If you think about it Robotech, BattleTech, and even Transformers are all late 80's and have a lot of similarities depending on which viewpoint you take on it. I don't want to deal with transformers mash up on BT the poor games gunna have to get pretty cracked as it is for this to be the next level on what the clan invasion was to 3025...Zentraadi themselves already the size of a small to medium mech without armor are an obvious advantage and aliens with extreme combat and spacetravel capability would be a whole new way to challenge the human race and theres plenty of backstory/lore to draw from. I'll have plenty of my own thoughts eventually but I just thought of this so give me your thoughts and ideas to share with anyone feeling adventurous enough in recreating such a crazy campaign all the way to lostech alien salvage long forgotten being discovered and reactivating a beacon that brings these giant humanoids from beyond the known galaxy
Battletech vs Robotech
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- Last Post 27 July 2018
so first off lets just say all optional advanced tech is available and its the end of current BT lore. 3150? I think that's the highest tro I've seen so far. obviously there is only so many nuclear weapons in the innersphere guess weapons are everywhere now but still there really are only soo many of those either. my point is rarity of the best of the best should always be kept in mind.
the original marauder model was an exact ripoff of the visual design to the Zentraadi officer mechs. and lots of people have made various models of different designs FROM robotech already so I'm hoping theres still knowing and interested players/gamers that would be up to the task. I'm gunna look up whats here and request to link those designs into this thread. I also shall be checking shortly as to whether and what rulesets of a similar nature there may already to be found amongst the net.
the agility of macross tech is beyond anything in BattleTech but lore for the first season of robotech was that in earth/terra year 1999 an empty battlecruiser of alien make craters a third of an island and was still halfway salvageable. with that level of human technology supposedly we partly harnessed a great deal of the Robotech Masters' technology creating extremely fast and agile LAM's and eventually even mind-controlled and even AI-controlled machines of veritable death and awesome destructive capabilities later in the series. I have a subtitled Macross frontier to watch but it hurts my head to try to watch it and try to follow it all.
Mechs like the Phoenix Hawk LAM, Archer, Ostoscout, etc are other fine examples that drew their original designs from robotech.
I want to basically scale up the Zentraadi mechs to what they would be if they were at the same scale to their mechs as we are. and I want to them to have as many attributes as I can match up via lore to a sensible disbalance of giant aliens that Robotech lore basically says we survived and continued fighting with pre-2000 tech to start against the same enemies.
in one of the 3025 mech descriptions I recall a 20 rack that was actually a rapid-fire 5-rack, that and an upscaled Improved swarm missile munition seem like a good set of rules to measure against. the veritech fighters had improved power range and accuracy with the rifle they carried when in fighter-mode though I'm not sure exactly how much. all the scenes where missiles were used the clouds of those things they put up at a time was enormous.. I want to figure how to "dis-balance" reasonably such new tech into BT terms of weight, space, dmg, ht, range etc.
A: Welcome to the Nebula California
D&D, Xmen, Transformers, and Star Wars as implemented in the battletech universe.
B: You want 120 meter tall Mechs?
I know this isn't your style of gameplay Thunder but you don't have to make a big joke out of the idea. I like playing with the radical idea's and making new ones. this would obviously be a whole 'nother level of menchtek. but games are played to have fun so don't heckle.
ok kinda figured it wasn't all jokes, just looked that up, haha NO! but indeed I get your point. and unfortunately 120 meter mechs aren't all that far off in the scale of those Zentraadi but I still want to keep them as defeatable opponent's since as I said about Robotech lore we managed to fight and lose badly but survived nonetheless against this superior force. with the thousand+ years of Battletechs higher tech and expanded numbers of humanity this kind of invasion would be even more hell than when the clans first invaded but I think it'll be more feasible than the classic robotech storyline of only ten years research and construction having the bloody SDF-1 combat-worthy (well mostly..)
Why not go for Super Heavy 'Mechs?
I'm likely to draw a lot from how those are constructed but I'm probly still gunna have to stretch that particular envelope because again those damned Zentraadi are huge already, I'm probly gunna have to scale them down too now that I think of it as 50'tall is what in meter's again- how many levels is that terrain-wise? I want them to still be on a level beyond any tech the current BT universe has to offer which includes being able to build to scale with their own size despite the increased effect of gravity due the sheer size they are.
