video game "Mechwarrior 3" where an unsupported Lance has to do with whats available to complete the mission objectives.
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ThisOneGal

Huzzah! There are at least two people apart from me who are interested in this!

Gonna try and get their approval to share our PMs here, hopefully that'll help with keeping everyone on the same page and possibly get more interested parties to show up.

ThisOneGal

Alright, here's the discussion I've been having.

Quote from: Captain Whitebread on October 28, 2015, 11:35:48 PM
I've been playing Battletech since the mid 80s, running the game as often as playing it.

I'm a huge fan of 3025 tech and I DESPISE the Clan tech.  Part of the fun of the game was playing the heat scale like a fiddle.

Okay, I'm going to get off my soap box before my rant really starts to get going (In my day, all we had was two dice.  Two!  And that was when 'dice' mean six sides...)

What did you have in mind?  Obviously a small number or characters would have limited influence on a galactic scale.  How about a small mercenary unit that has managed to do the impossible.... get their hands on some salvaged mechs, without having the bloodline to have inherited. 

Do you have mechs because you have a title or a title because you have a mech.....  It's a question the nobles don't want people asking.

Quote from: ThisOneGal on October 29, 2015, 12:39:00 AM
Honestly, most of what I had in mind was in the post; a game about a single mercenary lance, with a mix of stompy robot action and political intrigue (which will probably descend into just robot stompy politics, although not as a OOC goal).

> How about a small mercenary unit that has managed to do the impossible.... get their hands on some salvaged mechs, without having the bloodline to have inherited.

That's interesting, but I wouldn't want that to be true of all PCs. I was looking more for a lance made up of the dregs of nobility. If you're a member of a powerful house, your the vaguely connected pretender, or a outcast that was given a mech and sent away so they won't have to deal with you. If you're not some bottom run third stringer, your house is. That mech you're running is taking almost all of your house's resources to keep going. You don't have an army or a fleet; you have your mech and a share in a dropship/ftl ship (not familiar enough with the Battletech setting there).

Of course, in that setting, having some or most of the mechwarriors in the lance not be noble at all works fine.

Would still want a mix though; gives the plot multiple directions to pull from. Dealing with more favored members of a house, dealing with noble responsibilities, dealing with not being a noble, etc. And given the nature of a lance, one persons problem quickly becomes everyone's problem.

> Do you have mechs because you have a title or a title because you have a mech...

A good question, and one worth exploring. The 'default' answer I would go with is 'yes'. A noble without a mech is just a wealthy bureaucrat (whose resources will quickly be taken by a noble with a mech), and a mech without a house quickly falls into disrepair and stops being a mech.

> Obviously a small number or characters would have limited influence on a galactic scale.

I wasn't aiming for anything *galactically* significant. The default setting I was assuming was a porous border (space is really, really big, and really, really empty; a hard line border between interstellar powers is a fantasy/convenient simplification, but not the truth) between two/three houses (ones that the PCs were part of or had strong connections to). The lance is involved in the usual land grabs and power plays, until something interesting happens that draws in more attention from outside and places the lance in an interesting position.

Sorry if I'm rambling. It is 1230 in the morning and I need to go to bed.

Quote from: Captain Whitebread on October 29, 2015, 02:21:52 PM
What size mechs are we talking here?  I'm envisioning a light lance, somewhere between 80 and 120 tons total weight.

With a small merc lance with political connections, I think the stage is limited to one region of one planet.  The lance enforces the Noble's decrees and in exchange gets access to limited repair and refit resources.  They are big dogs in a small pond but they are still dogs, held on somebody else's leash.

Enter the new kid in town....  a rival noble's son returning from the front....  in a griffon.  It's in near perfect condition and is more than a match for any single light mech but a lance of them would give him a seriously hard time. 

Now politics plays a greater role, because the lance is no longer the undisputed champions of the battlefield and things need to be settled subtly.  Of course if that happens too often, the lance becomes a needless expense.....

Quote from: ThisOneGal on October 29, 2015, 08:17:25 PM
>  What size mechs are we talking here?  I'm envisioning a light lance, somewhere between 80 and 120 tons total weight.

I was going to go with whatever people wanted. The lance would be on the lighter side so that 'there's always a bigger fish' remains in play. If you want hard numbers, but default assumption would be 120-200 tons for a 4 mech lance, but that's mostly based off of my experience with Mechwarrior 4 where light/medium mechs do so little damage that playing them is boring 'cause it just takes so *long* to kill anything.

If someone wanted an assault mech, I'd allow it, but it would come at a pretty high cost. It would be their 'one cool thing', would require a lot more maintenance, and basically draw more attention than it was probably worth.

> With a small merc lance with political connections, I think the stage is limited to one region of one planet.  The lance enforces the Noble's decrees and in exchange gets access to limited repair and refit resources.  They are big dogs in a small pond but they are still dogs, held on somebody else's leash.

> Enter the new kid in town....  a rival noble's son returning from the front....  in a griffon.  It's in near perfect condition and is more than a match for any single light mech but a lance of them would give him a seriously hard time.

> Now politics plays a greater role, because the lance is no longer the undisputed champions of the battlefield and things need to be settled subtly.  Of course if that happens too often, the lance becomes a needless expense.....

That all sounds good and interesting.

Quote from: Captain Whitebread on October 29, 2015, 09:36:27 PM
I think I can work with that.

I'm thinking about a couple of mech ideas personally.

1:  Wasp with no jump jets armed with a large laser in place of its medium laser

2: Firestarter that has had one of the flamers replaced with a foam tank so that it can put out fires

3: Valkyrie - stock

4:  The previously mentioned Griffin.  PPC has been downgraded to a Large Laser

Pilots are subject to change without notice but the Griffin pilot is the most detailed.



Quote from: ThisOneGal on October 29, 2015, 10:17:04 PM
I'm sorry, can we back up a moment? I'm a little confused. (I have been awake for far too long and need to go to bed, so the confusion is probably not your fault.)

What sort of RP are you looking for? People/format/logistically-wise. In my original post I was looking for a group of players and hopefully someone else to GM. The impression I'm getting for your messages is that you're expecting a duet where one of us GMs and the other runs the lance... maybe?

I should stress that that's not an issue (I don't have any strong objections there, although I may lack the skill to make such an endeavor entertaining), I just need to know what it is you're looking for/talking about so I can, well, understand what I'm talking about.

And again, it has been  a long day, so I'm a little slow on the uptake at the moment.

Quote from: Captain Whitebread on October 29, 2015, 11:05:55 PM
Not  looking for a solo RP.  I was suggesting several possible characters, not the entire lance.

Quote from: ThisOneGal on October 29, 2015, 11:51:48 PM
Gotcha. Again, as I said, tired.

Those all sound interesting. I'd lean towards suggesting the Griffin one.

As I mentioned in the original post, the inspiration for this was the Battletech kickstarter, especially these images:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/www.harebrained-schemes.com/kickstarter/BATTLETECH-06.jpg
https://s3.amazonaws.com/www.harebrained-schemes.com/kickstarter/BATTLETECH-05.jpg
https://s3.amazonaws.com/www.harebrained-schemes.com/kickstarter/BATTLETECH-02.jpg
https://s3.amazonaws.com/www.harebrained-schemes.com/kickstarter/BATTLETECH-04.jpg

Part of what I found interesting was the quasi-warhammer 40k thing going on, where Mechs are relics of a bygone era, and those who pilot them are the military and political elite. Kinda like knights in (decidedly un-shining) armor the size of buildings, wielding cannon and laser instead of swords. There shouldn't be anything such as a 'stock' mech; they can't really build these things anymore, and it takes great effort and resources to simply maintain them. Each one bears the scars of decades of battle or neglect, each is a shattered masterpiece, held together by sweat and treasure. To see an actual, functional mech in the setting should inspire as much awe and terror as seeing that exact same mech in 2015 would.

Sorry, I'm not sure where I was going with that.

But yes, that's the sort of feel I was going for, and why I'd lean more towards the Griffin idea you suggested.

For my own PC, I have no idea what I'd go with, even for the mech. I mentioned liking the Omen design, but it's a Clan assault mech, and trying to scale it down doesn't work super well. Furthermore, a lot of the cooler art of the 3025 period (the Battletech kickstarter stuff and some of the MWO stuff) involves mechs with arms/hand/punchy ability. Which is cool, but finding melee capable mech art either skews towards 80's silliness, Warhammer 40k grimdarkness, or anime agility, which are not what I'm looking for.