I'm thinking of how to basically scale the ruleset so its as if human mechs were as elementals are to a well rounded medium mech. sure one or two shots from the Zentraadi mechs will shred most of our mechs but using their size against them and gorilla tactics or swarming them can eventually overcome them. Plus while they'll have some technology that's along the same lines as ours but more advanced such as lasers, ac, missiles, etc that we'd have in common to capture and research just as the I.S. did when the clans invaded, but we'll have some tech that they've never studied like say our biochemical and nuclear weapons. might even say they've never used such weapons or perhaps even never used nuclear and have a whole different energy source that is the core of how their machinery operates and the first thing humanity has to discover and learn in the quest to defeat these giant invaders.
If it helps, Superheavy 'Mechs officially stand 3 levels tall. That translates to ~18 meters (~60 feet).
According to A Time of War, Elemental suits are 3 meters (10 feet) tall and a bipedal 'Mech 12 (~40). That's a 4:1 ratio. Applied to your Zentraadi-Human size ratio, that would make their war machines ~160-240 feet tall.
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I know this isn't your style of gameplay Thunder
I am Shocked. Shocked and Offended I say! My style of gameplays is broad and inclusive! It kinda has to be since my own personal preferences are in the realm of munchkinism. It does no do to throw black kettles in a china shop.
Ah, so you realized I was giving the name of a source book 
Capital Mechs. Take a normal mech. Multiply the armor and structure by 10. Round the damage from all weapons that hit combined normally. Role 1 hit location per mech's full attack. Cluster weapons apply maximum damage because they can't miss hard enough.
Multiply the damage dealt by 10. Attacks splash. Pick your AEO damage reduction rules. There are several to choose from. My concern is that missile attacks really shouldn't splash much. Like maybe homing arrow IV level splash. Missed attacks Don't miss... They scatter.
The thing about the Zentradi is that their battlepods are more closely akin to power armor or protomechs for them. They don't really use our equivalent of mechs. For physics based reasons. (Cube Square laws do not like things that big moving. Especially quickly. A Fall would probably destroy a mech that big. You can build the skeleton to support it while its standing, but it will crush under its own weight if you apply that much force from the side instead of straight up and down.)
The best part is, even at 120 meters tall, They still only take up 1 hex. (They just completely take it up. No stacking at all in a Zentradi mech's hex.)
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Its been a long "minute" since I saw RT so I forgot ever seeing them get into or out of their mechs. That'll make things easier because as you were saying about physics and weight vs. structure I was already thinking they'd have to have superior materials to withstand that extra mass, the smaller scale disparity and thus smaller mech makes things a whole lot easier. probly can even stay withen the size of Superheavy but add some tech so they at least move as fast as some medium and heavy mechs. maybe make it so whatever the engine rating would usually grant for MP and with their engine, gyro, internal structure, "myomer" and actuators all upgraded to multiply the normal speed by 1.2-1.5 or more depending on what that averages out in their mechs.
what might you guess their Light mech would weigh? think I should have them all stuck in superheavy or do you think a 50' tall humanoid could wear a lighter suit of armor that still grants full protection? I think they had a locust lookalike but mostly I recall seeing a lot of ostcout or whatever those pods with legs were, and officers usually had a marauder lookalike. all the Veritech fighters were Pheonix-hawk LAM lookalikes and the second mech I recall seeing on the SDF-1 were Archer and Longbow lookalikes. I know there were plenty of others but those are what I think filled out the majority of the mech forces at least in the first macross/robotech seasons.
once I've got a better handle on the mech differences I can start working out what the Zentraadi are like unarmored or in infantry level armors. then I'll need to work on some of the big things like the SDF-1 robotech masters' crashed ship that will start the storyline. thankfully someones already made a good superheavy design for the MAC-3 SDF-1's (and I think SDF-2's as well?) defender mechs with three artillery sized barrels on their backs.
ok I'll need a little bigger on second thought for the MAC-II Destroid monster: http://robotech.wikia.com/wiki/Destroid_Monster