Alright, I have started to ramble directionelessly, and need to go to bed. Feel free to respond to my incoherent ramble in whatever manner makes sense to you.

Quote from: Captain Whitebread on October 30, 2015, 01:01:02 AM
What tonnage were you looking at for the smaller version of the Omen?

I can whip one up for you.

Quote from: ThisOneGal on October 30, 2015, 07:50:36 PM
~45 ish. High end of Medium.

Quote from: Captain Whitebread on October 30, 2015, 10:31:20 PM
Meet the Portent:

45 Tons

Speed 4/6/4
Heart Sinks 12
Armour  7.5 tons

LRM 5     RT
ammo LRM   (24) RT
AC 5    LA
Ammo AC (20)   LT
Large Laser   RA
Jump Jets   RL
Jump Jets   LL

Mostly light ammo weapons but it's got a big laser for when it runs out (unlikely give the amount of ammo in each ton)



Quote from: ThisOneGal on October 30, 2015, 10:48:52 PM
Wow, thanks! :D

TBH though, I don't know how the Speed/Heat Sink/Armor mechanics work in the actual game, so I have no idea what those values are like. :P (I have never actually played the tabletop game or had access to the rules. Often wanted to though).
Although it does look like a miniature IS Thor. :P

But yes, I do appreciate the work you did. ^^

So yes. Not sure what our next steps should be. Probably mucking about with character concepts/planning. As a heads up, my response times may be appallingly slow; this last month as been Interesting Times for me, and November is likely to continue this trend, unfortunately.

Quote from: Captain Whitebread on October 30, 2015, 11:24:04 PM
Quick lesson:

Each ton of armour = 16 points of armour

Each location has a specific amount of armour

Each weapon does a specific amount of damage and creates a specific amount of heat

Each heat sink dissipates one point of heat

Heat build up affects targeting and movement

Dice are used to determine whether you hit and where you hit.

Once the armour is gone, you can damage the internal components.


Congrats!  You now know how to play table top Battletech (I've been playing the tabletop version for 30 years....)

Quote from: ThisOneGal on October 31, 2015, 10:32:30 PM
Ah, I see. Thanks! ^^

Didn't know about heat affecting targeting/movement; In the computer games, it's basically a limit on how much you can shoot before shutting down. Or be shot, I suppose, but trying to shutdown AI mechs with heat was a pointless task. A full flamer build on a desert map could barely keep one enemy mech shutdown. I recall doing a custom match with a lance of nothing but flamer mechs vs a single mech with no heatsinks and a bunch of pulse lasers and I think that mech won... :/ (or at least, was winning until I got bored)

I'm rambling again.

But yes, thank you for the lesson. I'll try and get some sort of character together at some point. Currently have a cold and am all loopy from cold medicine.

Quote from: Captain Whitebread on November 02, 2015, 05:52:41 PM
There are times when I hate myself.

I have 74 characters ready, organized into lances and companies, ranging from mechwarriors to tank jockeys, with infantry and air support.

Okay, so I'm recycling them from my last table top campaign.  I've just stripped out any heavy and assault mechs or tanks (with a few exceptions). 

I'm thinking 4-6 smaller factions on the planet and one neutral zone which includes the starport and the hyperpulse generator.  Groups from each faction frequent the neutral zone, to spy, hire new mercs and occasionally scrap it up in the areas outside the city for fun and occasionally profit.

A heavy tank company keeps the peace but has been known to take bribes and send units out to reinforce one side or the other of a faction.  To date they have never opened fire on each other but have appeared on both sides of a battlefield.

Why do I get the feeling I'm going to be GMing this?

Quote from: ThisOneGal on November 02, 2015, 06:00:31 PM
>  There are times when I hate myself.

> Why do I get the feeling I'm going to be GMing this?

Eheheh... ^_^

Probably because you are *waaay* more knowledgeable about this than I am. Also, more competent. :P

> Okay, so I'm recycling them from my last table top campaign.

Bah, recycling content is a key part of the grand culture and history of tabletop RPGs. Don't feel bad about it. ^^

> I have 74 characters ready, [...]

Given all that, I'll probably go with a noble that's been sent to (what they consider) the ass end of nowhere. It'll help explain why she's kinda oblivious as to a lot of 'obvious' local stuff. Also allows for in-character explanations of stuff, which are more interesting than OOC explanations, since you can show character that way (and have unreliable narrators).

Quote from: Captain Whitebread on November 02, 2015, 08:43:27 PM
Of course her advisors are going to tell her the unvarnished honest truth.

"Of course heat sinks cost 100,000 each.  Everyone knows that..."

You'd get a the nickel tour. 

"That's so and so.  He's the one that eats kittens, so make sure you tell him you're vegan when he sends a dinner invitation.  He pilots a <whatever>."

What will she pilot, your young lady who is so out of her depth?

Ralhend

I say we scrap the actual rules and just use the setting.

And its good to see we have another 80's player, back when Fasa was Fasa :)

I favor energy weapons over anything else, ammo is just a pain in the ass otherwise.

My character would likely have an Uziel, or a Swayback

******************************************************************

My Idea, if I was to DM this game, is the following:

We role-play an alternate timeline in the Fedcom Civil War, starting in 3062.  We are part of an independent mercenary outfit sponsored by the Grey Death Legion,(Carlisle FOR THE WIN!) and are based on the world of Outreach.

The nature of the game is where we take various missions from whoever employer's offer them (Private corporations at first, then later from the Lyran Alliance and the Federated Suns), roleplay them out, collect our pay and salvage, rinse and repeat.  This type of format will allow new players to drop in and out as they are able, giving us a little freedom.  Should you get busy and want a break, we can say your character is taking a break, or away with another unit doing whatever.  You can always come back later)

I would like to do at least one extended campaign where it is a survival type mission, not unlike the video game "mechwarrior3", where the unit is cut off from the main force, and forced to salvage or raid as they progress to the objective.  Once the main objective is completed, they escape by commandeering an enemy dropship, which is later added to the company assets, meaning we no longer have to pay drop fees.

I am not happy with the in game official cannon where outreach is destroyed by Word-Of-Blake later in the 60's.  In my table-top games this timeline does not exist.  In my games, Wolves Dragoons were successful in their defense of the planet, and were able to acquire HPG tech from the Blakist assholes...  (This would take us a while to progress this far though.  It would happen seven years in the in-game future per-se.)   
Also, Lockheed/Raimei Corporation was not destroyed in 2814.  In my timeline, Lockheed/Raimei is known as LMBL(Lockheed Marshal Battleworks Limited), and is a significantly more powerful.  In addition to their Aerospace fighters they also produce thier own line of Battlemechs. 

I do not use the standard battle-tech rule set, just the setting.  My system is a hombrew d1000 roll against the chart type with more detail than the usual 2 six sided dice used in the vanilla system, without adding any more complexity roll wise.  Weapons and mechs have more detail and variation, quirks, and other things that make each item unique, rather than all medium lasers having the same static numbers, etc.

OR...

We can use the MektonZ system...

OR...

We can scrap a rules system entirely, go free-form, and focus on the story unfolding without a bunch of pesky numbers and statistics distracting us *Wicked evil grin* "I like this idea the best!!!!"

Im in the market for heavy action and story, not unlike Gundam, Full Metal Panic, or Gurren Lagann. (Yes, I love anime)

Oh yeah, Don't forget...  All the pig-mole steaks you can eat =D
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Captain Whitebread

I wasn't planning on using the gaming system for this.  It would be free form. 

Sway backs I have no issues with.  Uziel is 3062 tech, which I despise.   I'm looking at 3025 tech and a single planet setting where the players actually have a little influence on the governance of the planet,  where a single lance can hold the balance of power between city states that are, if not actively at war, actively working to undermine each other.  Game of Thrones with big stompy robots.

Have you read the books?  Grayson Death Carlisle was an idiot who couldn't see a trap until after he fell into it.
There are nights when the wolves are silent and it the moon that howls.

Ralhend

Ahhhh.... Maybie I am wrong, but I said the normal cannon does not apply to my games.

It seems we have a personality conflict off the bat, and will not make suitable partners. I will take my ideas elsewhere.  There is no point in struggling to get along with someone if a paycheck is not involved.

Thank you for your time and consideration. 
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ThisOneGal

System
I was leaning towards freeform, but using the Battletech rules as guidelines for equipment and 'power levels' and such. If we did use rules, I would want it as simple as possible; 2d6 +/- (0-3), 7 or better is success.

Setting
I'm in agreement with Captain Whitebread here; I was inspired by the Battletech kickstarter, and so I want something in the 3025 era. Granted, I'm not fully versed in the lore and am willing to be quite lose with it, but I do want to maintain the GoT with Stompy Robots theme. Here's how I envision it:

* Mechs are rare, generally relics of a bygone age (Star League, as I understand it). New ones can be built, but it takes multiple star systems to do so. It takes an entire star system to support the level of specialization needed to build the micro-fusion cores that power the damn things, and entire planetary populations to support building weaponry worth outfitting to a mech (there's very little need for laser systems the size of trucks with energy requirements equivalent to a large industrial sector unless you have a mech you want to put it on).  And so on and so forth.

* Mechs are nearly exclusively piloted by nobles and deployed by Noble Houses. Being a Mechwarrior is what makes you better than the rabble. Being able to muster the resources and extremely skilled labour to maintain and deploy Mechs is what makes a Noble House matter. Anyone can make piles of money, tax the populace, and raise an army. Only Nobility can bring forth a Mech that can destroy all of that in a day. 'Mercenaries' are disgraced or up-and-coming Nobles. The closest a non-Noble can get to piloting a Mech is if a ailing nobleman/woman can no longer pilot theirs, and has no suitable replacements from within their lineage. Then they might 'adopt' a non-noble to act as a surrogate pilot.

* The Noble Houses were very recently in a state of open warfare, but no longer. Everyone is too exhausted to fight openly, so major hostilities have ended. The 'war' is still very much ongoing however, but now it is though intermediaries, proxies, and deniable assets: Mercenary Lances.

* The Clans have not shown up, and are not a factor.

* The campaign is largely limited to a single planet or star system. The system is important enough to be worth fighting over and controlling, but until open war breaks out again it's not worth sending reinforcements to. What is here is all that's gonna be here for a long time. Terrestrial planets are huge, so it's not like we'll be lacking for space or diverse environments. Just look at Earth.

* While multiple lances of Mechs operate on the planet and there are many Noble fiefdoms (as to allow much mech on mech action and political intrigue), the number of 'true' noble houses present is negligible. The local powers lack the ability to deploy mechs offworld/over interstellar distances, and are thus completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. External noble houses lack the interest/will to get too involved, and have little more than token garrisons present (each substantially less powerful than the local 'lesser' noble forces). This is a cause of resentment and conflict in addition to the usual power grabs.

* Mech tonnages are in the light/medium range. Heavy mechs are exclusively deployed by external noble houses and used primarily as threats/shows of power (there are maybe half a dozen of these in the system, at most). If a heavy mech shows up, something has gone horribly wrong for someone. Assault mechs are not present unless brought in from out of system.

* Mechs are effectively unique artifacts. In practice, there is no such thing as a truly 'stock' mech; time and circumstance have shaped all of then individually. A mech should be as much a character as its pilot.

Canonicity
I'm fine with fudging numbers and names; I'm probably going to be rolling a scaled down Omen mech, which is notable for being a Clan assault mech from like a century later. If Ralhend wants to rock an Uziel, that's fine, but he should probably file the serial numbers off and strip any Clan/advanced tech off of it.

Captain Whitebread

#8
Mechs aren't quite as difficult to manufacture as you envision.  If they were, no one would risk them in combat.  Constant war has reduced the factories that manufactured them to near ruins, so they are very difficult to build, rather than very expensive (although they are quite expensive).

I'm thinking the planet in question is one of the lesser 'war zones'.  Representatives of each faction are present but they tend to be from the poorer lines or have done something to alienate themselves from the more important nobles.  There are 36 mechs currently on planet, divided up roughly equally between four of the five groups (each with 8 mechs) with the fifth (the PCs) having the fewest NPC mechwarriors.  Four PCs would bring the sides into full equality.

As far as dice rolling goes, 7 is not always enough.  Sometimes you can't succeed, no matter what the dice say.  Give me a bit to divide up the current NPCs and we will see what we have.

TOG, which house is your character from?
There are nights when the wolves are silent and it the moon that howls.

ThisOneGal

> As far as dice rolling goes, 7 is not always enough.  Sometimes you can't succeed, no matter what the dice say.

In instances where success/failure is a forgone conclusion, I skip dice rolls. The dice are there for when success and failure are equally interesting options for the story. It's weighed heavily in favor of success because it's more fun to play competent people. :P

> TOG, which house is your character from?

Honestly, which house she's from isn't terribly important. (Although probably not Kurita/Draconis Combine, despite their cool logo). What's more important is that a) they're way bigger fish than anyone else here, and b) she's not exactly 'popular' with the powers that be back home.

I'll get a proper write up here in the next hour or so.

ThisOneGal

Draft 1

Incomplete, obviously, but it's a decent enough sketch of what I'm going for.




Name Kathryn Foss of House XXXXX

Visual Reference
Height Reference

+ Majesty
Young nobles receive the finest education and the best training available. Every aspect of their upbringing is engineered to create the fittest heirs. They are taught to think faster, deeper, and more creatively than their peers (and hopefully their completion). They are trained to be stronger, faster, healthier. All of this is obvious, and anyone with sufficient money or will can give this to their children. Anyone can be taught etiquette, diplomacy, subterfuge and leadership. What separates the noble upbringing from all others is instilling the will to power. Young nobles are taught from birth that they can and will be the best, if they only try. And the thing that makes them superior is that they will try. To be noble is to know that you have all the best opportunities in the world, and the only factor in your success or failure is you.

A noble is not truly noble because of their training, resources, or luck. We are noble not only because we know we will be victorious, but because when you encounter us, you shall know as well.

+ Mechwarrior
As a noble, Kathryn has been raised from birth to pilot a Mech. Her record as a mechwarrior is one of consistent competence. By her own admission, she has neither earned reputation for wisdom nor been credited for courage, although she tends to phrase that admission in an idiosyncratic syntax.

When speaking honestly with her instructors, her primary strength is her skill at tactical positioning. She has a knack for being where she is not expected, which is especially impressive given her mech's sup-par speed. Despite, or perhaps because of, her noble upbringing, her command skills are lacking. She functions far better as a supporting element than a leading one.

+ Noble Arts
Kathyn has been trained in a number of skills not because they are directly useful, but to meet the expectations of someone in her position. History, diplomacy, and standard combat skills are all of obvious use. Swordplay is only taught to build up your image (the longsword is her obsolete weapon of choice). She's proficient in singing and dancing, both the formal kind that maintains face in court and the informal kind that earns you friends when you've managed to slip your security escort for a bit of fun.

- Reassigned To Antarctica
She has her rank, her mech, a handful of loyal staff, and not a whole lot else. The exact nature of her offense is immaterial, and bringing it up is a thing that is Unwise To Do In Front Of Nobility.
She is unfamiliar with the system and its politics, but this is less because of naivete than because of disinterest.
Kathryn is no exactly out of her depth, but people assuming she is is a weakness that can be exploited.
Interesting possible plot arc is having her converting the system into her own fiefdom and using it as a springboard/base of power for greater things. Unlike her competitors, she'll know she can build a powerbase from nothing.


Mech Name (Class)
Visual Reference
Corrupted Technical Readout

Tonnage: High end of Medium (45-50)

+ Heavily Armed
Big Laser, Autocannon, LRM launcher.
Collection of smaller lasers/machine guns.
A flexible and heavy loadout, it can't beat a specialist, but it can almost anything at any range.
LRM engages at long/indirect ranges, autocannon is primary weapon with flexible range, big laser is backup weapon, and the collection of smaller weapons are short range/anti-non-mech weapons.

+ Tough
Can take a beating. Pretty rugged too, even for a mech.

+ Jump Jets
Appear where you are not expected.

- Slow
Not fast. It's still a medium mech, but it's on the slow end of medium.

- Generalist
Can do almost anything well, but is not the best at anything. The trick, of course, is to not attack the enemy's strength.
If you have a plan, almost any other mech would be better. If you don't know exactly what's going to happen though, this mech will be able to exploit whatever weakness presents itself.